Trade Alert – Short addition, flash trim, and thoughts on politics vs trading

“An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling falsehood.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited

“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.”
― Aldous Huxley, Collected Essays

I read a lot of news, blogs, analysis, reports, bills, and just about everything else I can get my hands on pretty much all day every day.

I like to link to a lot of the economic and political analysis out there that supports much of the view of the present and future realities that I’m presenting to you guys every day. The problem is there are really two primary kinds of views that dominate even the non-mainstream media blogosphere —

1. The blind bulls and other pundits who truly are either clueless trend followers or, worse, paid (or wannabe paid) shills with no real interest in truth and accurate analysis.
2. The permabears and alarmists who are often right in their political analysis and on the long-term ramifications of today’s crony capitalist culture but always seem to think the economic doomsday is always on tap. I used to mock the permabears during the mid 2000s when they missed and/or squeezed themselves out the markets’ big moves up. And I couldn’t believe it when I finally turned bearish in 2007, started selling down all my longs and closed my hedge fund to go to TV and so many of the permabears were so worn down and burned out that they were finally either out of the markets entirely or outright bulls at the top.

It’s again felt like those mid 2000s for the last few years since I’ve returned to trading and been long and bullish, despite my concerns about the mid- to long-term outlook for our economy. I can’t stand the reasoning (or lack thereof) of most bullishness out there. And I can’t stand the constant doomsday calling of most of the bearishness out there.

I certainly don’t think that I’ll always be right about the economy and/or the markets and I don’t mean to across all high-falutin’ here.

But the point here is the importance of being flexible in not only your trading, which you hear me talk about often, but also in your analysis, your outlook, and the timing therein. You guys certainly know my political stance on being anti-bailout and anti-institutionalized-accounting-fraud etc, and I’m sure most of you have some passionate political viewpoints yourselves. But you’ve got to be coldly objective about not letting your politics affect your trading and investing.

No trades for me today though I am bidding on some March RIMM puts with strikes around the $13 range or so. I’m also looking to sell a few more of our SNDK calls that we bought a couple weeks ago at the lows and are still making me longer as the stock rallies higher.