[...]this isn’t a recovery, in any sense that matters. And policy makers should be doing everything they can to change that fact.

For a man that achieved nobel greatness for integrating a few small fields of economics (read: not all that great), he is finally bringing some rational thought into economics, although, a bit late.

Beyond that one sentence, though, I still consider Krugman a quack. He may be one of the only people who hasn’t seen a connection between easy money policies plus government stimulus and the inevitable misallocation of resources that occurs when there is too little risk to borrowing money and not enough reward given to those who save. Continuing the consumption driven economy that we as Americans have enjoyed for the past 20 years.

Does anyone else not get the feeling that politics in general are leaving a bad taste in the mouths of most Americans? Nobody likes the Democrats and the Republicans are hated too. Its a political stagnation of sorts, where no one wins. I guess this is why I’m Libertarian.

Feel free to link here or repost to get some attention to this bug. I wouldn’t mind a phone call from Tim Cook.

The Road To Nowhere Bug

How to reproduce:

Open iPod.app

Play a music video:

Stop the video:

What Happens?

Welcome to absolutely nowhere. This would make an excellent blonde joke. How do you occupy a blonde for hours? Play a music video and tell her to get back to her music without pressing the home button.

I want to be able to use iPod.app. Tim, the bug is #8172593.

I will be watching the markets and hopefully by the end of this week, I will have defined my strategy with something concrete and defined.

Expect another post to come tomorrow with a little bit more detail about the trade (if I make it).

With that in mind, here is my current portfolio snapshot:

*Options spreads are listed Long Put / Short Put / Short Call / Long Call

As you can see, I only have one profitable trade as of this writing, which is really deceiving as far as the overall trade performance is concerned. $ANF had slightly anemic open interest on the long put option, so I had to pay a few more cents for it, which put the overall trade at $(12.50) starting out, $ANF hit a low of $31.90 today and closed well above those lows, giving it plenty of room should this stock decide to chop higher and lower.

$RIMM, my should-have-waited-till-after-earnings trade has seen volatility spike as it goes into what is becoming an important earnings call for the company, hence my losses on the options. $RIMM is actually setup very well to expire out of the money as it is at its mid-high point, perfect for when they miss earnings.

Only time will tell on these trades though, I look forward to developing my strategy further. I am also planning on starting up a daily or weekly podcast for all 11 of you that regularly read this blog. I just feel like options trading has some real potential to help out the retail investor, why not give my 2c on the subject! Look for the premier of “The Trading Desk” sometime next week, I’ll squeeze it in sometime between my 40/hr a week job, trading, and my upcoming iPad App.

All of these positions, except the $BP position will be coming off of the books at the close. Overall, even with the blown trade on $BBY, profit this month was a healthy 8%, or ~$850. I am currently looking towards my next plays for July expiration, and I will probably be writing a post on my methodology and trading strategy in the near-term. Happy Trading.

Oh, $BBY closed down ~$2.50 ($38.50). My reactive selling yesterday cost me big money.

Sad news, $BBY closed down $0.10 cents. Its contracts priced at ~$1.15. More math involved, but 100 shares in a contract * 5 contracts and you begin to see the losses incurred and the losses that could have been avoided.

What have I learned?

• Trading on emotion is a quick way to losing profits.
• Trade only on technicals, not emotion.
• Trade at the close, not during the emotional open.

Notice anything? Emotion during trading is an an absolute killer. Trading strategy must be as robotic as possible to assure that exit probability stays at or above 50%. I emerge a smarter trader, keeping cool even as the market deals me my largest losses. I emerge at the end of the day, profits shrinking, but who’s complaining about 10% return in one month?

I am always looking for new positions and monday will be no different. Depending on how the market opens, I may look to get rid of my $QQQQ and $BBY holdings as they are my under-preformers right now. I may play russian roulette with $BBY and hold it until earnings, just depends on my appetite for risk at the close tomorrow.

Its no wonder I have no clue what the hell to write on my blog, but I am going to try and keep everything relevant and segmented. If you are interested in my trading endeavors, I have a new “Investing” category listed above. I will be posting portfolio updates as well as profit/loss updates in this category.

I have also set up a new “code” category which will pertain to everything code/computers. Here I will try and label the posts with the projects that they pertain to, this way everyone can follow my projects more closely. I will also be posting weekly updates on the status / current work on all of my projects, plus any new ones I have started working on.

I hope everyone (all 11 of you that visit per day) can bear with me as I make this transition to a more thought out blogging style.

Note that this is just a side project I completed to give my mind some time to “play” while working on my new startup: ObjecteDB.

    $c = curl_init($cURL);
    curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_URL, "http://tockx.com/s.php");
    curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_HEADER, 1);
    curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
    curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
    curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $strParameters);
    $strPage = curl_exec();
    curl_close($c);

Plus, it just seems so repetitive. When you a guy like me, and your build a few RESTful applications, its tough to let your code get “uglied” with code that looks out of place — so I wrote CoreNetwork, the best way to use curl with PHP. Using CoreNetwork, you turn your old, dirty curl code into something beautiful:

    $net = new CoreNetwork()->url('http://your-rest.com/api/noun');
    $get = $net->get()->returned();

Its easy to use and is available at GitHub. Go check it out, it will make php and curl so easy and beautiful.