Metaphysics and Emotion

On to metaphysics and emotion. Here's a Floydian line to consider:

*Women can always have sex. Men cannot. This is the core difference.

By this I mean that women are always desired and that if they wanted sex can always find a man, anyway in the world, that also wants sex.

Men, to the opposite, may always want sex, but are not wanted, and must pursue.

This means, to me, that men always "want" and women are, or can be, always "wanted". These core differences shake our destinies.

It is this same way in learning and studying the market. Men and women have core desires to succeed, to "win", and to "be right." Men, I believe, have more of this "hunter" methodology deeply engraved in their pysches and biases, and often struggle with "winning" and "being right." Women do not have this same intellectual drive to "win," unless they have become "manly." It's important and interesting.

Learning who we are, and what we deal with, helps us with the emotions of trading.


My 26 old daughter's perspective -

It's your commentary, but from the perspective of a woman growing up in the 1990s and 2000s there is plenty of hunter mentality in women nowadays. Nearly as much so as men. The problem is men don't see it yet and at some point it'll change a lot of this world. The perception of having this desire is what men see as being "manly," but women have always had it on some level and it's growing more and more every day - we just still know how to hide it and market it differently than men are used to seeing. Not that this is necessarily a good thing, but it definitely exists nowadays.
Nov
From The S and A Short Report, responding to the 400 point 11/13. Pay careful attention to the commentary on Paulson's great new "bait and switch program with our deficit dollar bailout.


"Wow. Yesterday was a remarkably brutal trading day.

My power went out shortly after Treasury Secretary Paulson finished explaining the Bait & Switch bailout program. So I didn't see much of the afternoon session.

I'm stunned by the carnage in the market.

The selling was broad based. It was pervasive. And it was relentless.

Of the 100 or so industry sectors, none were up on the day. It was a wholesale liquidation of everything. Financial stocks made new lows. Oil broke down. Gold and silver sold off. And many components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average are on the verge of becoming penny stocks.

Then, just to rub a little salt in the wound, after the close yesterday, Intel lowered revenue guidance. Business is weak in all areas and in all geographic regions.

The stock market futures sold off on the news. And I spent much of the early evening slapping myself on the back of the head for holding a few new long positions overnight.

But... there are some positive signs.

A tremendous amount of bullish pressure is building in many of the momentum indicators I follow. The S&P 500 is nearly 100 points below its 20-day exponential moving average – a magnet from which the index rarely strays more than 30 points. And the sentiment among CNBC anchors is as bearish as I've ever seen it.

All of this points to a bounce. And a bounce from this depressed level could yield 200 or so points on the S&P 500."



Gain a lack of respect. Paulson is worth 850 million, and ran a large brokerage. He is our Sec. of the Treasury. Bernanke is a college professor who has never had a real job. Greenspan is a disciple of Ayn Rand, and practiced supply side bubble economics. The Feds can't even define where the most pressing issues are, or what they have been. Congress actually thought they understood what they were voting on.

The Federal Reserve should be disbanded.

Let's hope that Obama has the smarts to fire these idiots and truly run this like a business. Shame on us for allowing this to happen.

QUESTION AUTHORITY. Here's why:

(CBS/AP) While the Bush administration shifts course on its $700 billion rescue plan, Congress is examining whether even bigger changes should be made in the program in light of the deteriorating economy and soaring mortgage foreclosures.

The debate may not be resolved until President-elect Barack Obama takes office on Jan. 20 and pursues policies for administering the rescue program that are likely to be more closely aligned with his Democratic allies in Congress.

In anticipation of the change of administrations, Democrats were holding hearings in both the House and Senate on Thursday examining various aspects of the most serious financial crisis to hit the country in 70 years.

That crisis was publically declared a recession on Thursday by a major global economic cooperative, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, of which the United States is one of 20 members.

The Paris-based OECD said in a statement that the economies of the U.S., Japan, and Europe were in recession, and the developed world's collective economy was on track to shrink 0.3 percent during 2009.

The House Oversight Committee was examining the role that hedge funds may have played in recent market turbulence. Among those scheduled to testify was billionaire investor George Soros, chairman of Soros Fund Management.

Meanwhile, the Senate Banking Committee will hear from executives of a number of financial institutions including Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo on the issue of how the government's $700 billion rescue effort is operating and particularly whether the government should be requiring more commitments on the use of the money to address rising mortgage foreclosure problems.

CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports that the massive tax-payer bailout of the banking system - sold to the American public as a transparent your tax dollars are buying massive shares in some of the nation's biggest and most successful banks - with virtually no strings attached. And that's all allowed under Congress' plan.

Attkisson and the CBS News investigative team decided to ask the banks directly what they are doing with Americans' tax money. Their responses were, on the whole, less than enlightening.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced Wednesday that the administration had decided to scrap what had originally been the centerpiece of the program - a proposal to buy troubled assets to get them off the books of banks as a way of promoting increased lending.

Instead, Paulson said the administration will proceed with an alternative plan to spend $250 billion to buy stock in the banks as a way of bolstering their financial situation and accomplishing the same goal - getting the institutions to return to more normal lending.

Despite shifting from the original plan, Paulson insisted he did not mislead Congress, reports CBS News business correspondent Anthony Mason.

I will never apologize for changing an approach or strategy when the facts change.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson
"I will never apologize for changing an approach or strategy when the facts change," he said.

However, critics contend the administration should be imposing more restrictions on the stock purchases as a way of insuring that the banks will use the government resources to increase lending rather than just hoarding the cash or using it to acquire other banks or boost dividends for stockholders.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said even with the changes in the rescue plan he was still disappointed in the administration's unwillingness to issue strict guidelines to ensure that participating firms use the funds to increase lending.

"In these difficult times, fear is still overwhelming confidence," Schumer told reporters on Tuesday.

More reports detailing the difficulties facing the economy were expected on Thursday with the Labor Department releasing its latest look at weekly applications for unemployment benefits, the Commerce Department reporting on the trade gap for September and the government reporting on the budget deficit for October.

The level of jobless claims was expected to remain at levels indicating the labor market is under severe strains, reflecting what many economists fear could be a deep and prolonged recession.

The government reported last Friday that the unemployment rate soared to a 14-year high of 6.5 percent in October as businesses cut another 240,000 jobs.

The trade deficit was expected to show some improvement, declining to $57 billion in September, compared to $59.1 billion in August, reflecting a big drop in the price of imported oil and a weakening economy, which is dampening demand for other imports.

The budget deficit, however, was expected to show a big increase in October, the first month of the new budget year, rising to $101.5 billion, compared to $57 billion in October 2007. The soaring costs of the bank rescue and the weak economy are expected to put the country on track to run up a record deficit for the current budget year of between $700 billion and $1 trillion, a staggering sum for a single year.

Despite its new flexibility, the administration said Wednesday it remains opposed to using the rescue fund to bail out the ailing auto industry or to provide guarantees for home loans, an idea that supporters contend offers the greatest hope for helping legions of Americans who are facing foreclosure.

Congressional Democrats felt otherwise on autos, and strongly. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid were pressing for quick passage of a major package for carmakers during a postelection session that begins next Tuesday, and one key House Democrat was putting together legislation that would send $25 billion in emergency loans to the beleaguered industry in exchange for a government ownership stake in the Big Three car companies.

But, if recent history is any judge, an auto industry bailout may not have the desired effect. In the 1990s, Japan tried the same thing, reports Mason.

"And what that resulted in that was this sort of quote unquote 'Zombie Economy,'" Steve Massocca, of Pacific Growth Equities, told CBS News. "You had these zombie companies that were kept alive simply by the fact that the government was able to support them."

The Bush administration has concluded that the bailout bill that passed earlier does not allow loans to the auto industry.

Paulson told reporters Wednesday that the administration was exploring the possibility of setting up a program in conjunction with the Federal Reserve that would provide support for the $1 trillion market in securities that fund such vital consumer products as credit cards, auto loans and students loans. About 40 percent of consumer credit is supplied through the sale of these securities that are backed by payments consumers make on their credit cards and other loans.

The administration has already spoken for all but $60 billion of the initial $350 billion supplied by Congress, including the $250 billion for direct stock purchases from banks and $40 billion for a new loan supplied on Monday to help stabilize troubled insurance giant American International Group.


And from subscribers:

1. MP: Great job on the 440 call...I hope those who had second buys yesterday made out OK today...did she go up enough?


I bought 1 today when the DOW hit 8200 for 4.50

I bought two more near 8000 for 2.85...had an average price of 3.40

Ending up spending a total of $1020...only to sell off all three separately about 2 hours later for a 60% total profit! Made $610 today and could have sold for an extra 2.00 profit but I cannot be greedy anymore! I thought I was being greedy when I held out for 60%! But the market was rising so fast that I was a little unsure about how to take profits. I think I did OK like you already said!

2. GE: NIce trade. Bought at 3.40, and sold at 14.50. What a market. Still hold partials.

3. Jean: You amaze me. You missed the downturn yesterday, but allowed us to buy at 5.00 averages and sell to 12.50, that's what I did. What a market