Coming Up Close

We thought just for an instant

we could see the future.

We thought for once we knew

what really was important.

Coming up close!

Everything sounds like welcome home.

Come home, and oh, by the way...

Don't you know that I could make

A dream that's barely half-awake come true?

I forgot about this song. I heard it today and the phrase, “Coming Up Close” hit me. There were many instances where I came up close to what I wanted but never achieved the entire prize, but enough of it to be satisfied. I also realized that the set of skills, talents (bright and the ugly ones) that I possessed were enough to make it.

**

I spend more time with twenty-somethings than I do with people my own age. It's a reality of my work. Most people spend nearly half of their time with coworkers than they do with others in your “regular” life. That's a given.

Pushing twenty years now I've worked with “kids.” I've seen cohort after cohort come and go. One thing you begin to realize is that they're all the same at heart. So was my cohort was when I was 22. People are always people.

One of the things I've noticed is that many people in their twenties are trying to undo all the personal shit they experienced as kids, teens that drove them from their true selves. They spend a good amount of their young adulthood trying to become human again. We did the same. Everyone would if they were the least bit self aware.

I overhear it. “I wish I was this or I wish I wasn't that. I wish I had that, was going there or was becoming what I want.” To my, and other older adult ears, it sounds like whining and only whining because we wrongly think that having youth is enough. “Ah...what are you complaining for? You're young and you got it ALL!” It wasn't enough because there were always things to work on that required more than a young, flexible mind to overcome. It requires time and dogged, persistent effort. We from the older ranks forget.

Another thing I remember, finding that girl who would make everything alright. The one who would complete me. I and thousands of others thought this..and women too. I wasn't alone in that Disney belief. What eventually happened wasn't that I was made complete, I was forced to experience things that made me to grow and affix newer parts to myself, or shed others that no longer worked. No one is complete, we all are corroborate...and hopefully corroborate in a more positive way.

Still, I see the twenty somethings doing the same as we, believing in the same myths and you can't tell the youth anything, nor can you tell me anything either at my age Why? We don't believe shit until we experience ourselves. We trust our own judgment far too much in too many things as correct. Damn...how many times was I wrong before about things..and right? There were many. My own judgment..and YOURS...isn't infallible.

What I can tell the youth is that you don't achieve completeness at all, you achieve acceptance. There is no way in hell would they want to hear that. Well, true...what I said isn't specific enough and perhaps it takes decades of living to learn this: You can change parts of yourself, through persistence and there are those qualities that won't move at all. It's the latter that you accept and realize it wasn't that bad at all really, not in the scope of things is it all bad.

“I know who I am.” Nope I don't. I prefer to think “I know what I am” Think that way and it gives you the perspective you need. I try to hammer that lesson into the kids. Want to try it? It's scary. This was developed in the mists of Big Sur's Esalen Institute years ago.

Imagine there are two of you, the real one and a second one that'll do some observing. Imagine the second you watching the first one and describe what it sees. Be careful, you'll learn stuff that may make you cringe. You'll also see things that are “right.” The cringy stuff is what you have to work on.

I do this on occasion still. It's like taking a temperature on your life, where your at at the given moment.

I tell the kids that achieving a dream is great and once you do, that'll set into action a whole different set of possibilities, most of which you'll never anticipate but will navigate as best as you can. And if you don't hit it, nail the target, not achieve the pure dream but come up close. That's enough too and that will set into action it's own set of unforeseeable possibilities.

Always morphing. The band changes it's tune and you dance the new dance. That's the success of managing parts of yourself that you could never change and it'll profit as if you did change it.

Roll The Bones

I haven't played the Wall St. ponies in years. I used to when the dot.com mania was exploding. Those were nice times when clicking a mouse made you money but all that was trend following, how could you lose? I once needed a few tires on my car back then. I refused to pay for them. I was going to get someone else to pay for them. The dot.com mania helped me in that regard.

I've said it before, gambling bores me. I've never been to Foxwoods nor do I have any inclination to go, but put me in front of a stock screen and I'm locked on like any other Gamblers Anonymous addict. My first time betting was at the Lincoln dog track and I lost both times. I thought, “Where's the fun in that?” My first successful stock purchase blew me away. I clicked a mouse and money showed up into my account.

For the past nine months, I've been developing algorithms that sniff and hunt for opportunities. I'm about ready to throw the dice if and only if the damned market would fall on it's face. I don't enter a trade against a general trend that's too damn high and the market is at that now. But I keep watch for that fall and entry point. Want a stock tip? I don't have any. I don't purchase individual stocks, I purchase ETF's which are baskets of stocks. Why?

During those past nine months I ran dry runs to see if my ideas panned out. I was zeroed in on Michael Kors, the high end women's apparel company run out of Honk Kong. My stock/financial scans produced very few companies whose 10k's were healthy. Everything about Kors was great, the debt, sales, income statements and all else. I ran a dry run on it. I got raped.

Why did I get raped? The fools at Kors decided to expand their market. They thought that increasing their customer base would produce more sales. It tanked. Sounds weird huh? Kors at one time was the purveyor of silly expensive items that attracted just the very rich. Once Kors opened the doors to the filthy, disgusting middle class, the rich dumped the product as they saw it as no longer being “exclusive” anymore. It's no fun being rich when the everyday schlub can wear the same garments as you can. How can you stand out and rub other people's faces in it if you can't be exclusive?

There once was a law on the Roman Empire's books that stated that only the Emperor could wear purple garments. NO one else could. Purple was the color of royalty. Now imagine how exclusive purple would be if every dirt farmer, goat herder or soldier in the Empire could wear purple? 2000 years later and nothing changes.

This action by Kors to let the every day pigs (you and me) wear “purple”was not readily available through any stock scan I could create. This was information I could not have and hence, could not figure into my strategy.

ETF's are great. They are baskets of 100's of stocks that spread the risk of foolish decisions around. The only ETF's I pay attention to are the broad ones that mimic the S&P 500. I want it generalized to the point of banality. There are those who claim you cannot make a killing on broad based stock picking and they can be right about that. But you can also end up being porked by a rhino while in a pit of squid too you know. Go purchase a biotech stock about whose new drug is being studied by FDA....only to have it denied and watch that stock go to a few tenths of points above zero...real quick.

I haven't pulled the lever yet. Once I go in, I'll go in hard. I'm waiting for the market to throw up. Jesus..would you do it already? I'm waiting! 

Me vs. Every Money Center, Major Bank and Corporation Out There.