.<-than

It's 5.50 in the morning. There's nothing special about that. I'm still at Rhodes Hall. Lately I feel like that isn't too special an occasion either. Time has been flying by, but not. Can't really explain it. There's hardly any time to eat, sleep, breathe, crap, play or do anything other than the assignments. The part I used to hate about studying. When I take stock of how I spent my time, 80% of it is usually related to school. Things are flying past me - classes, jobs, education, money. But still the past month and a half feels like a gazillion years.

Somehow the picture above makes it all worth while though. Ithaca is gorge(ou)s. Everyone knows that. But I'm beginning to discover it in the strangest ways. From the 5th floor of Rhodes Hall at 5.53 in the morning the view seems a lot to take in, in a single frame. The Clock Tower and Statler to my left, the baseball field in front and a dark scary road leading to East Hill towards my right. Complete silence except for the occasional car passing by. Some stars seem to be poking holes in the sky and one big one wants to shine, even through the thick cloud trying to cover it.

What's the point of this blog entry you ask? I have no idea. No real revelations to discuss and definitely no new theories. I'm listening to the same playlist I listen to everyday when I walk to the Commons, but it feels so inexplicably different right now. Why am I still awake? Partly because I promised a friend who's sleeping in the lounge behind me that I'd wake her up, but mostly so that I can catch the sunrise.

This entry much like my being awake is totally pointless but this complete pointlessness is now becoming the underlying theme of my most interesting pursuits. The 'nothing specials' the 'totally pointlesses' seem far more interesting than most things with purpose. Watching 10 straight episodes of a stupid series like Heroes instead of sleeping. Walking to North Campus on to the suspension bridge to smoke a cigarette. Sitting outside in the freezing cold to write a blog entry about nothing.

If my life were to be the sum total of a series of absolutely pointless events/pursuits, would I make a pointless enough point about pointlessness?

Another Lesson in Portfolio Management

I've discussed the parallels between love/emotions and investments before. Somehow today, I feel like 3.33 a.m. is the perfect time to formalize my thoughts on the subject. Let's start with the basics:

Love = Money/Liquid Assets
Self-love = Cash reserves
Love for family = Treasury bonds
Love for friends = Diversifiable portfolio of value/growth/GARP investments in publicly traded securities
Incoming love from friends = Convertible bonds
Romantic love = High volume speculative trade for big swinging dicks
Marriage = Retirement plan
Lust = Day-trade
Casual acquaintances/Networking = Forex hedges

This is the story of portfolio manager X. Until the age of 12 or so, his portfolio consists mostly of treasury bonds along with a few forex hedges, with slowly building cash reserves. The excitement in the forex markets starts to make the treasuries look rather boring. This is when X decides he wants to test the real power of his cash and begins building his portfolio of investments. Some years X feels like a big swinging dick while in other more bearish years he settles for smaller positions in publicly traded securities, all the while building his appetite for risk. Then comes age 17-19 (college years) when he sees all his peers making big returns on big trades with the IT boom and general uptrend in GDP. He starts looking for the next sexy Microsoft/Google to put all his money in. After all, what good had diversification done him so far. The big money was in the speculative trades.


Treasuries are now hardly visible, and he's pulling his money out of the long-term investments because he thinks he's found his source for alpha. That year the markets gave him so much more than he'd dreamt of. On some volatile days, there were huge amounts to be made in day-trades. It was raining cash. He had so much cash now, that he was out hunting for more spec trades to invest in, and in the coming years there were many IT start-ups that he hand-picked to be queens of the markets.

Then the bubble burst. The markets that buried him in cash just like that, took it all away, just like that - with no respect for the investment strategies he thought he had perfected. All he was left with were a little bit of treasuries and some money tied up in the forex markets. The market recovers, but he doesn't. He's lost his nerve. Every time he finds a spec, his hands freeze up when it's time to pull the trigger. The next few years pass by, as he burns through his cash reserves and issues convertible bonds to survive. He spends his time looking through every stock screen he can get his hands on, looking for the next big thing - sometimes finding, never buying. His creditors keep telling him that spec trades aren't the only investments out there, that he should look for other sources of alpha.

Slowly, but surely at age 25, X begins to realize, that he doesn't have the stomach for specs any more. Day trades were not for him either - the teenagers on the trading floor could have those. X is now a well diversified value investor. The clean balance sheets afford him a sound sleep. But sometimes, just sometimes, he wonders if he might want to retire some day.