Hello Maurice, I am back, happily in Money Rock, next to Freedom Mountain, near Asphalt Beach, on south side of Concrete Jungle.
I wrote this note to you while traversing the Pacific, and while waiting in lounge transiting the WAT-WOT-WhatIsNot sideshow that is and always will be Manila, capital of one of the best places and one of the worst countries in this world.
The 16-day long holiday was good. We usefully rested, productively exchanged thoughts with friends, and joyously engaged in playing, eating, and sleeping (some pics ... achamchen.com ).
I did not agree with my friends on many issues. Most disagreements are in the economics and finance area, some debates involve geopolitics, but no controversy exists concerning family, friends, right and wrong.
Thinking about how to preserve capital and how not to lose wealth is an activity best engaged in during the quiet and otherwise idle hours of travel. Let me do just that and think out loud, test some ideas, and listen to the actively transformed echo bounced back by the collective consciousness that is the BBR thread.
We all paid our one-off Silicon Investor subscription fee and should use what we paid for in the best way we can.
I want to start off by taunting you, as usual and perhaps always, as I used to when much younger, digging up a sweet potato planted by the compound manager where I lived when growing up, use it to knock against the window of his sleeping quarter, wake him up, and then noisily disappear into the anonymous safety of night.
I was a naughty kid. I remember my friends and I sometimes dug up carrots, instead of sweet potatoes, but taking care to leave the surface plants intact, standing, without their underlying goodies. The compound-keepers would water the crop, and watch the individual plants wilt, day after awful day, mysteriously.
I am older and much improved now, though not quite grown up.
I no longer pick at sweet potatoes and dig up spicy carrots, or wake up their keepers with the fruits of their labour.
I now pick at sweet QCOM and dig up spicy AOL, and try to keep Maurice awake thinking about all those who scheme against his lovely Tonka of Qs;0)
I, with my chilled guava juice at side, am thinking in a most satisfying way about my natural QCOM trade and obvious AOL exchange, along with my apparent Gold backstop, and self-evident non-USD wager, all in part financed at 1.5% interest rate by the diligent working and hard saving Japanese Sake-7-Bottles who no longer need his wealth, taking away Mq's fruits, while leaving the plants seemingly undisturbed, destined to wilt;0)
I always get an inkling of nervous feel whenever I am thinking satisfied, but since I like thinking satisfied and feeling nervous, let me continue to taunt you.
My natural QCOM trade
Message 18500597
... is one way to play what I believe to be a zero-sum game of chance and what you say is an ever fruitful investment in new era currency.
If QCOM remains within the strangle hold of USD 35-37.5/shr on July option expiration day, I will have made up to 25% on my wager and managed to keep the stock. If so, then I will have gained economic profit against your Q-holdings without Q having increased its market cap pie to any material degree. If this is not a zero-sum outcome then the world as we know it has indeed come to an end.
When I think about it, why, it would be as if I gained control of a chunk of your company at up to 25% discount to market price.
Better still, I believe, given the size of the Greensputin-enabled monetary bubble, the splash damage of the bang, and the expected elongation of suffering period per professor Bernankaput teaching, I will have time and opportunity to make four equivalent QCOM trades and thus abscond with a piece of your beloved QCOM completely free of any charge.
The way I will thus gain rich possession of the hoped for coming of QCOM would be dissimilar to the method used by option-incentivized management. They manage the company's operations, whereas I would only be ameliorating the volatility of the stock price for no useful purpose, much like a game, played against loyal shareholders such as Maurice and enthusiastic cheerleaders such as Mq.
You should notice I do not sound as if I am in love with the stock I happen to own, having achieved a higher level of Zen at a younger age:0)
Now, to more serious matters.
Now I am here:
Message 18559470
Strategically, I believe so this to be the truth for now.
Message 18566813
Tactically, I intend to decrease my cash holdings, increase natural resource shares in concert with paper gold holdings, decrease bond weighting, and put on more high volatility put/call straddles of some non-natural resource shares such as QCOM, AOL and CD, and of course, samo samo on NEM, FCX :0)
Chugs, Jay |
