Disqus - Latest Comments for firebones

Re: The Ten Golden Principles For Successful Web Apps

firebones — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 16:45:15 -0000

I think instead of RESTful (which speaks to me as a developer, but perhaps not to others), you really want what Sam Ruby calls "intertwingly". Factor programmable out of RESTful and what you're left with is that the service under consideration is capable of being intertwined with other pieces of the web fabric.

Re: Update On Tuesday Night Football for the Apple II

firebones — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 22:39:56 -0000

I found it on some of the Apple II archive sites (Asimov). After tracking down the lineage of the software and further acquisitions, I think there's a UK game company that owns the rights, but hasn't done anything with those rights for 20+ years. It'd be nice if the publisher would release it from abandonware status either to the original author or into the public domain. As much as I wish there were some basis for liberating abandonware, upon further reflection, I'd prefer to see a legal basis established that would allow for forgotten works to be set free. Or at least a culture of IP owners who could see the benefit of bringing classic ideas and implementations to the wild for study and creation of derivative works.

Re: Twitter Killed My Blog!

firebones — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 00:11:45 -0000

This, my friends, is why I love fortune8's blog. It's concise, information dense, you have to study it a bit to understand (which engages you in the dialog) and he's not afraid to post a picture of a hot babe to illustrate a double bottom or a double top.

Re: Review: Kindle 2.0 (with a side of AMZN)

firebones — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 23:24:42 -0000

Great quote. The power of that distribution is so surprising. I've heard people say the same thing about signing up for Amazon Prime, but I can usually delay gratification when it comes to most meatspace purchases.

Re: Gary Vaynerchuk - The value of each viewer/user/customer is NOT THE...

firebones — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 18:43:30 -0000

When BigCompanies finally "get it" with respect to social media, how do you think the medium itself changes? It seems like it'll have to be a very gradual transition or the increased noise of commercialization will drive their prey away.

Re: Trade Conservatively, Consistently, & Powerfully

firebones — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 02:00:24 -0000

Awesome job for three hours a day! A couple of observations:

Volatility has been insane the last six months...do you think you can still do 10 points per month in a more "normal" environment?

And when do you think we return to a normal environment?

When I've been looking at my great returns since September, I've been constantly having to ground myself with the notion that I can't extrapolate from what the last 6 months have been like. In this market, there are enough swings in a single month that might take 6-12 months in a more normal market to see.

I totally agree with the notion of going for simplicity and avoiding exotic dishes--stick to what you know. I've snacked many, many times on the "garnishes" recently, but my single best big meal came from a big long term put position on the $SPY that paid off well. Not exactly the point you were trying to make, but close enough to make me think again about how I approach the market and whether I'd be better grinding the indexes instead of my current approach.

Re: Morgan Freeman on ‘The Wallstrip Edge’

firebones — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 01:09:09 -0000

The funniest damn thing I saw all week. Better than Colbert's Doom Bunker, better than the Stewart takedown. "That's Forrest Gump, you dumbass." Work that in as a cover blurb for the paperback edition.

Re: Why I Don't Like Ultrashort ETFs

firebones — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 23:46:27 -0000

Good points, although in terms of sentiment on the street, I have more people hitting me up for when to get back into the market than I do people swearing it off altogether. In fact, I don't know anyone who has really capitulated in that way yet, and I'm not sure what more it would take for that to happen. Martial law, maybe? Ultrashorts aren't going to make it happen, or instigate withdrawal from the markets.

Maybe the signal to look for on that thesis is massive early 401(k) withdrawals, penalties be damned.

Re: Rally Time?

firebones — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 23:38:01 -0000

I'm not shorting more tomorrow unless there's irrational exuberance, but I will gradually cover if we trend down more. This feels like in the fall when we have a day that's down the first half, rally the last hour, then a strong Wednesday, and flat to down the rest of the week.

Historically, S&P going to 540-560 seems possible before this is all over. I have no feel for short term rallies though--they've caught me twice, but the overall short trend has prevailed in the long run.

Re: Postmodern Investing: StockTwits Experiment Week #8

firebones — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 23:27:55 -0000

I agree on the multiple account thing. The dimension that Covestor and StockTwits miss is the trades in the context of overall risk profile. Trading aggressively with 1%, 5% or 25% of your net worth and winning are different animals, and even if the trades are published, you're lacking vital context. I've had some success with a portion of my portfolio, but hesitate to share or advise others because my risk profile is likely to be completely different. Sykes hanging his hat on a $12K stake yet raking in 60x that annually from other services seems completely irrelevant to me. It's like Immelt buying 50k shares of GE...meaningless.

On the crowded room: I've seen two communities that originally offered a lot of value in the early days completely get overrun within a two year timespan. I fear for StockTwits reaching this same point. However, the chance of that is lower because the value is in the relationships established--even if it turns into a noisy channel, I have about a dozen good voices I can turn to which will survive whatever happens. The relationships cross-cut the actual service itself and are portable.

But I've seen an uptick in spam followers recently (e.g., people who are following 8000, followed by 8000) who have almost no value to me. Following more than 400-500 or so is almost a guaranteed no-follow; their motives are elsewhere.

Re: Postmodern Investing: StockTwits Experiment Week #8

firebones — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 03:04:55 -0000

What I'm struggling with tonight is the difference (and relationship) between a site and ecosystem like StockTwits and its bazaar of independent voices vs. the more trusted and walled-garden approach of Covestor.

I hadn't really explored Covestor much until tonight and was pretty confused to see a penny stock trader like Timothy Sykes up 2000% in the last year at the top of the leader board. Then you find out he's trading with around a low-five-digit account, yet is pulling in $50K-$60K/month from his site, which ends up being about 10x his trading profits.

I'm one to believe that filtering the unwashed masses triumph in the end and that while Covestor removes the transactional and data-entry friction, it introduces a lot more psychological friction (in terms of linking your account, deciding to share your trades, etc.) But seeing a penny stock trader and chronic self-promoter winning over there falls into that "too good to be true" category that doesn't seem to do either Covestor or Sykes any good to have atop the leader board.

It will be interesting over the next year to see if StockTwits ends up as part of someone's walled garden, or if it stays true to the crowd-sourced roots and a series of related services spring up that are perhaps less "trusted" than Covestor, but maybe more practical and useful to the unwashed masses.

I don't bet against the internet, ever, and therefore I'm in the StockTwits camp for the long run. But if you truly believe that verifiability will be the determining factor for the winners, then no matter how much insight passes through StockTwits streams, it's going to be amateur hour compared to Covestor.

(What really intrigues me is what percentage of StockTwits users are on Covestor, and for the ones who aren't, what are the reasons why they're not?)

Re: Postmodern Investing: StockTwits Experiment Week #8

firebones — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 21:11:48 -0000

Auditing is important.

I suspect that sustained performance is difficult to find and achieve, and that who is relevant at any given point in time changes. If someone happen to catch market conditions where your skill is strong and you have a knack for self-promotion, then converting that luck into another revenue stream as the context changes out from underneath you is important. A permabear is useless during a bull market, but when the tide turns, they may be a great student of how things go bad and therefore may be much more important to listen to. Yet as the context changes, that voice that is now the loudest is far less relevant.

The question is how to find voices that fit the context that you might be investing in at any given point in time.

At the end of the day, it is perhaps more profitable to be a student drawing from the best of a variety of teachers (each relevant for a variety of contexts) than it is to be a teacher who might be tempted locked into a particular context and ideology. Agility triumphs over ideology.

As for eating your own cooking--great point. Cramer and the typical CNBC pundit would be far more credible if they were allowed to trade and tout all they want but only if they were willing to lay bare their entire trading history in return for this freedom.

Re: Black Swans and Petrostates: Gregor.us Monthly

firebones — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 00:56:51 -0000

E.M. Forster: "How do I know what I think until I see what I say." Your last sentence seems to convey the same sentiment.

I have a blog post that I'm working on that proclaims the death of the newsletter. My basic theory is that as more voices emerge, for every paying newsletter writer, there will be 10 up-and-coming analysts giving it away for free to make their marks, devaluing (in the long run) the paid analysts. This cycle will repeat, and names will continually turn over. The social filter will replace the editorial filter; there will still be value in finding the new and relevant voice instead of relying on the previously relevant established voice.

The good news is that the right voice at the right time, properly amplified, can capture value for the content creator, but only for a limited time before circumstances and competition displace it. The numbers are against any single content creator having a long run.

What may happen then, if you can't amplify that value into other venues (e.g., books, paid media appearances), is that your last observation in the post also becomes the primary value to you, the author--that the clarity of thought of working in the open results in the production of personal clarity of action, and you end up profiting far more from the direct use of your better (and more honest) thinking than from selling it.

Re: P^3

firebones — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 01:23:39 -0000

I had the covered calls going on SRS today and didn't get a chance to buy them back when it was around 80 so I could dump the stock. Consequently, I'm still holding SRS at 72; will learn from that though.

Re: P^3

firebones — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 23:21:12 -0000

Great stuff once again. Hope this isn't the last lesson. You're the one I credit with giving me useful tips on how to take advantage of charts in a useful way. I feel like the blind dumb luck of the last 5 months is over and now I've got some tools to use to start optimizing what I'm doing.

I've done everything wrong on SRS over the last three months--buying in at 116, 107, 70 and then 50 for a cost basis of 86. Stupid, compounding error. But wrote a lot of covered calls along the way and I'm now near break even counting the premium. Only the belief that commercial RE has major pain later this spring kept me in.

I made that AAPL mistake too; bought puts at about $94, then kept averaging down on the puts even as it went to $100. Finally pulled out of that one. But like you said, in the scheme of things, only the appropriate position size and the long expiration gave me the leeway to ride the initial buy down almost 35%.

Re: Trades with Too Much Complexity

firebones — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 22:18:14 -0000

I haven't yet. I would have avoided a 100% loss on all my USO calls, and probably saved some bad moves with GOOG calls. What's hard to tell is how many times I would have been stopped out on trades for which I averaged down--I think it probably would have been close to a push. If I could find a good source of historical bid-ask on options, I could figure it out.

A great example is my recent X puts. I bought a batch at @ 3.10, then another @ 2.10. Soon after the second buy, the bid-ask was something like 1.65-1.80 at one point (which would have triggered a 40% stop on the initial batch). I held, and later sold both lots at 3.10 for a 23% overall gain. I count that as one win of around 47% on the second batch, and a loss of transaction costs on the second batch. Had I stopped at 40% loss and ended the same way (i.e., held the 2.10 batch until 3.10), the overall trade would have been an overall -2% loss.

I repeated that pattern several times, averaging down on puts and calls for AMZN, SPY, NDAQ, BBY, etc. A tighter stop on the X trade would have stopped me out of both trades for a 20% loss.

My strategy would be totally different if holding stocks though, or in times of more normal volatility. I would then go with tight stops and be satisfied with a 40% win percentage.

3:1 is crazy--even factoring out the 15 in a row at the start, it's still about 2:1. The only thing I can say is that I was short on 85-90% of my trades during a time where there was a 30%+ drop in the market, so execution had little to do with it...it was primarily due to being on the right side of the trends.

Re: Market dies but ANF still flies: End of trading day for TR (Twitter Reality) Portfolio 02/17/09

firebones — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 20:45:17 -0000

I almost pulled the trigger on that one after following your track record for awhile, but couldn't bring myself to do it with the futures down so much. Great work.

Re: FUCK TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program), We Need H.A.R.P., W.I.M.N.R.P, P.S.S.R.P…Read On

firebones — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 00:04:31 -0000

P.E.R.P -- Ponzi Executive Relief Program. Used to bail out failing media companies engaged in expensive marathon stakeout sessions of Madoff and others.

Re: Master of Disaster

firebones — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 23:39:05 -0000

Great work. I had a similar run with $AAPL in the 4th quarter. Stick with what you have a feel for.

Re: Bears run and longs fade: End of trading day for TR (Twitter Reality) Portfolio 02/10/09

firebones — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 22:04:42 -0000

Good post. Have you done anything with negative mentions combined with negative surprises? I wonder if this year you want to go in with equal weighted shorts and longs so that at least one side takes advantage of the trend while the other is only partially affected.

Re: Best Buy…Not too Big, Not to Small - Just FAIL!

firebones — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:39:43 -0000

Upside, as a fast food connoisseur here's my channel check: I can tell you that Wendy's generally has the most efficient and best service, but the prices drive everyone away--it's often a barren drive-thru. Look out below. McDonald's is more miss than hit--one in every five stores is well-run, but the brand is as infused into the psyche as Ford or GM (oops) so people go there despite every other order being screwed up. The only consistently good experience for price and service is an odd one: Taco Bell. Somehow, they split the difference. I see Wendy's taking the first hit, McDonalds weathering the storm, and Taco Bell actually just whistling past the graveyard of a recession. I think Subway franchises hold up because they're run by a bunch of nuts who can tell you to the gram how much mustard they put on each sandwich to increase margin.

Re: StockTwits for Idiot Retail Investors: Week #5

firebones — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 02:12:34 -0000

Thanks for the info to follow up on. I've been checking out Brian's stuff, and had been meaning to check into yours.

Re: StockTwits for Idiot Retail Investors: Week #5

firebones — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 18:42:00 -0000

I came to the name "Idiot Retail Investor" after seeing some commenter on Kedrosky's blog use it in a self-deprecating manner. I think "Learning Retail Investor" is more accurate by now. Although "idiot retail investor" has some decent Google juice now.

The portion that I'm playing with here is significant enough to be interesting in my overall portfolio, but small enough that I can't do too much damage. I learn better with real money and real butterflies (game situations) than on paper, and this whole experiment is a test in seeing whether I can scale up.

Re: Hasn't It Always Been About Status?

firebones — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 22:08:07 -0000

43things.com is probably the one you are thinking of.

Re: "Story Stocks" have a great ending: End of trading day for TR (Twitter Reality) Portfolio 02/05/09

firebones — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 08:02:55 -0000

The other thing that comes to mind is whether twitter volume correlates to market cap (the bigger the stock, the more people know about it and use it) and therefore the success on any given day depends on how large cap stocks perform as a whole. In fact, maybe Twitter is better for finding which sectors are rising on a given day rather than which individual issues.

Or from a value point of view, plot tweets against marketcap and look for outliers--lots of buzz about a company with a low market cap may mean it is undervalued.

Fun stuff.