Rhody Trader

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.

Last week Moolanomy posted How I Save $8,535 Per Year By Not Having A Car. It’s a subject that’s been on my mind for a while now, but has come up at a very interesting time, perhaps prophetically.

Yesterday I was on my way for a drip to spend some time with friends and visit with family down in Rhode Island (I live near Boston). Before I got on the highway I had to fill the tank. Having done that, I began accelerating up the onramp only to lose top gear. Uh-oh. Not good. This is probably going to cost me. Needless to say, I never made it down to RI.

So now I face the prospect of a big repair bill.

Here’s the deal, though. I hardly ever drive. Most weeks the only time I spend on the road is to and from the grocery store. I might make one real drive involving highway travel each month. This is the benefit of living near the subway, which in turn stops close to the office.

With that in mind you can probably understand my reluctance to put a great deal of money into repairing this 10 year old, 100k+ miles car. And by extension you can probably also understand why I’m not too keen on purchasing a replacement. I’m strongling thinking of going the rental/Zip Car route for when I need wheels.

I was totally blown away today when I found out that our much maligned US Men’s National team had managed one of the all time great escapes today. After losing 3-1 to Italy and then getting embarassed by Brazil 3-0 there was basically no chance that the Red, White, and Blue was going to make the semifinal round of the Confederations Cup. After all, it would take a win by 3 goals against Egypt and Brazil pummelling Italy. We had only scored 1 goal so far, Egypt looked very good, and Italy almost never gets pummelled by anyone.

Who would have ever thought Sunday’s final pool play round would see these scores:

Brazil 3 – Italy 0
USA 3 – Egpyt 0

That left Italy, Egypt and the US all on 3 points (1-2 records). Italy and the USA both had -2 goal differentials (-3 for Egypt), but los Americanos advanced as the second place team by virtue of having scored more goals than Italy (4 to 3). Amazing!

Next stop, the first semifinal on Wednesday for a date with Spain. They’re just on a 15 matching record winning streak. We played them pretty close a year or two back in Spain, though, so it might not be a complete blowout.

Got a big week coming up. No, it doesn’t have anything to do with the markets. I’m talking about soccer - football to my friends across the pond. The 2009 FIFA Confederations Cup is going on in South Africa. Today the Red, White, and Blue face off against Italy (2:30pm Eastern). Fans of the beautiful game will recall the last time the two sides met up, back in the 2006 World Cup. It ended up in a hard fought draw that I contend was ruined by poor officiating (ejections saw the game end 10 vs 9).

The USA gets no break in the second match of the tournament either. On Thursday Brazil is the opponent. The supposedly weak member of the pool (relatively speaking) will be Egypt, which Los Americanos will play on the weekend.

The top two teams advance in the pool advance for a crossover semifinal round against the top two from the other pool next week. Given the draw, the odds don’t look great for the US to come out. I’d just like to see them play consistently well.

Here’s a picture of where I’m moving in a couple of weeks.

It may not look like much, but two blocks down the road is the shore. Also, my commute will be a bit shorter and I’ll have a 3-season porch and a deck. Most importantly, I’ll have all the space I need for a proper home office - which has been a major short-coming to the place I’m soon to be vacating.

Of course all this means I’ve got a move coming up in the a couple of weeks. I really don’t look forward to that, but I do look forward to upgrading some of my furnishings. They are despearately in need of it.

I’m contemplating a dramatic move.

In the next few weeks I’m going to be moving into a new apartment. No, that’s not the dramatic part. That’s something I’ve had in the works for a few months now.

The dramatic part is not having a television in the new place. I’ve got one now, but it’s rather aged and due to be replaced by and HD model. I’ve also got cable with the sports package as I enjoy being able to watch high level soccer 12 months a year on Fox Soccer Channel, some baseball and college football and volleyball. I also enjoy educational TV and a selection of network programs.

In other words, I’d be giving up something significant if I ditch the television and cable.

I’m at the point in my life where I’m trying to simplify things as much as possible. I certainly don’t need television in my life. I love to read and I’m sure less couch potatoe time would make me that much more productive with all my side projects.

The decision hasn’t been made yet. I have a little bit of time.

We”re supposed to get like 15″ of snow here in the Boston area.

Yes, it is March.

Now you know why I hate this month so much. It teases you with the idea of spring unfolding then kicks you in the tail with cold and wind and snow.

I’m back in action!

It’s been a while since I posted here. Sorry about that. The complexties of what was going on with my job and other things made it very difficult to dedicate any time to this blog. That’s changing, though.

As of this week I am no longer covering both the stock and forex markets. I’m down to just forex moving ahead. By the looks of things, that’s going to end up allowing me more time for my external ventures, though it’s early days yet. I’m going to be moving in a few weeks, so I won’t be sure of what my full workday looks like until I have the new commute sorted out. Hopefully it will be shorter, but since I haven’t actually decided where I’m moving to yet, I don’t know.

Part of the plan for my new place is to have a proper home office. My current set up is sub-optimal to say the very least. Once I get myself a spot I can actually spend some time working in I’ll be able to be much more productive both where posting to this blog is concerned, and where developing and expanding my trading education efforts are involved.

One of the major upgrades to what I’ll be able to do is to once more comment on the markets. While I was working on the equity product I was under the somewhat oppressive constraints of the SEC Registered Advisor rules. Shifting to forex, though, I’m out from under all that, so I can write to my heart’s content.

Look for the sharing to being shortly. I have a lot of stuff bottled up!

Last month I found out I was going to be the victim of a corporate restructuring or downsizing or whatever you what to call it. The bottom line is that the analytic product I was working on was being eliminated. I’ve expressed my view that it was a short-sighted decision, but it was made well above my pay grade, so my input wasn’t sought.

Since that time I have been in various discussions to shift to another group in the company. For a while there it looked like I was heading for a position in London to fill an economist position on the European fixed income desk. It would have been an interesting move from both geographic and market focus angles. I’ve wanted to make a London move for years now, and very nearly did so in 2000, but at that point I took a detore into coaching collegiate volleyball.

Alas, I won’t be heading for London this time either. A forex analyst position has opened up on this side of the Atlantic. After some discussion with management it was clear that taking this position was the best option all the way around.

So I’m heading back into the forex arena somewhere around the start of 2009. Obviously I’ve been trading it all along, but I haven’t been a professional analyst in that market since the late 1990s. This will definitely be interesting. Things have changed a lot since then. When I left that market it was still almost exclusively an institutional one. Since then the retail side has exploded. That’s going to make things really interesting on this second go-round, I think.

I received a package yesterday, one that I’ve been waiting for. Part of it was a new batch of books I’d ordered. I read on my commute, sometimes around the house, and almost always before going to sleep each night. As a result, I got through them quickly, so I have to refresh the supply frequently. Mostly it’s fiction to shift my mind to a different place for a while.

But that’s not the problem.

The other thing in that package was a new game for me. It’s Sid Meier’s Civilization IV. I used to play a prior version (I think it was II). These strategy type of games (sims I suppose you could call them) can really get their hooks in me. I decided to get this one – and one for soccer management – as a little splurge when my book royalty payment came in. Call it a little pre-holiday gift to myself.

I played the game a bit last night and boy did it remind me how much time you can lose once you get going. Hours go by in a blink. You don’t get tired. You don’t feel hungry. This could cost me days of productivity!

But it’ll be fun.