Movies Watched -- Raw (2017)

In French. 98 minutes so within the sacred 100 minute mark, but I still watched it at 1.5x because I'm not into horror generally, esp. horror from France.

A vet school is a good place to stage a horror movie though. Made in France, so attractive young women wander around in their underwear at length (see below). The lead girl was cute as was her butchy sister, when they weren't cannabilizing anyway. Not for the squeamish!

SPOILERS: Pair of sisters, both in vet school, discover they have a taste for human flesh, thanks a lot, Mom. It's not badly made, it's just gross and I wasn't thrilled.

If you're into horror movies, you might like it. There were some funny bits to lighten up the vats of blood being thrown around. Yellow rating for horror fans, red for a general audience.

A funny review by Jeffrey Bloomer.

Red light district

Movies Watched -- My Life As A Zucchini (2017)

66 minute running time ... I still had to fast forward from 20 minutes in. Animation from France. Not for kids.  Supposed to be heartwarming and uplifting, I suppose, but I just found it depressing -- orphans, abused children ... dark stuff, you know. Hideous claymation characters (see below). Just awful, and no child should ever see this. Red rating.

Horror story....

Notes for Chat with Traders, Episode 20

Episode 20 ... Kunal Desai (65:15)

• Likes Costa Rica, it's like "Jurassic Park"
• Dad is an engineer, always dabbled in the stock market, "the worst trader in the world"
• Graduated high school during the dot com boom, everyone was a day trader
• Opened first account with "buyandholdtrading.com"
• Looked for ideas at MSN Money, Jim Jubak
• Lost all his money in less than a week during dot com bust
• Lost all his money again in Global Crossing, Nortel Networks, Lucent Technologies bust
• Had years of this kind of up and down disappointment
• These losses taught him how to be resilient
• Met Paul Singh online
• Indian people love to get free stuff from other Indian people
• Desai had knowledge but no trading methodology
• Had to corral what he knew and make a cookbook, systematize his knowledge
• Build routines to build a trader
• How do you size your position? You have to have a method
• People freeze when they have a loss, deer in headlights, can't get out
• A-ha moments come from competence and then repetition, practice time
• Competence plus screen time, you begin seeing things clearly
• People give up or blow up before they get requisite screen time
• Takes thousands of repetitions, simulated or live or trade reviews, to reach a-ha moment
• Took Desai *years* to get profitable
• Paul Singh, veteran trader, passed down his knowledge to him 
• Took another year before he said, yes, I can do this forever
• How long do doctors and lawyers go to school before they make a buck? Years! Trading no different
• Desai trades momentum stocks, a trend trader, both long and short
• Read William O'Neil, made sense to him, better matched his personality than Buffett buy and hold
• Earnings breakouts the most powerful thing he has seen in trading
• Good daily chart an absolute necessity
• Earnings surpises are the best, people rush in
• High relative volume makes patterns very clean
• Being a generalist will not make you money
• Master one or two things, better than knowledge of 20 or 30 things
• Mastery takes the thinking out of a trade
• Once a stock gets in play, you trade it both long and short, keep it on your radar
• Must understand your own personality, what you're comfortable with, what fits you
• If you're uncomfortable, you're not going to trade well
• Find something that you "vibe" with
• He can't tame himself, he's a wild, aggressive man and accepts that
• He has max loss on his trading account, $2,000 a day is his max ... stops trading at -$2,000 mark
• Live to fight another day
• When you see the market well, push it
• Give back rule: if you give back half your gains, cut yourself off
• He experiences FOMO a lot, worse for him than taking losses
• "You chase, you die" -- condition yourself to know this
• Market gives you endless opportunities, "on to the next one"
• "Skills are cheap, passion is priceless" ... don't get into trading for the money
• People without passion give up at the first sign of trouble
• Long, rocky road to trading success ... need passion to get through it
• It takes years and years and years before you make any money
• You can't date, you miss weddings, birthday parties, etc.
• You have to work like a dog, long hours, huge cost
• Desai had desk job while he was learning how to trade, he was obsessed with trading though
• His successful students all have incredible resilience
• "Oh shit, this is going to be hard." People quit.
• People get frustrated and give up, even with the simulator
• Once people start live trading, their money is on the line, they go to dark places, the resilient make it
• Lots of talented people just give up once they get knocked down
• You are not trading chart patterns, you are trading your hopes and dreams
• Can't learn how to trade when you need the money from trading
• Every good trader is in good shape, no fatties, "get your pump on"
• He needs to trade with a beach view, helps him maintain his perspective
• Whoever you are, it will come out in your trading, get to the root of it
• Everbody knows the patterns, everybody knows what to do, but only 1% can actually do it
• bullsonwallstreet.com (est. 2008)
• You need a mentor, a community, to learn how to trade
• "My man!"
• Twitter: kunal00

Movies Watched -- Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer (2017)

118 minute running time so at least 18 to 28 minutes too long. A weird one, I fast forwarded from 20 minutes in. Casting a gentile like Richard Gere (a Methodist who converted to Buddhism no less) to play someone named Norman Oppenheimer is nearly as mysterious as casting Steve Buscemi as a rabbi. Anyway, that aside, it is a sad story, the tragic end is not an understatement.

The Jewish macher as someone lovable ...  (macher from maker, a person who gets things done, but it does have the negative connotation of "fixer") ... he's not shady so much as he is a cipher ... a nobody desperately trying to be somebody ... these are sad ideas.  Maybe if it had been 90 minutes long, I could have watched it at normal speed and enjoyed it, but no, it's overly long.  Yellow rating.

Let me introduce you.... 

Notes for Chat with Traders, Episode 65

Episode 65 ... Brett Steenbarger (59:20)

• Read The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand as sophomore in college
• Thought psychology could be used to make people do their best
• University of Kansas grad school, late 1970s, political psychology degree
• Trading his avocation, psychology his vocation -- parallel interest
• The Psychology of Trading, his first book, written in 2000
• Victor Niederhoffer, a friend and mentor, encouraged him to write a book
• Teaching at Syracuse University medical school at that time
• Chicago trading firm hired him away to work for them full time as trading coach 
• Market makers he was working with didn't use charts or fundamentals, just the book (DOM)
• Pro athletes still work with coaches even after they've made it; same is true of pro traders
• Markets change, traders need to evolve
• Identify and build upon strengths
• Now he works with several hedge funds and financial firms as a consultant
• Market volatility expands and contracts, traders need to adapt to that
• Separate logical from psychological errors -- correctly identify that first
• People are more sensitive to losing money than making money
• Become exquisitely aware of your habits -- build self-awareness
• Observe yourself, then re-channel yourself
• He has four cats
• Revenge trading comes from frustration, you want to make it back
• Be aware that you are about to revenge trade, step away from screens, calm down
• You can't change something you're not aware of
• Commonalities of successful traders:

1. Adapting to changing markets (trends, volatility, people participating all change)
2. Building on strengths (day traders are good at fast thinking skills and pattern recognition; investors are slower, deeper thinkers)
3. Cultivating creativity (seeing the world differently from others, seeing opportunities others don't see)
4. Developing best practices (and turning them into best processes)

• Best practices: how you generate ideas, manage positions, manage risk and reward, review your results
• Trading Psychology 2.0 is his second book
• You don't have to motivate yourself to eat breakfast, it's just routine
• All your best trading practices should also just be routine, no motivational sticky notes on monitor needed
• Repeat what you do every day until it becomes a routine ... all about repetition
• Make the most of your competencies
• Work around your weaknesses
• Steenbarger knows he can't make markets, cognitively and emotionally he's unable to make rapid decisions and process lots of information
• Steenbarger himself suffers from cognitive overload easily, needs to be able to reflect
• Steenbarger tried to trade full time and absolutely hated it because he wasn't working with people [I'm the opposite]
• Uses guided imagery to have traders imagine hitting their stops, losing money ... but staying calm and controlled
• Effective goal setting requires a specific plan, a day to day plan
• A goal without a plan is a wish
• Not a fan of monetary goals -- performance anxiety is real
• P&L front and center (the outcome) will mess up your processes
• Better to look at improvement ... month to month, not just P&L, but risk-adjusted P&L
• Make friends with loss and failure ... your losing trades teach you things, what changed? 
• Embrace the mistakes you make, ultimately how we become better is by learning from mistakes
• Don't think about your results in dollar terms, think in percentage terms 
• Hard to take risk and make good decisions when you think you must succeed 
• Make sure you have something in your life that's more important than trading
• Trading shouldn't be the major part of your life ... you need to be balanced
• Traders with longevity have some source of satisfaction separate from profits
• A fascination with the markets themselves could be that source of satisfaction
• Website: traderfeed.blogspot.com
• Twitter: @steenbab

Movies Watched -- 20th Century Women (2017)

118 minutes long so at least 18 to 28 minutes too long. Set in Santa Barbara in 1979. Annette Bening is a 55-year-old single mother with a 15-year-old son ... she's sort of a Bohemian Mom, doin' the best she can with a teenage boy, which isn't very good. She chain smokes which may explain why she looks older than 55 (Bening is in fact 59). She has a couple of boarders in her house, and they form a sort of weird "family." I fast forwarded from 20 minutes in.

There are some funny scenes... the "family" and some hippie friends watch Jimmy Carter's "Crisis of Confidence" speech, at the end of which someone says, "Wow, he is so screwed," which made me laugh.  At the dinner afterward, the pretty punk tenant (Greta Gerwig?) leads the group in saying "menstruation" together, which I found amusing. But there's no way I could have sat through two hours of this at normal speed. Yellow rating for Boomers and very early Gen-Xers (say, pre-1965 Gen-X). Anyone under 40, or especially under 30, would hate this nostalgia piece.

Dick Brody wasn't thrilled and got out his thesaurus: "the banalization of its meditative, nearly collage-like sense of memory." Melissa Anderson nails it in this brief review: "a trip back in time in which era-specific talismans substitute for genuine thought. Though big feels glut 20th Century Women, even emotion seems ersatz."

Period blouse

Movies Watched -- Mudbound (2017)

135 minutes with seven minutes of end credits so it's still over 30 minutes too long. Depressing and a tear-jerker. You know something horrible is going to happen the whole time (1940s Mississippi, after all), you have a sense of doom, you know, oncoming tragedy. Female star is Carey Mulligan and her funny ventriloquist dummy face. She's talented and has gotten a *lot* of work in recent years. "Mike Ehrmantraut" plays the villain ... always makes a good bad guy.

The movie wasn't badly made, it's just overly long (Rex said it should be called Stuck-in-the-Mudbound). The atrocities committed by racist white men not that long ago shouldn't be forgotten ... but it isn't entertainment. They tried to end it on an upbeat note, but it's still painful to watch. Yellow rating.

Sharing a smoke.... little nod to Michelangelo (The Creation of Adam)

Movies Watched -- Wonder Woman (2017)

141 minutes with 10 minutes of end credits which means that it's only 30 to 40 minutes too long. The trouble is the backstory takes a good 30+ minutes, the whole Princess Diana of Themyscira, Daughter of Hippolyta thing. There are so many of these comic book superhero movies now because Gen-X has taken power from the dying Baby Boomers, and these are the movies Gen-X wants. The formula is to lighten the ultra-violence with some comedy (including a big dick joke), and it largely works here.

Gal Gadot, wow, talk about the ultimate Jewish Princess. She's amazing -- tall, beautiful, great bod, sexy non-native English speaker accent. I could just watch here alone on screen for 141 minutes. Evil Germans ... who tires of German villains? Dr. Maru's face mask was well done. Matt Damon-ish guy playing the American hero (the Americans are always heroes). Hollywood movie so they throw in an Injun, a Moroccan (with fez!), and a goofy Scotsman (with kilt!) for the Sesame Street PC thing. 

It wasn't terrible, but it was just so long, and filled with CGI bullshit that I hate (looks more like a videogame at times than a movie), and the formula is tired. I can't recommend this, other than just watching it for Gal Gadot, who definitely deserves your very close attention. Yellow rating at best.

Come hither

Movies Watched -- The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (2017)

112 minutes so at least 12 to 22 minutes too long. I hated this. Watched it on Netflix so I couldn't fast forward. Talk talk talk. Screwed-up family. Whining adult children ... Adam Sandler playing a "serious" role -- always a bad sign ... Ben Stiller, ditto ... and there's Adam Driver from Girls again, that guy gets roles non-stop even though he can't act.

What could have interested me here was an exploration of religion... were all of Dustin Hoffman's wives (incl. Emma Thompson, Candice Bergen) gentiles? Were all his kids half-Jewish? Did Judaism play any role in their upbringing? Sandler's beautiful daughter is obviously a WASP, did Sandler marry outside the faith? There was not a word about any of this. His daughter makes shocking artsy porn as a freshman at Bard -- isn't that cute?

Selfish Baby Boomer dad, now a doddering old guy, screwed-up kids, who cares? If Dustin were in the hospital for two months, who paid for it? Would his healthcare plan from Bard pay for all that? Some of it was sort of funny, but not really. I suspect I'd hate every movie that Noah Baumbach makes.

Full red, avoid this movie. 

Update: Meyerowitz lawyers contacted me to take down the screencap. This makes me hate Baumbach even more.

Token black boyfriend to boot!

Movies Watched -- The Salesman (2017)

In Persian. 125 minute running time so at least 25 minutes too long. This was depressing. It was made by the same guy who did About Elly, which was also depressing, and A Separation (which I really liked). Iranian society appears to be screwed up ... I guess it's mainly an Islamic Republic thing (the "clerics' clamp," as Tony Lane put it) ... sacred versus secular / traditional versus modern, etc. All the same themes the guy explores in all his movies (marriage, money, the State), but he's also interested in examining humiliation and revenge here.

What interested me was how poor Iran looked, it reminded me of 1990s China ... terrible construction quality, ugly fixtures, cheap everything -- just depressing. I'm not going to talk about the story at all, since it's a little complicated -- it's a sort-of thriller. The movie starred some stunning Iranian women of Instagram, same as About Elly (same lead actress). Beautiful women. Can't recommend it for a general audience, but my capital A.R.T. art readers will like it ... gets a yellow rating.

SPOILERS: (I don't think any kind of sexual assault happened ... he stroked her hair, thinking she was Ahoo, and when she turned, they both freaked out and she fell and cracked her head open. He panicked and left. There was no rape. Any real "violation" never occurred ... it's just in her husband's mind.)

You lookin' at me?