Search Results for: palo alto

Peachy Pared Plunge

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Well, the market hasn’t even opened yet here on Monday morning (and I say “morning” loosely, since my dogs know what’s going on with Greece and got me out of bed at 4:30, so it’s pitch black here in Palo Alto) and it feels like we should be getting the Friday bar ready, since there’s been so much amazing news over the past 72 hours. There were over 600 comments on Slope this Sunday – – on a Sunday, people. Most blogs don’t get that many comments in a year.

One might think I’m disappointed the ES has pared its losses by half already. Nope. I actually prefer it (honest!) I am not aggressively short “the market” at all right now. Yes, I’ve got 80 individual shorts, but I have one and only one big short in the form of an ETF, and that is the high-yield instrument JNK, which is kind of a throwaway. I’d be a lot more upset if I had a ton of index puts, since the plunge over 40 points on the ES at the opening bell was so exciting, but now that actual trading is getting ready to open, the profits on such options would be greatly trimmed.

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The Beast

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I grew up in the deep south of the United States, and the neighborhoods were de facto segregated. I was never taught racism, however, so in elementary school when I invited a black kid over to my house, he asked: “Will your parents mind?” I seriously didn’t know what he was talking about. “Why would they mind?” He replied: “Because I’m black.”

Well, I brought him over anyway, and we had a good time. Here in California, when people learn I’m from Louisiana, they assume I’m a bigoted redneck. The irony is that I’ve found the wealthy suburbs of the Bay Area to be far more racist than I ever knew in Louisiana. The zillionaires in Atherton are perfectly supportive of the coloreds, as long as they stay in East Palo Alto, as God intended.

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Irrational Real Estate

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I’ve done many, many posts about the insane real estate market here in the Bay Area. I’m not going to bore you with another “can you believe how much they want for this?” because, by now, I think you kind of get the point.

However, this week, in the venerable Palo Alto Weekly (which, as is typical for the newspapers around here, has a publishing frequency that has absolutely no correlation to its moniker) a local real estate agent, Xin Jiang (pronounced “Xin Jiang”) composed the following article, which I have helpfully highlighted for you: (more…)