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