In this day and age of shouting and rudeness over any and all issues great and small, it is somewhat pleasant (though thoroughly pedantic) to note the language of the treaty that ended our revolutionary war. This preamble and the Treaty were written in the most gracious of language design to promote harmony and bury the dispute as best as could be. Wish that on this eve to the labor day weekend we take note that people don't have to talk to others like barbarians and shouting insults stops nothing - usually starting something.
"It having pleased the Divine Providence to dispose the hearts of the most serene and most potent Prince George the Third, by the grace of God, king of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, defender of the faith, duke of Brunswick and Lunebourg, arch- treasurer and prince elector of the Holy Roman Empire etc., and of the United States of America, to forget all past misunderstandings and differences that have unhappily interrupted the good correspondence and friendship which they mutually wish to restore, and to establish such a beneficial and satisfactory intercourse , between the two countries upon the ground of reciprocal advantages and mutual convenience as may promote and secure to both perpetual peace and harmony; and having for this desirable end already laid the foundation of peace and reconciliation by the Provisional Articles signed at Paris on the 30th of November 1782, by the commissioners empowered on each part, which articles were agreed to be inserted in and constitute the Treaty of Peace proposed to be concluded between the Crown of Great Britain and the said United States, but which treaty was not to be concluded until terms of peace should be agreed upon between Great Britain and France and his Britannic Majesty should be ready to conclude such treaty accordingly; and the treaty between Great Britain and France having since been concluded, his Britannic Majesty and the United States of America, in order to carry into full effect the Provisional Articles above mentioned, according to the tenor thereof, have constituted and appointed, that is to say his Britannic Majesty on his part, David Hartley, Esqr., member of the Parliament of Great Britain, and the said United States on their part, John Adams, Esqr., late a commissioner of the United States of America at the court of Versailles, late delegate in Congress from the state of Massachusetts, and chief justice of the said state, and minister plenipotentiary of the said United States to their high mightinesses the States General of the United Netherlands; Benjamin Franklin, Esqr., late delegate in Congress from the state of Pennsylvania, president of the convention of the said state, and minister plenipotentiary from the United States of America at the court of Versailles; John Jay, Esqr., late president of Congress and chief justice of the state of New York, and minister plenipotentiary from the said United States at the court of Madrid; to be plenipotentiaries for the concluding and signing the present definitive treaty; who after having reciprocally communicated their respective full powers have agreed upon and confirmed the following articles.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
dull trading day and the Friday Long Island Railroad Cannonball
It is Thursday and nothing much seems to be happening. If you lived in the Hamptons, I mean actually be a year around resident, the last summer week before Labor Day was a mixture of anticipation and absolute dread.
Before the LIRR went to doubledeck cars in the middle 90s there was a train (still running but not as much fun) that left about 420p from various feeder trains and made a first stop in Westhampton Beach before just a couple more stops ending in Montauk. The normal 2:15 trip was an hour and change and the train was named the cannonball for obvious reasons. It once sported a stand up drinking car (although those who knew smuggled drinks on from the various liquor stores en route) and at the first stop 12-1400 weekenders arrived sloshed at a station with a dozen cabs and a car pickup line maybe a mile long. Welcome to a weekend in paradise.
The few supermarkets were often sold out of off anything not green tinged by Saturday morning. Locals take to shopping at 2am to avoid the crush. Kids swarm the aisles eating everything they can lay hands on and the parents blythely just toss the half eaten apples back on the pile.
Mostly it involves anyone who has a little summer money left has made reservations and take the opportunity to swell the population 10fold on this last big weekend. Wall street exits its madness to come out here and enjoy madness with sand.
We locals don't mind as it brings some money out into the local economy. We aren't sorry you came and we won't be sorry you left.
It does make for a pretty flat market day all in all.
Before the LIRR went to doubledeck cars in the middle 90s there was a train (still running but not as much fun) that left about 420p from various feeder trains and made a first stop in Westhampton Beach before just a couple more stops ending in Montauk. The normal 2:15 trip was an hour and change and the train was named the cannonball for obvious reasons. It once sported a stand up drinking car (although those who knew smuggled drinks on from the various liquor stores en route) and at the first stop 12-1400 weekenders arrived sloshed at a station with a dozen cabs and a car pickup line maybe a mile long. Welcome to a weekend in paradise.
The few supermarkets were often sold out of off anything not green tinged by Saturday morning. Locals take to shopping at 2am to avoid the crush. Kids swarm the aisles eating everything they can lay hands on and the parents blythely just toss the half eaten apples back on the pile.
Mostly it involves anyone who has a little summer money left has made reservations and take the opportunity to swell the population 10fold on this last big weekend. Wall street exits its madness to come out here and enjoy madness with sand.
We locals don't mind as it brings some money out into the local economy. We aren't sorry you came and we won't be sorry you left.
It does make for a pretty flat market day all in all.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
The Keno Brothers from Antiques Roadshow and Dovetails
I was thinking further on the previous post "temperment" and I thought about something I heard one of the Keno Brothers talk about a few years ago. I was visiting a famous auction house in NYC on business and saw one of them outside the auction room so I approached. I gave him the "i'm a big fan" thing and we just chatted. In the course of it I opined that an 18th century craftsman must have spent "forever" making those little dovetail joints that fit so perfectly and would hold up for 250 years yada yada.
He gave me a very interesting answer. He said "the comparative cost of labor was, in the end, fairly cheap. It was the quality that was expensive" - meaning anyone could make a rough dovetail to hold things together - but only the quality of the fit distinguished a functional piece from a work of art that was also a functional piece.
A true craftsman takes a function stance and refines it so it still works as good but has lasting result as well. perhaps another view of temperment?
He gave me a very interesting answer. He said "the comparative cost of labor was, in the end, fairly cheap. It was the quality that was expensive" - meaning anyone could make a rough dovetail to hold things together - but only the quality of the fit distinguished a functional piece from a work of art that was also a functional piece.
A true craftsman takes a function stance and refines it so it still works as good but has lasting result as well. perhaps another view of temperment?
Temperment
I read a great article put out by Legg Mason and will quote part of it here:
"History clearly shows that being smart and having an appropriate temperament for investing are distinct. Of course, ideally you want an investor to have both smarts and a proper temperament. But if given a choice between the two, temperament seems the more rare and valuable.
Curtis Faith’s new book, Way of the Turtle, is a story about trading. Yet the importance of temperament comes through loud and clear. He shows persuasively how psychological pitfalls repeatedly stymie good investment results. The story of the turtle traders is fascinating, and warrants going back to the beginning. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Richard Dennis was one of the best-known and most successful commodities traders in the United States. In the early 1980s, Dennis and his partner Bill Eckhardt debated whether great traders are made (Dennis’s view) or born (Eckhardt’s contention). The back-and-forth gathered steam one day when the partners were visiting a turtle farm in Singapore, prompting Dennis to claim, “We’re going to raise traders like they raise turtles in Singapore.”
So Dennis and Eckhardt ran an experiment. They put an ad in major financial newspapers soliciting applicants for a training program. The ad explained the partners would train the group and seed them with a substantial trading account. Over 1,000 people applied, and after rigorous screening and testing, Dennis and Eckhardt invited 40 candidates for interviews in Chicago. The interviewers sought to evaluate the intellect and reasoning of the candidates. They ended up selecting 13 people, less than 1-in-100, for the maiden class. They dubbed the group the “turtles.”
Faith was only 19 at the time, the youngest of the turtles, and had a background in the nascent computer programming field. Other turtles included a Ph.D. in linguistics, a handful of traders, and a professional gambler. The group was clearly very smart, in Faith’s words, “among the brightest I had ever met.”
In late 1982, Dennis and Eckhardt trained the group, covering concepts including probability,
money management, and risk of ruin. In early 1983, the partners gave each turtle an account equivalent to $50,000 – $100,000 and let them loose. By agreement, the partners would assess the results after a month and adjust capital levels—more for the successful traders and less for the unsuccessful ones—accordingly. After the initial period, Faith was up the most in the class. Dennis rewarded his results with $2 million. More relevant is why Faith did the best: It turns out he was the only turtle who actually followed the system. All of the other traders decided to override the system at one point or another, owing mostly to psychological factors.
Many outsiders deemed Dennis the winner of the nature/nurture bet because the turtles in aggregate went on to enjoy long-term success.
Faith, however, argues it was a draw because while the trading approach can be taught to most people, some are better suited to deal with the psychological aspects than others."
I was a professional musician in my first life as a trumpet player and an orchestra and band conductor. there were some persons in the workforce who were better or worse technically but the really great ones were of a particular temperment..particularly the trumpet players. There is a great story about Adolph Herseth who was principal trumpet of the Chicago Symphony for decades and one of the great orchestral musicians of the 20th or any century. When he first auditioned Fritz Reiner the rather difficult conductor chose a piece with a very hard trumpet solo that came "out of the blue" after sitting cold for 10 minutes waiting for it. Emotionally enough to drive you nuts. Reiner had Herseth play the part over and over. finally Herseth said "Mr. Reiner, you can send the orchestra home now. We can do this all day long and I ain't gonna miss". That is temperment.
"History clearly shows that being smart and having an appropriate temperament for investing are distinct. Of course, ideally you want an investor to have both smarts and a proper temperament. But if given a choice between the two, temperament seems the more rare and valuable.
Curtis Faith’s new book, Way of the Turtle, is a story about trading. Yet the importance of temperament comes through loud and clear. He shows persuasively how psychological pitfalls repeatedly stymie good investment results. The story of the turtle traders is fascinating, and warrants going back to the beginning. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Richard Dennis was one of the best-known and most successful commodities traders in the United States. In the early 1980s, Dennis and his partner Bill Eckhardt debated whether great traders are made (Dennis’s view) or born (Eckhardt’s contention). The back-and-forth gathered steam one day when the partners were visiting a turtle farm in Singapore, prompting Dennis to claim, “We’re going to raise traders like they raise turtles in Singapore.”
So Dennis and Eckhardt ran an experiment. They put an ad in major financial newspapers soliciting applicants for a training program. The ad explained the partners would train the group and seed them with a substantial trading account. Over 1,000 people applied, and after rigorous screening and testing, Dennis and Eckhardt invited 40 candidates for interviews in Chicago. The interviewers sought to evaluate the intellect and reasoning of the candidates. They ended up selecting 13 people, less than 1-in-100, for the maiden class. They dubbed the group the “turtles.”
Faith was only 19 at the time, the youngest of the turtles, and had a background in the nascent computer programming field. Other turtles included a Ph.D. in linguistics, a handful of traders, and a professional gambler. The group was clearly very smart, in Faith’s words, “among the brightest I had ever met.”
In late 1982, Dennis and Eckhardt trained the group, covering concepts including probability,
money management, and risk of ruin. In early 1983, the partners gave each turtle an account equivalent to $50,000 – $100,000 and let them loose. By agreement, the partners would assess the results after a month and adjust capital levels—more for the successful traders and less for the unsuccessful ones—accordingly. After the initial period, Faith was up the most in the class. Dennis rewarded his results with $2 million. More relevant is why Faith did the best: It turns out he was the only turtle who actually followed the system. All of the other traders decided to override the system at one point or another, owing mostly to psychological factors.
Many outsiders deemed Dennis the winner of the nature/nurture bet because the turtles in aggregate went on to enjoy long-term success.
Faith, however, argues it was a draw because while the trading approach can be taught to most people, some are better suited to deal with the psychological aspects than others."
I was a professional musician in my first life as a trumpet player and an orchestra and band conductor. there were some persons in the workforce who were better or worse technically but the really great ones were of a particular temperment..particularly the trumpet players. There is a great story about Adolph Herseth who was principal trumpet of the Chicago Symphony for decades and one of the great orchestral musicians of the 20th or any century. When he first auditioned Fritz Reiner the rather difficult conductor chose a piece with a very hard trumpet solo that came "out of the blue" after sitting cold for 10 minutes waiting for it. Emotionally enough to drive you nuts. Reiner had Herseth play the part over and over. finally Herseth said "Mr. Reiner, you can send the orchestra home now. We can do this all day long and I ain't gonna miss". That is temperment.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
compensation - some thoughts
The NY Times this morning ran an article (cited above in the title link) that goes to executive compensation review at the bailed out auto companies. There is a minor uproar generally about compensation paid to execs in failing companies or in those who take bailout money by the by.
Frankly anyone who puts a 4 ton SUV on the road that gets 15 mpg and blocks the view of us mere mortals with lesser vehicles deserves very little compensation...its the why reward stupidity thing. Not fair. Not reasonable. Purely sentimental but that's what it is.
On the far side of the moon there was another huge issue raised when a fellow fom Citi received his bonus in the order of 80 million + dollars. Who is worth $80M? He made Citi something like $700 in pure profit so he really isn't hourly wage material but $80M??? C'mon!
I got into a minor debate about this with someone here. I was wrong. His view is correct. The fellow would have received nearly nothing in compensation if he lost Citi money so his compensation is performanced based. Ok. That makes sense, but again - $80M (I'm not sure if my numbers are close or exact but the principle is what I'm after here).
This guy is something of an independent contractor or running his business and he is making about a 15% return. No small business can survive on 15%. None that I know of anyway.
Executive compensation or compensation on any level isn't always what it is cranked up to be or as it is portrayed. I was wrong.
Frankly anyone who puts a 4 ton SUV on the road that gets 15 mpg and blocks the view of us mere mortals with lesser vehicles deserves very little compensation...its the why reward stupidity thing. Not fair. Not reasonable. Purely sentimental but that's what it is.
On the far side of the moon there was another huge issue raised when a fellow fom Citi received his bonus in the order of 80 million + dollars. Who is worth $80M? He made Citi something like $700 in pure profit so he really isn't hourly wage material but $80M??? C'mon!
I got into a minor debate about this with someone here. I was wrong. His view is correct. The fellow would have received nearly nothing in compensation if he lost Citi money so his compensation is performanced based. Ok. That makes sense, but again - $80M (I'm not sure if my numbers are close or exact but the principle is what I'm after here).
This guy is something of an independent contractor or running his business and he is making about a 15% return. No small business can survive on 15%. None that I know of anyway.
Executive compensation or compensation on any level isn't always what it is cranked up to be or as it is portrayed. I was wrong.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Tick Tock
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HEIGHT="40"
WIDTH="450"
>
ARCHIVE="Ticker.jar"
CODEBASE="http://java.barchart.com/ticker"
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>
News is news is news to me.
I've been a news junkie my whole life with a few brushes inside the print and radio news areas. I'm no way a reporter but have held positions in my life that required a reasonable recounting of events with editorializing the content. What that was was reporting but I wasn't reporting news like these guys on the trading floor get. I was summarizing what my friends around here would call ancient history.
I think that CNBC and CNN have a fair handle on 'breaking news' and have technology that displays it pretty fast. Timed events, like the jobless rate announcements etc., are brought to you "live" or as they happen but that isn't the case. I reality everyone on any trading floor of note is hearing history or ancient history when it hits TV.All through history those who had news first had an advantage, be it in war or economics, science or whatever. Now due to the pervasive nature of communications and media that "time advantage" is compressed. Not only is the receipt of news and the advantage of it measured in micro-seconds the advantage for use of this news is also a measured similarly.
I remember in the middle 1980s when the advertising firm I was with finally got a fax machine. With it took away the excuse of "must be in the mail" and thoughtful answers. The fax screwed that all up because the send new you had the question and why can't you answer right now. Just something to ponder.
I think that CNBC and CNN have a fair handle on 'breaking news' and have technology that displays it pretty fast. Timed events, like the jobless rate announcements etc., are brought to you "live" or as they happen but that isn't the case. I reality everyone on any trading floor of note is hearing history or ancient history when it hits TV.All through history those who had news first had an advantage, be it in war or economics, science or whatever. Now due to the pervasive nature of communications and media that "time advantage" is compressed. Not only is the receipt of news and the advantage of it measured in micro-seconds the advantage for use of this news is also a measured similarly.
I remember in the middle 1980s when the advertising firm I was with finally got a fax machine. With it took away the excuse of "must be in the mail" and thoughtful answers. The fax screwed that all up because the send new you had the question and why can't you answer right now. Just something to ponder.
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