Dilemmas

What's in the Szelhamos Portfolio?

On Sunday evening I was mildly hopeful that we'd had enough of this unbridled selling.

With a new week of option contract selling coming up on Monday and the start of a new quarter, all I really was asking for was a nice up day on that first day.

Despite what was going on in the Asian markets news of a potential Yahoo! buyout by its child, Ali Baba and an upgrade of Freeport McMoRan seemed like good omens.

There really wasn't any tangible reason to be hopeful, but much of the ride down hasn't been based on anything at all. So why should the upside be any different?

The idea of Ali Baba buying out its enfeebled parent was sad on one level, but maybe a necessary act. For all of those people using Yahoo's e-mail service, if that deal goes through, you might think about going elsewhere, as China will be your mailbox overlord.

No matter.

What will be more interesting will be the daily Yahoo Trends listings: Democracy sucks, Tiananmen Rocks, One child is enough, What Mao teaches America, Dalai Lama gay and various searches for dog related recipes.

OK. That last one was unnecessary.

The rest of Sunday evening was devoted to dealing with a dilemma.

I'd wanted to watch Andy Rooney's final 60 Minutes appearance, despite the fact that I haven't watched the show in more than a generation, back when his eyebrows were in the same time zone as the rest of his head.

The problem was that it was competing with a new episode of The Simpsons and the Ravens versus Jets Sunday Night Football game, which my kids were attending.

Whereas my kids have outgrown The Simpsons, I haven't. I still wear the T-shirt we won on a cruise one year as result of being uber-Simpsons trivia addicts. I purposely don't use the self-checkout line at the grocery store, just so I can point out the significance of the shirt to the bagger.

Through the modern miracle of speed clicking on the remote I was able to negotiate my way through that dilemma and still retain reasonable understanding of the content and context of the Andy Rooney segment and The SImpsons.

As far as football goes, I've never really understood it, so I could likely go a season or two of missing games and not be exorcised.

Andy Rooney was interesting.

He firmly characterized himself, first and foremost, a writer.

He made one statement that really struck me and got me thinking.

He wondered aloud, how with all of the events going on around us each day, anyone could possibly be unable to write a daily column.

Well, here's two things about that.

On a day like today, down about 260 points, it's really hard to find anything humorous in the days' markets. It's also hard to find anything to really write about, because there hasn't been much in the way of real news.

Sure the ISM number was good, but that was so 15 minutes ago. And I really don't feel the whole AManda Knox thing.

The second issue is that with so much happening, at least by Andy Rooney's reckoning, everybody could be writing.

It's bad enough that dregs, such as myself, are doing it. Do you really want the limited space available on the internet taken up by people like me trying to promote themselves?

Didn't think so, but read on anyway.

With dilemma so deftly solved, I had new confidence I could face this first trading day.

As it turned out, I did make one trade today, For a brief moment Freeport McMoRan took flight on its upgrade and I sold some weekly calls. I didn't get a good a price as last week, but still a 1+% ROI for a week of risk taking seemed pretty good, especially in light of the dearth of alternate opportunities.

Unfortunately, I sold them out of the wrong account. The account that I used was holding shares at a loss and I really didn't want to take a tax loss on those shares in the event the shares are assigned.

The account that I had wanted to sell the calls from was holding shares at a lower price that I wouldn't mind seeing the shares lost, since there would be a capital gain on top of the options premiums.

Within minutes of realizing the mistake it was already too late.

Before you knew it, Freeport, like everything else just tanked, as reality set it and everyone began to understand that the EU was far more dysfunctional than the United States ever had been.

But when it comes to dysfunction, no one is really interested unless the mocking finger is pointed at our political or economic systems. Now those are funny dysfunctions.

European dysfunction doesn't really sell.

If Andy Rooney was reading this, he would certainly recall an old newspaper editor's adgae: "Dog bites man? That's not news. Bring me Man Bites Dog, now that's news".

So today's dilemma revolved around the dual issues of what to write about and whether I was abdicating my responsibility by considering to take a nap at the height of the afternoon's trading.

Once it looked as if the die was really cast, there was no question that a nap was in order. At least that way I wouldn't have to think about another day of carnage.

As I was trying to fall asleep I was still dealing with what today's topic should be. Eventually, I decided to go with the popular uproar against Governor Rick Perry for reportedly frequenting and leasing a hunting spot getaway that greeted visitors with a racial epithet painted onto a large stone.

When I awoke, apparently Governor Perry defused the controversy by releasing the following statement:

"Some of my best friends are racists".

Good enough for me.

So that dilemma will go unanswered as I now question Andy Rooney's original hypothesis.

I don't know what Tuesday's trading will bring, although I've already checked the Asian futures. What I do know is that next Sunday Andy Rooney will be gone, the Ravens have a bye week and the Simpsons, whether a new episode or repeat will be my sole distraction.

Other than for the fact that we're going out for dinner to celebrate our son's 25th Birthday.

I'll deal with that dilemma when it comes.

 

Invest like TheAcsMan

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