I Find You Odd

Or should that title be, You Find Me Odd?

What I find odd is the lack of conversation about the sudden change in the markets.

As in there is no market.

At least no market that is tradeable.

Or is it just me?

After all one of us is odd.

INTJ Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Where can I find an INTJ?


A: We INTJs are über-introverts, so we prefer asynchronous and semi-anonymous forms of communication. We get most of our socialization through internet forums and Usenet newsgroups. Look for us there.


Q: Can I become an INTJ?


A: Unless you are born an INTJ, your only hope is to find a genie lamp while strolling on the beach, rub it, and make a wish. You can fake being one of us by burying yourself in a mound of books, nerding out on a favorite subject (like quantum mechanics, not needlepoint), wandering around by yourself, not giving a damn what others think of you, etc. If this sounds like too much work, just try doing a good robot impersonation.


Q: How can I break up with my INTJ?


A: Tell us the truth. We’ll reply, “Sure, why not?”, and go on with our lives.


Q: My INTJ is trying to take over the world. Should I be concerned?


A: Remember, he’s trying to take over the world for the betterment of everyone and everything. Just go ahead and let him. He’ll be happy and the world will be a more organized and efficient place.


Q: My INTJ just told me I’m retarded. Should I take offense?


A: You probably are retarded, by our standards. But don’t take offense. Our standards are so high that even we don’t meet them. We judge ourselves more harshly than we judge others.


Q: My INTJ isn’t sensitive to my feelings. Should I take offense?


A: We aren’t even sensitive to our own feelings. Why should we be expected to be sensitive to yours? We won’t even try to fake it. Insincerity is a pet peeve of ours, and anyway, it would ruin our reputation if we ever showed emotion.


Q: Why doesn’t my INTJ ever show emotions or feelings?


A: Because he doesn’t have any. Actually, that’s not strictly true; it’s just that we tend to get emotional about things you might not appreciate. INTJs have been known to cry during the liftoff scene in “Apollo 13″, for example, and there are also many touching moments in some of the Star Trek movies. An INTJ may also smile or laugh at random for no apparent reason; probably one of the voices in his head just made a good joke.


Q: My INTJ doesn’t care about me any more after he tried to explain his idea and I didn’t listen. What should I do?


A: Ideas are of prime importance to INTJs, and disregarding or not listening to our ideas is the highest form of insult. Although INTJs do not hold grudges, neither do we go out of our way to associate with people who don’t give serious consideration to our ideas. You’ll be in damage control mode for quite some time, fighting an uphill battle to get back into our good graces.


Q: My INTJ won’t talk to me. What should I do?


A: What subjects are you trying to talk about? Most INTJs hate gossip, and all of us hate talk of relationships. We also don’t do small talk. Try quantum physics, psychology, or some other deep (but non-touchy/feely) topic. If all else fails, try email instead.


Q: Why does my INTJ keep correcting my grammar?


A: Probably because you are being grammatically incorrect. The next time you tell your INTJ that you’re going to “try and [do something]”, prepare to get bitch-slapped. It’s “try to”, not “try and”. And there’s no such word as “irregardless”. Words have specific meanings, and language has specific rules; please abide by them. And don’t even get us started on your contextually ambiguous use of pronouns.


Q: I have this REALLY good idea… should I tell an INTJ?


A: Sleep on it… for a week or so. If it’s still so appealing, sleep on it for another week. Then maybe run it by one of us and we’ll pick it apart for you. Your idea is more likely to survive our scrutiny relatively unscathed if you have actual logical arguments and sound evidence with which to back it up.


Q: Is it dangerous to annoy an INTJ?


A: First we will ignore you, then we will launch a volley of extremely witty but esoteric insults that will probably go right over your head, and finally we will just engage the “nod-and-smile” autopilot and go back to ignoring you. Best to leave us alone at this point. If you push us too far we may blow up your head with our telekinetic abilities. So, yes, it can be dangerous to annoy an INTJ.


Q: What are the pet peeves of INTJs?


A: Thanks for asking. Our pet peeves are:

■We dislike surprises.

■We hate having decisions made for us. We’re INTJs; nobody is more qualified to make decisions than us.

■We dislike getting gifts, as it burdens us with the need to reciprocate.

■We hate small talk, gossip, and relationship/people talk. Really anything mundane is beneath us.

■We get particularly annoyed by attacks on our intelligence, competence, and integrity.

■We hate it when people try to manipulate us.

■Insincerity and lying.

■People interfering with our alone time.

■People who are chronically late.

■People who talk incessantly. We will just engage our “nod and smile” autopilot and mentally go somewhere else.

■People who are stupid, arrogant, opinionated, and/or closed minded.

■Crooked/badly placed pictures.

■Superficiality (body piercings, pimped out cars, brightly colored anything).

■Salespeople. INTJs are immune to emotional manipulation and have zero tolerance for lines of bullshit.

■Incorrect grammar and word usage.

■People who waste our time (see Salespeople, people interfering with our alone time, etc.).


Q: My INTJ keeps disappearing. Is this normal?


A: Yes. We need our “alone time” to recharge, more so than any of the other introverted MBTI types. Being around people for very long sucks the life force out of us, and we sneak off to be by ourselves whenever our “low battery” warning light starts to flash. (And in those cases where we can’t disappear physically, we will retreat into our minds.) Consequently we have great stealth capability; we can sit in a corner, observing while being unobserved, and we can escape, unnoticed, when we’re ready to move on.


Q: Why can’t my INTJ remember anything?


A: This is normal. Most of us INTJs are very forgetful. We have too much going on in our heads at any time to remember a lot of new stuff. Also, we zone out and go into autopilot mode quite frequently. We often won’t remember where we put our car keys because we weren’t “there” when we did it.


Q: My INTJ employee consistently strolls into work an hour late and leaves an hour late, every day. He/she seems to make their own hours, however the job gets done rather well. Should I feel disrespected?


A: Time is relative to the INTJ, and getting the job done right is paramount. We do not like wasting our time, so we will often adjust our schedules accordingly to miss AM and PM rush-hour traffic. The more traffic we miss, the more time we have for books, movies, video games, books, message boards, books, etc. You should feel disrespected, although it has nothing to do with them not honoring your work rules; it has to do with them not thinking you are particularly smart or competent. If you were smart/competent, you wouldn’t be going on about getting your wittle bitty feewings hurt by your disrespectful but high-performing INTJ employee.


Q: My INTJ is very pedantic.


A: Strictly speaking, that’s not a question.


Q: Dammit, see what I mean?


A: Yes, the irony was not lost on me as I typed the previous answer.


Q: And sarcastic as hell, too.


A: Sarcasm is a free public service we provide to those within earshot. No need to thank us. We also do irony, hyperbole, word-play and puns, one-liners, quick-witted observations and flippant remarks, and abstract and deep philosophical insights on nonsensical themes. Our sense of humor tends to be dry, warped, and morbid, and not everybody “gets” us.


Q: Why does my INTJ just “shut down” at the end of the day?


A: Our minds are always buzzing with plans and theories, and we cannot voluntarily get it to stop. But even an Indy 500 car will coast to a halt after it runs out of gas. When we are very tired our brains slow down, and we become normal or even a bit retarded. If we start asking you to repeat what you just told us but more slowly this time, and/or if we can no longer perform simple routine tasks like computing an orbital transfer burn or finding a memory leak in 10,000 lines of C++ code, you know it’s time for us to call it a day.


Q: Why is my INTJ so… well, so freakin’ WEIRD??!?


A: It’s probably just a side effect of the way our brains work. Many of us tend to be rather obsessive-compulsive, for instance ordering our cd’s, dvd’s, and books by genre then alphabetically (by title for dvd’s, by group then title for cd’s, and by author then title for books, except for series which must be kept in appropriate serial order). Most of us have other quirks as well, e.g., always eating M&M’s in a specific color order, naming our children in alphabetical order, etc. It’s a small price to pay for genius, really.


Q: Why does my INTJ just start nodding and smiling after we’ve been talking for a couple of minutes?


A:


Q: I said, WHY DOES MY INTJ START NODDING AND… Oh I get it, you’re being sarcastic again. Does it ever get old?


A: [ hey, more Wayne Newton anagrams… We Want On Yen, Ant On New Yew, Way None Went… ]


Q: Hello? Are you going to answer any more questions?


A: [ … “Hair Salon For Stray Nerd Nuns”, “Larry Moe and Curly’s On”, “Karaoke’s Not That Fun”, “Harry Potter’s Gay Stepson”, … ]


Q: I’m outta here.


A: [ works every time ]

Oh

Yer all revved up to trade, Automan is poised and ready to pounce, you are prepared to demonstrate your brilliance to the world.

Prepared for applause.

Then the Leader of the Free World threatens to annihilate all crude oil speculators.

Oh.

Before Obama, fifty one 610 tick bars in the pit session.

After Obama, seventeen 610 tick bars in the pit session.

Oh.

Sowell to the Rescue

I spent last evening reading Thomas Sowell and listening to Beethoven's 5th Symphony.

I feel better now.

I shan't watch, read, or listen to the "business" news anymore.

"When huge nations like China and India - whose combined populations are more than eight times that of the United State - experienced rapid economic growth in the early twenty-first century, their increased demand for petroleum drove the price of petroleum in the world market up to unprecedented heights, and with it the price of gasoline to new highs beyond anything that American consumers were used to. The reaction in much of the American media and among politicians was anger at oil companies. The notion of volitional pricing has never died out completely, however inconsistent that is with supply and demand." Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics

"A volitional view of economics enable the intelligentsia, like politicians and others, to dramatize economics, explaining high prices by "greed" and low wages by a lack of "compassion," for example. While this is a part of an ideological vision, an ideology of the left is not sufficient by itself to explain this approach. "I paint the capitalist and the landlord in no sense couleur de rose"," Karl Marx said in the introduction to the first volume of Capital. "My stand point," he added, however, "can less than any other make the individual responsible for relations whose creature he socially remains, however much he may subjectively raise himself above them." In short, prices and wages were not determined volitionally but systemically.

Understanding that was not a question of being on the left or not, but of being economically literate or illiterate. The underlying notion of volitional pricing has, in our own times, led to at least a dozen federal investigations of American oil companies over the years, in response to either gasoline shortages or increase in gasoline prices - with none of these investigations turning up facts to support the sinister explanations abounding in the media and in politics when these investigations were launched. Many people find it hard to believe that negative economic events are not a result of villainy, even though they accept positive economic events - the declining prices of computers that are far better than earlier computers, for example - as being just a result of "progress" that happens somehow." Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society

Free to Choose?

Not anymore.

Mr. Obama chooses for you.

Never mind the fact you have a nutbar in Iran building a nuke.
Never mind the fact you have US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Never mind the fact you declined the Keystone pipeline.
Never mind the fact you banned drilling in the Gulf.
Never mind the fact you ban drilling in parts of Alaska.
Never mind the fact you have printed hundreds of billions of U.S. dollars.
Never mind the fact nat gas is so cheap they can't give it away.
Never mind the fact Boone Pickens gave you a plan to actually use nat gas.
Never mind the fact China and India are gobbling up oil at a ferocious rate.
Never mind the fact that the peak oil preachers tell us we're out.
Never mind the fact that oil traders don't need you or your country.

No, no, no, never mind all of that, it's the speculators fault that crude oil is so high.

It's like having a four year old child running your country.



Oh I'm sorry Mr Obama, from now on I will only short oil, unless you give me permission to go long.

Free To Choose 1980 Vol. 2 - The Tyranny of Control from Free To Choose Network on Vimeo.

The Road to Plentiful

The western world is awash in debt.

Why?

The world does not understand the economic concept of scarcity.

“The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.” Thomas Sowell

We have all been told by the purveyors of consumer credit, advertisers, and governments that there is no such thing as scarcity. We deserve everything and we deserve it now.

We are entitled.

So the road to plentiful starts with spending every penny we earn and then borrowing every penny we can borrow. This is now the norm. Saving money is something old people used to do, no longer relevant to a "modern economy".

Now once we spend every penny we earn and borrow every penny we can have we now found the limits of plentiful? Other wise known as scarcity.

Of course not.

We find someone to blame our temporary scarceness on. It's the bank's fault, the government's fault, my parent's fault, my employer's fault, my realtor's fault, my spouse's fault, my neighbour's (the Jones) fault, anyone but me.

We not only blame we demand reparation. We demand our bank lower the interest rate, forgive some principal. We demand the government "stimulate" us. We demand the government take some money from rich people and give it to me. We riot in the streets, we burn our neighbourhood stores, we fight with the police. We get a divorce, now that really solves your "temporary scarceness".

If all that fails to put us back on the road to plentiful we wrap the whole world up in a blanket of blame and declare bankruptcy.

Aha.... free at last.

Now we still have our job, we are free to spend again, we wait a few months, we borrow at an enormous interest rate to buy something that "repairs" our credit history.

This actually does work, credit card offers start arriving in the mail again. Scarcity is gone, we knew it, we knew there was no such thing, we are not only back on the road of plentiful, we are in the fast lane.



Scarcity requires individuals to make choices. If individuals make the wrong choices there are consequences. There have to be consequences or individuals will continue to make the same mistakes over and over.

There used to be debtor's prisons.

"Although a free market economic system is sometimes called a profit system , it is in reality a profit and loss system, and the losses are equally important for the efficiency of the economy because losses tell producers what to stop doing, what to stop producing, where to stop putting resources, and what to stop investing in." Thomas Sowell

Governments react, they don't think, they bail out some, they let others fail, they decide.

They destroy economies.

Choice requires thought and discipline.

So do elections.

Les Moo

Perfection

Perfection does not exist in trading.

Or does it?

Perfection in trading is not a 100% win rate.

Perfection in trading is a 100% execution rate.

Only a machine can achieve that.

Since I am not a machine, yet, I have continued to work with Automan to allow it to take over.

Man did not learn to fly in one day.


But eventually you get there.

'I Have a Dream'

Well actually I had a dream.

It went something like this.

Working Title: Thomas and I

Characters: Solfest, a middle aged bald man
Mrs. Solfest, a not so middle aged beauty
Dr. Thomas Sowell, genius

Act I:
Scene: Solfest and Mrs. Solfest are asleep in their bed after a night of wild s.......ouch! (Mrs. Solfest reads over the author's shoulder and slaps him across the back of the head)

Oh hi honey, let me try that again.

Scene: Solfest is tossing and turning in his bed while mumbling incoherently.
Solfest: Don't shoot, Don't shoot, you're a pacifist!

Sowell: I'm not a pacifist you idiot, you broke into my home, I'm packing heat and I'm not afraid to use it!

Solfest: Wait, wait, this will all make sense in a minute. I mean I love you! Wait a tic, that didn't come out right.

Sowell: What are you some kind of perverted lunatic? I'm going to shoot you between the eyes and display your corpse on my front porch!

Solfest: No, No, I can explain, hey that is something you would do, (Solfest smiling) I mean display the corpse, like in the old west, I read all those Time Life history books, you ever read those?

Sowell: Shut your mouth asshole!

Solfest: Hey now watch the potty mouth, your junior high school teacher, what was her name, Ms. Simon, ya that's it, Ms. Simon, she wouldn't stand for any of that language now would she?

Sowell: (stares in disbelief) Who are you?

Solfest: (now beaming) I'm from Canada.

Sowell: Wonderful, did they ask you to leave?

Solfest: (roaring in laughter) No, No, I knew you were funny, that's a good one, did they ask you to leave, that's funny.

Sowell: (gun still pointed at Solfest's bald head) What are you doing in my house?

Solfest: Well I drove all the way down here cause I wanted to meet you.

Sowell: I have a secretary.

Solfest: Right, right, yes that may have been better. But I know you like baseball and I like baseball, I coach my son's team (Solfest looking desperately for approval) (none forthcoming) so I knew that you had seen Field of Dreams and I, uh, I, uh, well.... you're black.

Sowell: You're a genius.

Solfest: (nervous laughter) No, no, you're the genius,....I'm white, I mean, you know the scene where Kevin Costner tries to kidnap James Earl Jones?

Sowell: You're here to kidnap me? A skinny assed white bald headed un armed Canadian moron is going to kidnap me? (gun still pointed at Solfest's bald head)

Solfest: (more nervous laughter) No, no, I just thought you would appreciate the scene.

Sowell: So you broke into my house?

Solfest: W.P. Kinsella is from Canada.

Sowell: WHAT!!

Solfest: He wrote Field of Dreams. He was born in Edmonton. I thought it was our destiny to meet.

Sowell: Didn't you say you loved me?

Solfest: (very nervous laughter) No, well yes, but no, I mean I really like you, no, I mean I really like everything you write, I mean everything. It's like you're reading my mind when you write. Everything, I mean, almost everything.

Sowell: What do you mean almost everything?

Solfest: Well maybe the part about no gun control I'm not so sure of.

Sowell: I am.

Solfest: (the most nervous laughter) I can see that. You wouldn't mind pointing that some other direction would you?

Sowell: I would.

Solfest: Ah.

Sowell: What did you plan to do with me after your kidnapping?

Solfest: I wasn't really going to....oh you know that...ah, well I thought we could go have coffee, you know, maybe talk about economics, politics and you know, stuff...... I have a blog.

Sowell: Wonderful. (Sowell moves towards his phone)

Solfest: What are you doing?

Sowell: Calling the police.

Solfest: Ah. So you don't want to talk?

Sowell: No.

Act II

Scene: Solfest decides to make a break for the door rather than try and explain himself to the police.

Solfest: (talking to himself) He's old, 81, his reaction time can't be all that good, just go hard, don't hesitate.

Solfest jumps to his feet and breaks for the door!

Shots ring out!

Sowell wings Solfest in the back of the leg and is now standing over him.

Solfest: Wait, wait, don't shoot, don't shoot!

Sowell: I already shot you you idiot.

Solfest: (sobbing) It's not supposed to end this way.

Sowell: Now I'm going to finish the job. (Sowell raises the gun aiming right between Solfest's eyes)

Solfest: No, No, Wait! We are so much alike..... I think you're my Father!

Sowell: Your Father!! You moron look at your skin, your blue eyes, and I can guarantee you no offspring of mine is INSANE!

Solfest: (whimpering like a small child) I'm colour blind.

Sowell: Good Lord!

(Sowell loads another round into the gun's chamber with a cold hard metallic click and starts to squeeze the trigger nice and slow)

Act III
Scene: Solfest awakens screaming, but in a manly way.

Mrs. Solfest: What on earth is the matter with you?

Solfest: (sticky with sweat) Thomas Sowell was going to shoot me!

Mrs. Solfest: Who?

Solfest: Thomas Sowell, you know that book I've been reading....

Mrs. Solfest (rolling over) Good Lord, go back to sleep.

Solfest: Yes Dear.

I Think I'm in Love

Well love is a strong word, perhaps a serious man crush is more appropriate.

Ok that isn't appropriate either.

It started with some hero worship, now it (whatever it is) is out of control.

To whom are my affections directed?

Dr. Thomas Sowell.

How can an 81 year old man from Harlem and a 47 year old man from Canada have so much in common? Maybe so much in common isn't the right term. How can we think the same on almost every single issue known to mankind?

I have watched and posted his interviews and am now reading The Thomas Sowell Reader. This is a compilation of his essays and columns from his entire career.

I am laughing out loud and shaking my head in amazement with almost every page.

The saddest thing I can think about this man is that he has pretty much been ignored by the main stream media.

I don't think they like his message.

The truth hurts.

I want to quote you the whole book.

Please read it.

If you can't muster up the energy to read the whole book try this little snippet.

What did Winston Churchill say about socialism?

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

Ah yes that was it.

Prepare to be Surprised

Prepare to be wrong, surprised, whatever.

This chart demonstrates Solfest's little dilemma quite nicely.

Solfest is despondent.

If at first you don't succeed, wait for someone else to get it right.

El Problemo

The demise of Automan?

Maybe.

Solfest waits for a blue bar and upon completion of that bar Solfest places an order one tick above/below that blue bar for entry.

Automan cannot do this. Automan can only be programmed for the blue bar, not the future bar, the bar after.

The best Automan can do is place the order at bar close of the blue bar. This creates a few problems, one as you see above is if the bar after blue does not go your way you are still in the trade.

In fact the trade noted above went so fast against Solfest that the EMA angle on the blue bar (it was there, trust me) came off enough that the blue disappeared.

The bottom line is Solfest would not have taken this trade and Automan did.

Upon review of past trades Solfest can see on the trades that worked going in at bar close on the blue bar gets Solfest in at a better price.

But the review Solfest doesn't have is how many trades the Automan bar close would have taken, with no break of the high or low, and lost a full stop.

So.....the Big Boy Solfest Trader thing to do is go back to manual and track the different results from hypothetical bar close entries and the one tick above/below entries.

The stupid Solfest really wants to be Automan thing to do would be to say close enough and let Automan run.

Solfest thinks Solfest will do the Big Boy Trader thing and put Automan in the closet for a while.

Solfest will now cry like a Big Boy Trader.