Rhody Trader

Last night I watched a movie titled Believe In Me. It’s something along the lines of Hoosiers in terms of basketball coach comes to a new midwestern town (Oklahoma in 1964 in this case), takes over a struggling program, and leads it to great heights. In this case, though, the coach is expecting to be coaching boys, but much to his chagrin ends up with girls. It’s a real-life story of a legendary coach who clearly figured out how to make the gender transition.

I’ll admit, I’m a sucker for these coaching movies. Can’t help it. I was a coach. Moreover, specific to this case, I coached girls and women primarily (volleyball, not basketball). Any guy who has ever coached girls will tell you how different it is from coaching boys. It’s a real challenge to make the adjustment. You have to handle individual players differently, and the team as a whole differently. You have to learn how to be tough on them, which goes against much of what is ingrained in us growing up. If you can do it, though, it’s incredibly rewarding.

Anyway, the movie is fantastic. Highly recommended.

Last week it was reported that Dan Brown’s latest novel, Lost Symbol, had sold more than 1 million copies in its first day. Of course that will have included pre-order sales. CNBC just reported that in the first week the book sold a record 2 million copies. I am not included in that group myself. I’ve read both of Brown’s prior two books. Not sure yet whether I’ll read this one as well. I’m generally not the sort who feels the need to go out and get hold of a copy right away and Brown didn’t blow me away with the other novels in any case – not that they were bad, mind you.

But that’s beside the point. Let me just say that my eyes lit up at the number since I’m developing my own novel. It’s one which will share a genre and some other broad elements with Brown’s work, which means it will likely appeal to a similar market – a big one from the looks of it.

I just had a call from a woman at SFO Magazine asking if I’d be willing to be interviewed for a story on part-time trading, specifically trading for those who already have full-time jobs. I agreed. We’re going to chat tomorrow afternoon. I’m don’t know at this point when the article would go to print.

It’s interesting to be asked for an interview like this. I’m not talking about part-time trading. Personally, I’ve always considered myself a part-time trader. Yes, I work in the markets as a professional market analyst, but that’s not trading. In fact, most days I have to make a point of remembering to open my trading platform if I think I might do a trade. Besides, I’ve long found that my somewhat longer-term positions have been the most productive for me.

No, the thing I find interesting is how I’ve been asked for and interview rather than maybe asked to write an article on the subject. I’ve published three articles in SFO – Trading Coaches Needed!, Juggling Too Much? Trend Trading Simplifies Analysis, and What’s the Bandwidth?. Granted, it’s been a while since I wrote anything for magazine publication. Maybe this is their way of trying to draw me back in.

By the way, SFO published a review of The Essentials of Trading when it first came out.

I wrote the other day about how I was suddening coming back in demand as a content contributor to other websites and such. Apparently I wasn’t fully grasping the extent to which I may be in demand. Over the weekend I received the following:

I am currently looking for an AVP Snr FX Support guy to work for one of my clients (famous I-Bank) based in Singapore. Given that you know FX and VBA, I was wondering if you have any interests. If so, I can go over details. Can you let me know your current situation when you have a moment?

This came from a head hunter who appears to be based in Hong Kong.

Obviously, since I’m a forex analyst for the IFR Markets group of Thomson Reuters I do know a little bit about the forex market. For those who don’t know, VBA means Visual Basic for Applications. That’s the macro language used by Microsoft for its Office applications. In my case that means Excel macros, which I have done my fair share of developing over the years. That said, I haven’t specifically been a developer in a professional sense since the middle 90s.

As for whether I’d go for the type of job outlined, it would be a hard sell. I like where I’m at right now and have never really thought much about moving someplace like Singapore. I’m always willing to listen, though.

I’m in demand as a contributor again.

This sort of thing seems to go in cycles. Around the time my book came out (2006) I was getting requests from all kind of places, like magazines and websites. As a result, my name was all over the place in trading media circles. The last couple of years have been a bit less intense in that regard, but now I’m getting queried on the subject again.

I was contacted by www.forexpros.com about contributing regular content there. I’ve also been corresponding with one of my former colleagues (old boss actually) about doing some writing for www.forexlive.com. I’m taking a look at things and sorted out what it means for my employer (www.ifrmarkets.com), but the odds do seem to favor my getting involved in the not too distant future.

Maybe I’ll write another article for Stocks & Commodities and/or SFO Magazine. Haven’t done that in a while.

I suppose I really should do some work to raise my profile again. I’ve got my trading faq book in the works, after all.

I have been lax in my posting of late, but I have good reason. It’s been a bit of a revolving door in the office of late. We’ve got one member of the team out long-term with a broken leg and a few other injuries from a tree falling on him. Last week a second member of the team was out on holiday. This week and next we’ve got another medical absentee. I’m the only not taking any time out – at least so far – and the ins and outs has kept my duties bouncing hither and thither.

I have been trying to keep up with things in the blogosphere, and came across a couple of interesting things. One is a post by Ulli at Wall Street Bully which I found rather funny, in a kind of ironic way. And if you want a free MIT education, you can go here.

Speaking to the Rhody part of my monicker, word has it Sarah Palin is making a move from the biggest state in the union to the littlest. If that were to come to pass, Palin would surely not be a viable candidate for anything anymore. Rhode Island is a classic New England Democrat dominated state.

In terms of being productive outside work, I’ve gotten myself back into gear with my trading faq project. I have a list of about 40 of the new trader questions I see asked most often with answers to them all. That list will probably expand now that I’m recruiting additional answer contributors. The goal is to end up with a really useful reference for those coming into the markets.

I caved.

After nearly 5 months without one, I finally bought a new television over the weekend. I never completely got away from watching entertainment in the form of movies and sports and such. I just had shifted to watching online. Unfortunately, I’ve discovered that watching stuff sitting at a computer is sorely lacking in comfort and overall enjoyment.

It’s one thing to have no TV during the summer when you’re spending a lot more time outside, but a completely different thing in the depths of winter when you’re periodically snowed in. Also, I’m a big soccer fan and like to watch football from time to time as well. I’ve watched several matches on my PC the last few months, but the experience hasn’t been that great.

So I purchased a new LG 42″ LCD HD television and home theatre unit to go along with it. I had done a fair amount of research on the matter. CNET suggested that a 46″ unit was probably the optimal size, but looking at the sizes in the store it seemed like the 42″ was more than sufficient. Also, I’m no technophile. This new TV is a huge jump over what I used to have (and my computer monitor), which will be more than enough to make me happy. It’s a 1080p, so top of the line from that perspective, but other things were closer to the lower end. I seriously doubt I’ll notice any difference.

Now I need to sort out my sources. I’d like to avoid getting cable again if I can get my configurations right to be able to pipe online content through the new TV. For right now that means I still won’t have CNBC to flip on first thing in the morning, so I guess it’ll still be Bloomberg TV over their website.

I just found out from an old friend that Emma Watson, AKA Hermomine from Harry Potter, will be attending Brown University in the Fall. In case you weren’t aware, I was a coach for the women’s volleyball team at Brown for six years. I can think of a few of my former players who would no doubt have found a way to befriend Emma had they been classmates with her.

I’m sure Emma will enjoy her time at Brown. The alumni I’ve spoken with have basically nothing but good things to say about the school. I, of course, had a somewhat different view of things. Not that I’m dissing the university in terms of its academics, which I would really have enjoyed as an undergrad. I did, however, have some serious issues with the way the administration – from the top on down – treated the volleyball team during my time there. I almost quit a few weeks before my final season there because of yet another thing they did. Maybe I should have given how that final season went, but it would have left the team in a tight spot.

Emma certainly won’t be the only high profile student on the Brown campus. There have been many and no doubt are several there now. I met Danny DeVito, his wife Rhea Pearlman, and their youngest daughter on a visit. They came to the volleyball office to talk about the team. The girl was never going to be a prospect for us, and she knew it, but Danny really got into the video we showed them of the team in action.

Rather surprising news this morning. USA central defender Oguchi Onyewu has signed with AC Milan. I expected to see him sign with a decent club after his Confederations Cup performance and with him being a free agent after his contract with Standard Liege (Belgium) ran out. Milan, though, wasn’t one of the names I’d heard, nor was it one I expected to have an interest.

Great for Gooch, though. He’s joining one of the elite European clubs and playing in a league known for strong defense. He’ll have some experienced pros around him, so he’ll be able to learn and grow. Hopefully he’ll get enough playing time to keep him sharp for the national team, though. That’s always a risk with this kind of move on the run in to the World Cup.

Alexi Lalas was the last US player of note to play in the Serie A. That was in the middle 90s after the success of the US team in the 1994 World Cup.

Now to see if Onyewu’s defensive partner gets snatched up by a Premier League team from his current side Watford, which was relegated at the end of the last campaign. There’s also talk that Clint Dempsey could move to a bigger club (I’m a bit skeptical there) and there are a few others being talked about. Landon Donovan, though, is the most interesting candidate for me.

I’m basking in the afterglow of Team USA stunning Spain in the Confederations Cup semifinal. I expected the home boys to put on a good show, but a win wasn’t something I was ready to expect. 

I saw the 1994 World Cup win over Columbia, which was a big deal at the time. I wasn’t that up on the global persective at the time, so while I knew we’d been big underdogs, to me it wasn’t as obviously a miss-match as the Spain match was supposed to be. Probably the most amazing US win I’ve ever seen was the 1998 Gold Cup win over Brazil when Preki scored on a free kick and Casey Keller had about as ridiculously good a match as any keeper has ever had. I will put that win above the Spain win because while we played Spain tough a year ago, offering some indication that we could make it hard on them, we’d never really been close with Brazil. The World Cup win over Portugal in 2002 is up there too.

So now it’s the wait until Sunday to see if we can put on the same type of performance in the final.

As a side note, on the hone front I saw one of the most phantom red cards ever when my home team Revolution was playing Kansas City in the second round of SuperLiga play. The way KC was playing there’s a very good chance that cost the Revs a win.