August 20th wednesday I was sick for a week and a half.
RESILIENT Ah resilient! I don’t know why the fucking market is still up.
The news get worst and the market still up. We are still below my bearish call at 16,950. It seems like that’s all I see and hear.
Ever since I mentioned them in my first and second blog in late June. I want to thank my son Spider, he hates when I called him that. For giving me both books (Black Swans and Tipping Points) a few years ago.
I am starting to feel like Jesse Libermore who made and lost three fortunes, as the story goes. He committed suicide in the men’s room of Oscar Del Monicos restaurant after losing his third fortune. He was called the Boy Plunger and the Great Bear of Wall Street. He made a $100 million dollars in the 1907 crash and a $125 million in the 1929 crash. You are talking about a billion dollars plus in today’s world.
I found his book “Reminiscences of the Stock Operator” early in my career there was a Strand book store across the street from my firm at 57 Water Street Downtown Manhattan. I had to pass it while walking to the subway to get home.
They had the new books inside. When the weather was nice they would put tables outside filled with used books and old books. I use to love to browse through them. That where I found and bought Libermore’s book. Try to get it. It is a great read.
I mentioned Black Swans and Tipping Points only because I am a contrarian, now it seems half the world is getting as bearish as me. Another thing that bothers me is the Advance-Decline Line Chart starting to look better. I mentioned Libermore because he said the only time he lost money was when he broke one of his own rules. Which is what I am doing now, breaking my own rules.
I want to thank Zerohedge.com for showing an A-D Line Chart a few weeks ago on the web site. I think zerohedge.com is one of the superior web sites out there. And I also think that only a small percentage ever saw or heard of an A-D Line Chart.
I am changing my Market Call? NO.
In fact I now think when this market breaks it would be a sound not only heard around the w.orld but around the universe.
I can’t stop listening Cold Play the CD with the colorful butterfly if you don’t think Latin love American music just go to you tube and watch there Rocking in Rio Concert from Brazil.
The last time I listening to a CD that much was in my younger years as a trader, the pressure on the job was too much most of my fellows’ traders either drank a lot or took drugs. I was raising a family and didn’t want to go that route besides I am Pisces we are addictive by nature.
I’ve been smoking since I was 14. For the last 2 weeks I had the flu. It’s going around. It gave me a lung infection and I had to go on strong antibiotics, coughing my brains out.
Did I stop smoking or even cut back? NO. What a fucking idiot!
Being sick is also the reason I didn’t write my blog in two weeks.
Anyway I bought a work out bench two dumbbells and a barbell and weights and worked out 2 or 3 nights a week while listening to Dark Side of the Moon Pink Floyd. It works. I was the calmest trader on the desk. When I was sick I wanted to write about AG BECKER. Here it is.
You know you don’t realize it but you spend more time with the people you worked with than your own family. I love all the people I worked with at AG Becker, then AG Becker Warburg then Warburg Becker Paribas. When I started at AG Becker in 1966 it was a NY start-up office with only 40 people, the main office was in Chicago and they were around for almost a century.
Over the years the NY office grew from 40 to 4,000 people. Then one morning August 3rd 1984 to be exact all the managers from all the departments in the firm walked around telling the workers to watch Reuters news at 9 o’clock am.
After 10 or 15 minutes it finally hit the tape AG Becker closed its doors. Dead silence. Everyone was in shock. I just sat there trying to absorb the news, 2 or 3 hours later people were passing by and saying Frank go out to lunch, go get some fresh air. I didn’t know what to do and never went out to lunch in almost 20 years. Traders were fed at the desk. Between making a market in 15 OTC stocks and executing orders you just couldn’t leave the desk.
That was Friday. Well about 4 hours later around lunch time I realize everyone left the floor. I wasn’t hungry. So I went outside and felt the midday sun for the first time in 20 years. I was scared. I left the building and sat on the nearest bench and lit up a cigarrete.
I close my eyes and said Jesus I just took out a big loan to buy a bungalow two blocks from the ocean at Rockaway Point that was between Breezy Point and Roxbury. My life dream. Isn’t life a bitch. I close my eyes again and said Please Jesus I need help. With that I automatically got up and start walking uptown for 5 or 6 blocks when I saw a bookstore I never notice before, walked in and like a guided robot walked three isles over make a right turn and about 1/3 down the isle I stopped, turned and looked at the books and my eyes and hands at the same time reached for a book that was called MIND CONTROL by Jose Silva. I walked into the cashier and bought the book. I walked back to the office and everyone was taking stuff from their desk drawers and putting them in boxes. It was depressing. I wished everyone a nice weekend and told them don’t worry we all will have jobs in one or two weeks. Only because AG Becker was the first Brokerage Firm that I can remember that went out of business in the middle of a Bull Market, believe it or not almost everyone had a job but the end of the first week.
The S.E.C. I think push Merryl Lynch into buying and hiring most of AG Beckers employees because and this is how I heard the story. There were many stories at that time that AG Becker hires a hot shot Bond Trader from Merryl Lynch who after 2 months lost 8 million dollars. Then the figure grew to 18 million dollars when all was set and done the final figure was 80 million dollars.That was just too much for a firm that size to absorb.
I started reading the book on the beach the next day and started practicing meditating for the first time on my life. Thank you Jesus for bailing me out again.
I just wish I could go back in time for just one day and go to work and see all the people that I loved. I miss all of you, even the not so nice ones.
Just thoughts
It took exactly 40 trading days for my 1987 crash call to happen. It is now almost 40 trading days from my June 24th bearish market call.
Final Note
One of the things that happened before the 87 crash was that the Japanese were buying US Real Estate and I think the Pan Am Building was bought at an outrageous price and now I hear that the Chinese are buying up Real Estate in Detroit at a crazy pace.
Next Blog
Water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink…. I don’t know who said that.
MARKET CALL ANASTASI 