My Black Friday

Despite the fact that I absolutely hate crowds, and I hate fighting to get a parking spot, the last few years I have gone out on Black Friday.  I never buy anything, but I like to get a sense of the crowds and to see what people are buying.  I have never actually bought anything because of one simple fact.  While there are great deals to be had on Black Friday, they are usually for things I don't need.  Now there is the part of me that loves a good deal.  I see something at 50% off, and it instantly piques my interest.  However, I find the whole thing rather sad as people line up more than twenty-four hours in advance to take advantage of doorbuster deals.

I only went to a few places.  I went to a Best Buy, a Borders, and a Macy.  I also just glanced in a few others.  While some pundits have predicted this to be a horrible shopping season, there were some pretty significant crowds at the Best Buy. The parking lot was quite full, with several cars continuously circling for a parking space.  I ended up parking pretty far away but I at least did not have to wait for my spot. I walked in and it was pretty crowded.  There was however no line at the registers.  It was kind of odd.  It was the first time I have not seen significant lines at a Best Buy on a Black Friday.  It might mean that Best Buy is getting really good at getting people through the line.   This is entirely possible because all the registers were opened and they had several makeshift registers throughout the store.  It might be also that there are lots of people like me, looking just not buying.

The same thing at Macy's and Borders.  It just was not all that crowded.  It seemed even lower on Saturday and Sunday.  This is in contrast to what is being reported in the news as most news outlets are reporting higher foot traffic this year than in years past.   It will be interesting to see how this news will be digested by investors.  It will really show how much bad news is actually baked in into the equity markets.

I'm Engaged

This weekend, on my vacation, I proposed to my girlfriend of almost four years.  She tearfully accepted.

I cannot explain how happy I am to embark on this part of my life.  There is no doubt that the last several years of my life have been the best they have ever been and this is due in large part to her.  While it may not have happened as quickly as she would like, like all things of this magnitude, I think it is important to be absolutely sure.

While my proposal itself was relatively simple, it was months in the making.  You see, the most important thing about it was that it needed to be a surprise.  The problem was exacerbated because she picked out her own ring (shown above) and thus knew that the proposal was soon to follow.  Given the way my fiancee's mind works, she would always be expecting it given any thing special that we did.  So I have very purposefully made sure that we have gone places and NOT proposed, so she would stop expecting it.

Another tricky thing I had to do was to be sure that it seemed that everything we were doing was HER idea., not mine.  I needed her to go to a very specific place, the location of our first kiss, but I needed her to get us there.  So as we planned out our vacation I wanted her to choose to go to San Diego.  She wanted to go to all sorts of places, but I had to keep guiding her to go to San Diego.  She eventually decided that was where we should go, so I was halfway there.

The trickier part was to get her to want to recreate our first date.  I was not sure how to get her to do this, but she opened the door for me on our way down to San Diego.  She suggested that we go to restaurant On the Border, the location of our first dinner together.   From there, I just recreated our first date, taking her to where we played mini-golf and then the same bar where we had drinks afterward.  I took her to the exact spot where she dropped me off at my car that first night and where we shared our first kiss.  I had a whole speech planned out, most of it did not make it out of my mouth.  Although I'm a good speaker, it is hard to remember everything when you are nervous :)  I told her how this was the location of my happiest memory, and I hoped to make it hers too.  I pulled out the ring and proposed, and she happily accepted.

We do not have a date yet.  It will almost certainly be sometime in 2009 and it will be an event wedding.  We will of course keep people posted.

Happy Thanksgiving

Got back from Vacation.  It was fantastic.  More on that later.

Decided to do the traditional Thanksgiving post and list all the things I'm thankful for.

• I seriously have the best girlfriend in the world.  She cooked up a fantastic Thanksgiving meal and did not complain about it once (she never does).


• Everyone I care about is happy and healthy right now.


• I have some awesome friends who are always there for me and are fantastic to hang out with.


• I have a job that pays me well and that is helping me get to my career goals.  No small thing given this horrible economy.


• I have the ability to have this site.  By this I have not only the means to do the activities on the site, but I have the knowledge to do it as well.


• I am never in want of anything.  While I do deny myself several things because I like to save money, in reality I could buy pretty much whatever I want whenever I want.  I've actually learned to loosen the purse strings a little bit.  Just this year I bought the digital Camera and a plasma TV.


• I don't live in Seattle anymore.  :)  Was reminded how much I do not miss it when it rained very heavily in California this weekend.


• The Lakers are 12-1.

There are probably several other things off the list, but this is all I can come up with off the top of my head.  I hope everyone had a good turkey day.  Back to posting on a regular basis tomorrow.

One Positive in the Financial Crisis

So there is definitely one positive thing happening because of this financial crisis.  People are talking about it.

I love talking about financial matters.  It is one of the reasons this blog exists.  My ears perk up whenever someone around work starts talking about saving, investing, and the stock market.  I love sharing the wisdom I have learned over the years with people just starting out.  It is one of the reasons I keep this blog up even though my original goal has gone out the window.

Because of the financial crisis, I have talked more about finance, money, and the economy at work than I ever have before.  People are interested in what is going on and don't always understand what is really happening.  I don't expect anyone to be as into it as I am, so I try and explain my perspective as much as I can so I can educate others.  The benefit of this is that often times, I can get someone interested enough that they start seriously thinking about their future.  I believe I have convinced more than one person to at least start putting away some money in their 401K.  I think I may have even convinced someone to dabble a little bit in the stock market.

At the very least, I hope this crisis gets people talking and interested in money and the economy.  I believe we are probably in for some rough times ahead, and the more people who take an active interest in their own financial matters, the better off I think we will all be.

On Vacation

I'm taking the week off to take advantage of the Thanksgiving holiday.  So I'm going to write some post ahead of time and post them throughout the week.

I do not take vacation too often.  It is especially odd that I'm essentially taking a week off of work, although I'm really only taking three days of vacation.  It just seems there is never a good time to take vacation and now is particularly tough for me.  There has been some upheaval at work.  While many people get stressed out in these types of situation, I always take it as an opportunity.  I have made the most progress in my career in such chaotic situations.  It is in these times that great leadership is needed and those who demonstrate it stand to do well.

To exacerbate the situation, I'm very interested in trading this week.  I really do think there are some great buying opportunities right here so long as you are in it for the long term.  There are several things on my shopping list that are very good buys here.  I still think the market could go down from here.  But I don't think it is down another 40%.  We might have 10% more to go, and then there will probably be a leveling off.  No need for me to pick the bottom, also no need to chase the market up.  I just wish the market would settle down for a few days.   If I can, in between catching some sunrays and watching out for any killer whales, I am going to try to do some trading and of course some blogging.

The Last 10 Years - Gone

Take a look at the above chart (Click on it to see the full picture size).  It is a picture of the S&P 500.  On Friday, the S&P closed at 800 but it touched 740 intra-day.  The S&P has been at this level twice.  Once in 2002 and before that in 1997.  Is this the real state of our world?  Have we really made no progress in the last 10 years?  Is this at all realistic?

It is hard to say.  I'll be the first to say, I never thought we would get this low.  I thought 850 was reasonable level for us to come back to.  But we fell right through that and kept on going down.   I knew this correction was coming.  I knew it was coming for a very long time.  In fact, I have been in a cash position for a LONG time because of this.  When I transferred my 401K almost three years ago on my way to Microsoft, I left most of it in cash because I though the market was so overvalued.  It is why I'm in such good position today to buy up assets.

But it is hard to imagine us right back where we started 10 years ago.  The prevailing wisdom espoused by so many experts, including Warren Buffet, is that buy and hold works.  It certainly did work when Buffet made his billions, but it has not worked if you have been in the market for the last ten years.  Granted, if you go twenty years back, or you go ten years in the future, you might be OK.  What do you think?  Do you really think we should be at the same levels we were at 10 years ago?   An age which just saw the explosion of the internet?  An age where most people did not own a cell phone?  Then again, it was the age when 20% down and 30 year fixed mortgages were the standard.  So maybe we do deserve to be here.

Breaking My Own Rules

I did something stupid today, I broke my own rules.

I've been, rather successfully, playing the volatility in the market.  I have avoided playing the long side since it is extremely hard to do in this market , but when the market touched a low and bounced, I decided to go long the market.  I bought SSO at $21.62 a share.  I was willing to take a 10% haircut on this,  which would have put me at $19.42.

But one thing I have followed during the last few weeks was to not be on the wrong side of momentum in the last hour.  You see, this market has consistently accelerated in the direction of the day in the last hour.  That is, if the market was up the whole day, it goes even more up in the last hour.  If it was down, it goes even more down.  When I bought the stock I told myself I would not be on the wrong side of the momentum at the end of the day.  If the stock was down, i would get out before the last hour.

The stock actually touched $22.71, and I should have gotten out when it did.  Unfortunately, I was waiting for $23 and it never came.  Well it became noon, the last hour of trading, and I froze with indecision.  I couldn't decide what to do, even though my own rules told me to get out.  At noon, the stock was right around $20.80.  The trend was down, and I should have taken my losses and gotten out.  I didn't.  The stock, predictably kept going down.  I did a rookie mistake, and kept waiting for the stock to go up just a little more so I could get out.  It did not.   The stock went right though my out point and did I sell?  No.  I held on to it and saw it touch $19.10.   Some sense finally did return to me, and I sold half the position at $19.62.  That actually ended up being a local maximum, and the stock dipped below $19.00 before settling at $19.10 for the day.

One day, about $1000 lost.  Pretty sad if you think about it.  I really should have limited my losses better but I did not.  I could still lose even more considering I'm not out of the position yet.

The moral?  Know your rules.  Stick with them.  They are there for a reason.