Another day, another O&G dilution: Ensco $ESV https://t.co/ateErgP2hv
— C. Maoxian (@maoxian) April 15, 2016
MT @TownsendMark From the West Highland Free Press pic.twitter.com/hgVCwfdbeU
— C. Maoxian (@maoxian) April 15, 2016
Tweets for April 14, 2016
Tweets for April 13, 2016
No Such Thing as an Expert on Asia
Some selected bits I liked from Stanley Karnow's appearance on Booknotes in 1989:
"... [a writer is] a bit like a sculptor with this enormous piece of granite ... you've got to chip away at that granite in order to mold that sculpture, and that is a very hard process.
I don't know any writer who thinks that writing is fun. It's hard work, and the way I do it is just as if I'm doing any other job. I get up in the morning and I have breakfast and read the newspapers and shave and shower and get dressed, but I go down in my cellar, where I have my study, and work. I try to get to my machine by 8 or 9 o'clock in the morning. Sometimes I'll run out of steam in the afternoon, but sometimes I'll go until midnight. But you have to treat it as a job; you have to be disciplined. You don't sit around waiting for inspiration. If you do, you're never going to get anything done because it's much more fun taking the dog out for a walk along the canal than sitting down there and writing."
"[MacArthur and Eisenhower] hated each other. They had terrible fights. Eisenhower was later asked, Did you ever know Gen. MacArthur? He said, 'Yes, I studied dramatics under him for seven years.'
Years later when Eisenhower was president, somebody asked MacArthur if he had known Eisenhower, to which MacArthur replied, 'Best clerk I ever had.' There was something incompatible about their characters. MacArthur was a monumental egotist, a talented man, a skilled man in many ways. Eisenhower was essentially a rather modest man, and they disagreed over policy. "
"The interesting thing about the Asians -- the Chinese, the Japanese, the Koreans, the Vietnamese, the Cambodians, Indians, Pakistanis -- coming to the United States is they're coming in with all the old American virtues -- family, hard work, risks and endurance, stamina. I think they're making a positive contribution to this country."
Tweets for April 12, 2016
Tweets for April 11, 2016
Tweets for April 10, 2016
Majoring in Jeffrey Hart
From Greg Fossedal's appearance on Booknotes in 1989:
"... we have this image of the Voice of America as sort of simply being the counterpart to Soviet propaganda. That it's sort of supposed to repeat democratic slogans and tell people how much superior democracy is ... the interesting thing is that the radios seem to have the most impact when they are concentrating on conditions within those countries. It doesn't do somebody in Hungary much good to hear that Americans are more prosperous. What they need is ideas and facts about how to incrementally reform the communist system ... our radio very aggressively and in some detail and with some thought behind it reported on those [incremental economic reforms in Poland and elsewhere]. And reported on how people were organizing in other countries and within Hungary how alternative parties were forming to the communist party. And this information was critical to the formation of those democratic movements."
Horizon Pharma Pre-Open
When something is moving pre-open (or after-hours) and I don't know why, I turn to StockTwits. If I had a Bloomberg Terminal, I'd look there first, but I'm on a $9.99 a month data feed, not an $1,800 a month one. Twitter itself is too full of ticker symbol spam to be of any use, and no "free" news source is quick enough to report anything.
Here's the timestamp for the 8-K: Accepted 2016-04-12 08:00:50. There are a lot of opportunities if you're paying attention and can act fast.
Click to enlarge
Telecom Sector Looks Like a Short
Scrolling through the weekly charts I noticed an Idiot Wave set-up in the telecom ETF, ticker symbol IYZ. Just squiggles, you know, the zig zag pattern, so if you're into risking money based on these things, the reward looks decent. Weekly chart so would take months to work out probably. Not something a hyperactive day trader could stand to do, except in a very small, take-it-and-forget-about-it way.
click to enlarge
ETF Trading Portfolio Update -- April 11, 2016
No changes this week.
Making America Great Again
From James Fallows' appearance on Booknotes in May 1989, discussing his book, More Like Us: Making America Great Again:
"If there's someone [in the audience] who is ... an unmarried person or a childless couple especially in your 20's or 30's that has some freedom, go to Japan because you can get a job in a short time teaching English. And while you are making money teaching English you can learn Japanese. And then when you've done that there are a million things you can do there. And you will have a sense of knowing what the future is like because America will be dealing with Japan. So go."
The Nikkei 225 peaked at 38,957 in December 1989, so I think he left almost exactly at the top. I was in college studying Chinese in 1989, having wisely? anticipated that Japan was peaking, and Japanese wasn't the language a young man should be studying then.
Fallows lived in China for some of the years that we were there (2005-2015) and I remember enjoying a talk he gave at the Bookworm. Thoughtful guy, hyper-articulate, we're lucky that he has been interested in Asia and writing about it for the last thirty years.
Tweets for April 9, 2016
Tweets for April 8, 2016
Books Read -- Lone Survivor
After enjoying No Easy Day, I thought I'd try another SEAL book, so I borrowed Lone Survivor. Unfortunately I only made it one chapter in before quitting. Luttrell comes across as a bit of a knucklehead and lays on the military rah-rah too heavily. Maybe it's just a problem of finding the right co-author.
No Easy Day was short and fast-paced and I appreciated "Mark Owen's" lack of reflection. Lone Survivor is 444 pages and there was no way I was voluntarily going to be in Luttrell's company for that long.
Tweets for April 7, 2016
Tweets for April 6, 2016
The Rise of the Corporate General
From David Hackworth's appearance on Booknotes in 1989:
"This tragedy that occurred started in 1946 when we took our Officer Corps and started this business of making everybody a diplomat and a warrior which ended up under Maxwell Taylor when he became Chief of Staff. Our Generals became corporate generals rather than the fighting generals of type that won World War II. The Ridgeways and the Pattons and so on."
Hackworth on military decorations:
"... take Admiral Crowe who is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. On his jacket it's ablaze with medals. 31 of them. But there's not one for a combat deed. They're all having-been-there awards. You're-a-good-guy award. You-moved-some-paper-across-your-desk-in-a-neat-way award....
Just like when Admiral Crowe perhaps appears in front of Congress, those are his credentials, and those Congressmen don't know they are just having-been-there awards. When he says we need this they believe that he knows what he's talking about from the standpoint of being on a battlefield. So I think that we've kind of put our award system at a cross purpose. Grenada -- there were 7,000 men on that island. They gave 8,000 awards. There were 200 enemy Cuban soldiers or so on that island. And they gave 200 awards for valor. One per enemy soldier.
... I think we need to go back and clean up our act on awards and just give awards to soldiers. The final line on awards is to me the only award ... that really means something to warriors is the Purple Heart and above that, the Combat Infantry Badge. That means I've been there."
Tweets for April 5, 2016
Ivanka
Love everything about this video ... Ivanka has great teeth, skin, hair -- the classic, polished Rich Girl look. and she's obviously sharp and media savvy.