In the Mix

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Heading into the weekend, it seemed the big question was how peace talks would go. By Saturday, it was clear that they weren’t even going to take place, which in saner times would have meant a total wipe-out on Monday (that is to say, today).

In fairness, there WAS a gap down on Sunday when the futures opened, albeit a modest one, and even then, the market bottomed within minutes before dusting itself off and moving to LIFETIME HIGHS on the /ES, the /NQ, the /RTY, and any other index you might care to mention.

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Sell Me This Pen (by Xerxes)

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There is a scene in “The Wolf of Wall Street” where Jordan Belfort is explaining to his friends how they are going to become extremely rich selling essentially worthless pink sheet stocks for obscene commissions. “Sell me this pen” has been the summation of a sales mindset for many years and this scene really does well in presenting the end-all-be-all of sales. “Create a need” in the customer’s mind, and you can sell anything.

I’ve actually been asked this in an interview before and, being that I do NOT have the salesman mindset, I failed miserably. I unsurely said “Well, this is a very nice pen. It will write all the things you need to write,” to which the interviewer said, “but I have this other pen”.

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