The waxing and waning of the desire to type into various blogging boxes has always interested me, mainly because of the waxing and waning. Some days the idea of chronicling things that are occuring in real life via pixels and keystrokes seems like the most absolute ludicrous, wasteful activity in the world; other days I miss it and am glad I've done as much of it as I have, as far as a record or journal of some sort of where my head was at during various times of my life.
Needless to say, I've been in a waning state of late, especially in regards to this poor blog in particular. A bit ironic in that I've actually been hitting the poker tables pretty hard the last few months, raping and pillaging the mid stakes ($25-$100 buy-ins) double or nothing SnGs and 6 max SnGs on Cake. It's far from exciting poker but I'm sitting at about 12% ROI over 2,000 or so SnGs, which is nothing to sneeze at, especially with rakeback and bonus cash from rake races thrown in.
Nearing the finish line with the little house I bought at the end of December and am renovating, which has gone pretty much according to plan. Already have a tenant lined up for it, so it's just a matter of getting it done, then moving on to the next project. Which is looking like it may be the house next door, as the abandoned house next to is going to auction at the county courthouse next Tuesday for failure ot pay taxes, and hopefully I'll be able to pick it up for the whopping minimum bid of $6,770.
The economy still seems to be swirling down the drain since my last post, or I suppose trickling might be a better word choice. Sluicing maybe, something between swirling and trickling. I usually am my own worst enemy when it comes to investing but I did manage a few things right during the last six months or so, catching a big piece of the swoon last fall via ETFs such as SDS and SKF, then taking biggish positions in SLW and SLV in early December, and plunked some money into GLD shortly after.
I've been tempted to take profits on the commodity-related positions as I think we're still in for one last big final plunge down to 650 or so on the S&P 500, and until the last few weeks gold and silver had been getting hit as well on big down down for equities. Lately, though, they seem to be bucking that trend, acting more like safe havens when more junk-kicking economic news takes equities to the woodshed.
Who knows, though, really. Not this dumb monkey. Part of me is very tempted to take profits and just let everything set in cash, as taking a position of any sort on either side of any trade becomes more and more like playing blackjack each and every day, with the only winner being the brokerage that keeps collecting their commission rake on each and every pot.
Still have the pleasure of going to the day job, and somehow or other we haven't announced mass layoffs, despite being a publicly-traded company in the financial services/risk management/credit risk sector.
We did have two new additions to the family since my last update. With no further ado, Socrates and Marley:
