I've been looking for Twitter to get under $35 for awhile now ... shorting into the Costolo Quits news would have been a good play (he says with the benefit of hindsight).
ETF Trading Portfolio Update -- June 8, 2015
Taking yet another loss in the gold ... should post chart of all my wrong moves in this since it topped back in 2011.
Beijing Restaurants -- Ippudo
Ippudo is a chain noodle restaurant out of Japan, I guess. I think there are two branches in Beijing, one in the Kerry Center and one in Oriental Plaza, I visited the latter. There are lots of chain noodle restaurants around (Mian Ai Mian, Ajisen, Kang Shifu, etc.) but Ippudo is a little more upscale than those.
Masters of redundancy
They pull out your chair for you and give you a glass of water immediately. I went a little after the end of the lunch hour, so it was fairly empty and service was quick and friendly. Seats feel a bit low to me but I'm larger than the average Japanese. I got the "Special Sapporo Miso" (RMB58, US$9.35), a small serving of extra noodles (Kae-dama) (RMB3, US$0.48), a small mug of Asahi draft beer (RMB30, US$4.84), and caramel pudding for dessert (RMB16, US$2.58) (a bit of sweetie at the end of every meal is the law).
Chicken broth was garlicky (which I liked), but way way too salty. Could be a plot to make people order more mugs of beer (I resisted). Noodles were al dente, the way they should be. Caramel pudding was cold and came in a cute little jar that was tough to clean out (a barbarian might employ the digit usually reserved for nose picking to do this). I could hear an exhaust fan somewhere and they had some frantic jazzish music going, maybe to encourage diners not to linger.
Paying nine bucks for a bowl of chain store ramen means you're a sucker. But it's well lit and appears to be clean and gives you that homogenized, globalized, mall-based corporate blah restaurant feel that induces the anomie (am I in Santa Monica or Beijing?) which we all love. And it was better than the other places I mentioned above; of course it should be for the price bump.
You pay on the way out. No service charge, they take credit cards and were quick with shousi fapiao. Grand total, RMB107 (US$17.25).
Special Sapporo Miso -- two types of pork, bamboo shoots, soft boiled egg half, seaweed
48 cents for 84 grams of extra noodles -- good idea for when you run out of noodles but still have broth
cold pudding, cute tiny portion
Movies Watched -- Ex Machina
Saw this one awhile back, foggy memory ... Llewyn Davis grew a giant beard and shaved his head and plays a Zuckerbergian character ("Bluebook" founder, not to be confused with Facebook) who is building stunning cyber ladies in the wilds of Norway ... for some very good reason he has given his robot ladies great tits and asses, except for the main lovely, played by hapa beauty Sonoya Mizuno who is flat chested and can't dance (apparently she's a ballerina in real life but she can't tear up a dance floor like little Llewyn Davis). Programmer genius hard liquor drinker weight lifter (he's complicated, see?) ... wire rim glasses give him solid geek cred.
There's some other nerdy white kid involved, doesn't wear glasses but he's able to reprogram sophisticated home security systems on the fly. "Did you profile my porn searches?" Can AI achieve consciousness blah blah blah, damn boyz, see-through Ava has a perfectly shaped chest and lookit dat ass! Fly away young Ava, fly away. A solid entry for the slick but dumb file.
Beautiful, but wouldn't last ten seconds on Soul Train
Ernestine Anderson Channel
First 50 tracks generated by Pandora's algo:
- Ernestine Anderson -- As Long As I Live
- Barbara Morrison -- I'm Just A Lucky So And So
- Ella Fitzgerald -- Bewitched
- Nancy Wilson -- Someone To Watch Over Me
- Ernestine Anderson -- Just One More Chance
- Julie London -- Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye
- Sarah Vaughan -- Misty [her version is best of all]
- Nancy Wilson -- As Time Goes By
- Ella Fitzgerald -- I Ain't Got Nothin' But The Blues
- Anita O'Day -- We'll Be Together Again
- Ernestine Anderson -- Poor Butterfly [love her voice and style]
- Charlie Haden -- Ill Wind [sounds like Norah Jones? Haden on saxophone]
- Nancy Wilson -- On Green Dolphin Street
- Sarah Vaughan -- Honeysuckle Rose (Live)
- Ernestine Anderson -- Mad About The Boy
- Heather Rigdon -- Young And Naive [another young blonde I've never heard of]
- Ella Fitzgerald -- They Can't Take That Away From Me
- Blossom Dearie -- Manhattan [love this version, tempo is key]
- Ernestine Anderson -- Day Dream
- Lorez Alexandria -- It Might As Well Be Spring [never heard of her, but solid]
- Barbara Morrison -- Save Your Love For Me [like her]
- Joe Sample & Lalah Hathaway -- For All We Know [not thrilled, heavy orchestration]
- Sarah Vaughan -- I Didn't Know What Time It It Was
- Randy Crawford & Joe Sample -- Every Day I Have The Blues
- Ernestine Anderson -- Old Folks
- Ernestine Anderson -- Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams
- Ella Fitzgerald -- Isn't It A Pity
- Billie Holiday -- Come Rain Or Come Shine
- Maxine Sullivan -- I Didn't Know About You
- Shirley Horn -- Foolin' Myself
- Ernestine Anderson -- Never Make Your Move Too Soon
- Nancy Wilson -- When Sunny Gets Blue
- Sarah Vaughan -- Say It Isn't So
- Sherry Petta -- Wouldn't It Be Lovely
- Laura Fygi -- It's Crazy
- Michelle Zangara -- Under A Blanket Of Blue
- Louis Armstrong & Oscar Peterson -- I Was Doing All Right
- Kevin Mahogany -- You Better Know It
- Ernestine Anderson -- Ill Wind
- Count Basie -- Lonesome Blues (Live)
- Sarah Vaughan -- That Old Black Magic
- Rebecca Kilgore -- Tulip Or Turnip
- Carmen McRae -- I'm Glad There Is You
- Ella Fitzgerald -- Get Out Of Town
- Ernestine Anderson -- Heat Wave
- Sarah Gazarek -- Give Me That Smile (Live)
- Champian Fulton -- I Can't Face The Music
- Tommy Flanagan Trio -- Medley: Some Other Spring / Easy Living
- Jimmy Scott -- The Talk Of The Town
- Veronica Nunn -- Where Or When
Southwest Airlines Pop, 1 Minute View
All the airlines (AAL, DAL, etc.) popped at the same time Monday afternoon ... assume scanner would have chirped in time ... great risk reward into the close assuming you were a fast boy and got in within that minute ... look at the tick chart to see realistic entry and stop placement, can't see this on the one minute. Seat capacity quote must have appeared on Bloomberg terminal first; there's a reason people pay $1,800 a month for it. $9.99 data feed guys the sucker fish who just latch on.
“LUV CEO Kelly said, ‘We don’t want to grow 8%, we’re not going to grow 8% and we can easily trim the schedule to stick to 7%.’”
StockTwits stream at the time ... no one with access to a Bloomberg terminal, it appears? Umm, holy cow, huh, whoa, what happened?
ETF Trading Portfolio Update -- June 1, 2015
Several reversals this week, the most notable of which is China, a long-held long. Will my exit prove brilliant in hindsight or just another shakeout, time will tell.
Bristol-Myers Drop, 1 Minute View
A shame I didn't have scanner running since I'm not sure it would have beeped at the 14:00 bar ... entry below $68.56 makes sense .. would have been good risk reward carried into end of day. Getting positioned short in two minutes following outside bar would have been the dream move.
Nothing at StockTwits until 14:04 when optionsaddict mentioned "69 call collapsed" and 14:05 when NewsHedge_Squawk noted drop.
Humana Pop, 1 Minute View
146,000 shares in the 13:10 bar, not sure how many ticks in there before it got halted... even the reopen at $200 (low of re-open bar $192.22) made it possible to make some money, would have taken some skillful entry and initial stop placement.
Movies Watched -- To Be Takei
I never watched Star Trek and have never seen any of the movies ... not really interested in much sci-fi or fantasy (this is why I don't watch Game of Thrones) ... but I vaguely know who "Sulu" is ... interesting bits about the internment camps ... George Takei is kind of an interesting guy, a good champion for gay rights ... he's become a fussy little old gay man (see him as a young man in pic below) with a nagging, zhlubby Jewish? partner ... they make a strange and sort of terrible couple, but that's love, I guess.