Maximum City

Gregory David Roberts' Shantaram is probably my favorite book of all time, and had no small part in my decision to visit Bombay.

The book is literally 900+ pages and is jammed with his very full life in Bombay. And now I understand why, as i could sit here for hours describing my last 3 days here and not do it justice. Bombay is The Maximum City, everything at extremes, everything in your face, in all it's beauty and depraved ugliness.

So quite fitting that the highlight and the darkness were one in the same. I visited sacred ground, a Hindi temple where they burn the bodies of the dead. It was adjacent to the train that was terrorist bombed last year, killing 400+ and many of the ashes remained on site. I actually saw the ghats still burning from the previous night, as well as the graves of baby ashes, literally dozens of little baby graves, and even a little baby skull.

It was heartbreaking and I was overwhelmed, such that my guide and the keeper took me for almost all the coin I had in my pocket, which was not that much, but about 3x more than i expected. They totally rolled me. "Welcome to Bombay!"

Yeah, living in Cali has made me so soft, and I definitely have a giant M painted on my forehead for Mark. I love it though, three minutes on the street and I had a giant bongo drum. I'm actually very excited to Bongo.

Besides walking around as the human ATM, I spent the majority of my time in what may be the greatest bar ever -Leopold's (also made famous by Shantaram). It was there last night, that I appeared on this supposedly huge TV show in Asia -Mondo Magic. Check your local AsiaTV listings. I think they may have me falling out of my chair.

Also, I have a very good friend there, Mahesh, who served me 3 nights in a row, and looked out for me like a brother. I met a Brit, 2 Aussies, a Philly girl, the manager for French Laundry, the crew of Mondo Magic, as well as the usual criminal element. Also, Mahesh is delivering a message for me to Mr. Roberts. Please ask for Mr. Mahesh if you go, he is class A.

getting on a flight to Goa. Shanti baba.

obattihey,
yt

see you in India

it has been a pleasure, an honor and a total trip to be able to post here for the last couple months.

thank you so much for spending even a little bit of your time here.

if the ritam allows, you'll be hearing from me soon. . .

if not, it's okay bc i love you.

see you on the other side of the world.

-yt

long rupee

i think yesterday (Monday) i was down like 50% or something along those ridiculous lines, all time low balance, "boo-hoo poor you", and all that. . .

not sure though as i was searching for a hotel in Mumbai most of the morning. the hotels are either 7 bucks or $500 a night. i would fall into the $7 bracket, but it didn't stop me spending several hours trying to arbitrage into the Taj Mahal, unsuccessfully.

anywho, came back today (NAS +89) and am down like 10-15% which is negligible in options. not caring too much though as i'm full on into this India trip, and still mostly bullish through the holidays. and yesterday, i did buy CROX March 50s @ 4.3 -why not. . . ????

read this great book a few months back, The 4 Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris -just had a write-up in the sunday NYTimes -good stuff. i'll be testing his theories big time the next few months. i'll be volunteering, yes, but my only money making (or losing) operations will come from trading, and i plan on spending maybe 4 hours total on it. that's 4 hours in 4 months. that'll be a new book -the 15 minute work week.

and that trading may, to a certain extent, determine the length of my trip.

actually though, just last minute, the rep from kiva.org contacted me. they do micro-loans a la Muhammad Yunis. anyway, they may need a rep in Delhi, so we shall see. . .

still, ideally, tomorrow before i leave, i'd like to go a few months further out in my calls, i.e MAR's for JAN's, but the market likely isn't on my travel schedule, so we'll see what it gives me (besides the usual beating).

om namah shivaya!

-yt

Smacaroni

nice day. . . again.

john carney at www.dealbreaker.com (which is the best site on the internets) said it's feeling like the quant bloodbath this summer, where the winners get sold and the highly shorted go up, w/ the big Nasdaq names down and CROX up pretty big. i think he nailed it, well done john. if he's right we're close to a bottom here, maybe next week. . .

if not, armageddon; canned goods, bottled water, automatic weapons, a bunker in montana and 2 ferrets.

i have some cash (in the other acct, i'm all in, in my IRA getting smoked) to put to work before i leave for India, and although i thought it might be all in on CROX, w/ GOOG and AAPL coming off big, that's where it looks like it's headed -dance w/ the GOOGLE that got you here.

i'd tell you my balance, but i'm afraid to look.

can i mark to model here??

have a great weekend!

shanti baba,
yt

worst day ever (not really) and chart o' the day

we make our trades, we make our life choices, and then we live with them.

we rationalize our decisions after the fact, coming up w/ reasons bc it gives us a sense of order or control over ourselves, when let's face it, our trading decisions are usually quite animalistic -some combination of fear and greed.

that's why i love trading. it gets in there and makes you confront those issues w/ real time feedback.

got smacked today, no question. still up a hair, yet off about 33% in two days, but i did no selling today. i'm long right up til' x-mas bc i got that feeling today.

the feeling is pre-historic, and the feeling i had is FEAR -yeah, scared sh-tless.

buy fear, sell greed.

so anywho, since most would rather have some sort of analysis besides "i was scared, so i bought, here's something i just made up (for you chart lovers):

http://finance.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1194566377000&chddm=84456&q=AMEX:DIA

this is YTD on the DIAmonds (The Dow Jones Industrial Average). i see a pattern (i see dead people). i see 3 corrections this year related to credit (i'm calling the present sell-off our third).

all three were sharp, deep, painful and very quick. the bottoms were marked by the capitulation of best of breed stocks, where the baby GOOGs, AAPLS, Goldmans, even GLD were thrown out w/ the bathwater. all three were marked by recession hype, and end-of-days housing chatter.

also, a high, a low, a higher high, a higher low, a higher high, and so far a higher low. . .

and the final capitulation was your best opportunity to get long the flyers.

i could easily be wrong. . .

we really could be on the straight-recession-express.

but that's not my bet.

-yt

blow out

i am being crushed as i write this -big time.

guess i needed a bit more humble-pie.

thank you sir, may i have another.

yesterday morning, all in, up 55-60%.

today, last check, up 25%, not bad yeah, but it looks like it's getting worse. . .

how do i feel? i just took my last chunk of cash and bought the GOOG Jan 800s.

basically, if we get any kind of rally btw now and January expiration, i'm good.

otherwise, blow-upville.

stay tuned in, or tuned out, whatever your pleasure.

ritam,
yt

humility

when writing yesterday, something wasn't feeling right, something was missing in my being, couldn't put my finger on it though. . .

well, i figured it out today -very clearly. HUMILITY. the markets are very good with that lesson.

we just had a down 360 last week, but this one was worse, at least for me, gave back the week's gains and then some.

to top it off, as the onslaught strengthened into the final minutes, i picked up some CSCO calls pre-earnings. . .

i could have just taken 10 hundred dollar bills and lit them on fire.

but even that would have taken too long.

options.

hey, i'm so blessed to be able to do this, even on days like this.

namaste.

humbly humbled,
yt

AAPL

all time balance here, good day no doubt. it feels like buying time seasonally for the big guys, so hopefully we can ride this until x-mas. besides tech, i like retail here, but not like target and sh-t like that but AMZN, CROX, and yes, ready to jump back into LULU, (all of which way off their highs). you could call these 3 "consumer discresh thrashings". long thrashings.

i still feel as though CROX will be be my biggest pos going into India, but currently my AAPL pos is like 7x as large. . .

BIG CORRECTION: yesterday, i said i paid $2.3 for CROX Jan 45s. that was complete misinformation, i actually paid 4-something for those and $2.3 for CROX Jan 55s a day prior, yes, FIFTY FIVES, i'm an idiot. sorry about that. over-trading misinformation disorder. any way, i like it.

also, re-initiated MER DEC 50 Puts in case the world ends or SEC investigation, whichever comes first.

looking for GOOG 1000s if anyone's offering. . .???

om ritam namah,
b

CROX

i still have friday's close scotch-taped over my screen, so i have no idea what happened today. . .

actually, yeah, not a great day, but not so bad either. doubled down on CROX when it hit $40 -Jan 45s at like $2.3 -whaaaat? liked it a lot at 50, love it at 40.

if it stays below 45, i will likely make it my biggest position before i take off for India next week. yes, that's right, bigger than AAPL in which I may go further out and higher w/ options.

i figure 1 of 3 things will happen w/ CROX by Jan 08':

1) unlikely -there will be some accounting scandal and i will be blown out: stock -20.

2) more likely -this will be the most obvious long in the history of plastic shoes: stock +40

3) most likely -none of the above and i will be in India chanting

all you need is love, love is all you need.

-yt

print this tape

back at my old place, on a good and green day, my mentor used to say, "print this screen!",so he could scotch-tape the green quotes over his live quotes.

after all kinds of over-trading this morning (see prev post) i'm up on the day, getting a lot of volatility juice on the options. volatility is a component of option pricing and when things go bananas, you get a bit more juice in your pricing.

so, print this screen, print this tape, i'm outta here, going to yoga.

have a phenomenal weekend!

much love,
yt

squirrelly

holy f-ing shit! it's getting squirrelly out there. figured i do a mid-session post to liven things up -lively! i was getting hammered this morning, so i started trimming my CROX, thanks to f-ing cramer who killed it last night, right or wrong, he will move a stock, so can't fight the tape and in the short term, can't fight cramer.

my MER puts, again coming up superman, sold them for a double, also had a very small pos yesterday on BSC on the Jimmy Cayne pot smoking -i was long the pot smoking to hedge MER puts -the idea being Cayne was cooler than anyone at MER by a mile high, baby!

okay so we seem to have stabilized, as you know AAPL is half my portfolio, so when it sneezes -aaaachooo steve jobs, i get hit, last check i'm down about 2-3% from where i started the week, still up about 40% in that account over-all, although like 20 minutes ago, i was down quite a bit more -options baby!

cleaned house, and am about 30-40% cash, still very long AAPL, small option positions in AMZN & CROX and small equity pos in LULU.

but gotta get back to staring at my screen and cheerleading! big G, little O, little O big G, GOOG, GOOG, GOOG!!

man, i need a yoga class, 10:30 w/ saul works very well.

om namah shivaya!!

love,
yt

-360 degrees of separation

between yesterday's close and today's.

too much to write, but let's just get the trades in first.

picked up calls on CROCS which was absolutely DEMOLISHED today -bought Jan 52.5s, Jan 70s and Nov 50s all at about 90% discounts from yesterday -what a bargain!!

my MER puts were like f-ing superman today. and AAPL held up well enough that i was actually up at an all time balance w/ the market down 220, but it was not to be with the too powerful -360 thrashing. still ended up basically flat.

time to watch fast money -man, i miss eric bolling though.

namaste for now,
yt