CheetahhhhhhhBlog Mark III

Wore my winter coat today for the first time in… I don’t even know how long. It’s getting cold here. My dad is shipping me a few of my sweaters from Wisconsin, and thank God for that, I’m going to need them.

Got invited to an Afghani wedding. The brother of one of my students. Apparently this is just a courtesy and he will not be upset when I don’t attend. The thing here is they will separate the men from women. This means I will be separated from my colleagues and will be alone with Afghanis who probably don’t speak English. Also apparently the men dance together, which I’m just not going to do. You may be thinking, “Go and see the cultural experience!” and actually I generally would, if I wasn’t going to be separated from the only English speakers.

A bit of stress and over-work at the office lately, because of midterms. This ain’t like Saudi or the Emirates. I actually earn my money here.

So I don’t have a lot going on except counting the days until I go to Manila. Less than 3 weeks.

Generally speaking, I think most intelligent people know that it is best to keep your mouth shut and listen. The reasons for this are so many and obvious that I’m not going to go into it. Suffice it to say I follow this general rule. Most people don’t know my real opinions about things. The other day I did, however, express myself to a colleague, with what appears to be unpleasant results. I expressed the opinion that Afghanistan and its warlords are case-in-point that justice and law almost always come from the point of a gun, and whoever has the bigger gun gets to define what “justice” and “the law” happen to be. OK now while this is a pessimistic and un-idealistic view of humanity, I think the historical evidence would suggest that my opinion is a reality. Indeed I would argue that most important decisions in history have been made at the point of a sword. I can Anyway really pissed off my colleague with this. You know there are some people who cannot accept divergent opinions, and if your opinion diverges from theirs, then you can’t be friends any more? You know people like this? Well there you go. Case in point, it’s more intelligent to keep your mouth shut. However I will say this. I have reached an age and a level of education and a level in my profession where I have earned the right to speak, and actually almost everybody recognizes this fact. Anyway. Don’t actually care, not even sure why I’m wasting the blog space with this.

I implemented my short selling of gold yesterday. On the right-hand sidebar, if you scroll down, you will see my trade plan for short selling gold.

I have spent a lot of time tinkering around with VoIP. Now if you want to call internationally you need Skype. And I like Skype. We actually have 2 New York phone numbers and one Madison phone number, they’re all Skype. If you’re calling Skype-to-Skype, the calls tend to be clear. However if you’re calling Skype-to-cell phone, internationally I mean, the calls tend to be ridiculously garbled, get cut off, etc. A recent call with my dad got cut off 6 times and I could barely hear him. So I have been experimenting with other VoIP. I’m not pimping for Toktumi AKA Line2 but their connections are really clear. I have already bought a subscription because I was so pleased with the clarity. And I called my dad today, spoke for a good half an hour with no problems at all. Now Toktumi works in the USA. So what I have done is used Google Voice connecting to Toktumi to make international calls. Did get a clear call going with my wife at Google Voice’s price of 17 cents a minute, which is as cheap as it gets for dialing internationally to the Philippines.

I added a lot of links on the right to other pages in this blog. All financial.

One of my colleagues is a local woman. We were chatting today and she told me that my students are all the children of warlords. I was shocked. She said, “Who else has money in Afghanistan today?” I suppose she’s right. And the warlords were fighting the Taliban for a decade so I suppose they’d be pro-US and send their kids to an American school. I suppose. This is supposing my informant is not telling me nonsense. Anyway there you go.

This part of the world is very Turk-leaning. Surprising until I remembered my history. The Turks swept off the plains of central Asia and destroyed the Byzantines. The local languages here are very close to Turkish. There are many Turkish language schools in this part of central Asia, and when people travel, they want to go to Istanbul.

I haven’t given a market commentary in a while, except I gave you my gold trading plan below. The reason I haven’t given you a comment is because I’ve been standing aside. Too volatile. A businessman wants predictability. Obviously. I will make a few general observations. As always let me preface this by saying I could be totally wrong.

(1) My leading indicator is the Shanghai Composite. It definitely suggests the bull market has returned.
(2) Observation #1 is tempered by the very strong seasonal pattern of the market tanking to yearly lows right around Halloween. Further, the SPX has clearly run into strong resistance. Thus I am slightly skeptical about the bull market, but then again, only a fool trades against the trend. All this taken into consideration, I will simply say that I would be surprised to see the SPX rise over 1200.
(3) Gold looks like it’s topping, but I have not seen the very high volume I require to confirm this.
(4) The dollar looks like it’s bottoming, and my evidence for this is not just the charts, but also because of the number of countries that are kicking and screaming to devalue their currency. I have not had a chance to study Bernanke’s comments from yesterday. If that knucklehead devalues our currency YET AGAIN, I am going to get a gun and fly to New York and find that mo’fo’ and stick my gun in his mouth and point out to him that the sensation he is experiencing is fairly similar to that which I feel when he devalues our currency. (And to any NSA agent who intercepts this electronic signal and flags it, no I am not serious, I will not stick a gun in Bernanke’s mouth.)
(5) Just because of the very strong seasonal pattern of a Halloween market bottom, I’m leaning toward caution and waiting for early Nov before I seriously consider placing an index trade (index options trading is my business). I am also following this path of caution because I want to see clearly what the Fed does and how the market reacts to it. I am not interested in gambling. I am interested in high-probability trades.

The headline of the Wall Street Journal today says US contractors were working for the Taliban. My students have been telling me this for 2 months now. My students also claim that the British military is paying off the Taliban. This I find hard to believe but I presume they’d know.

While on my weekly shopping trip today I could not help but reflect that Kabul is a completely insane town. First there was a traffic jam caused by an 80 year old man pulling a huge mountain of metal in a cart. Then there was a traffic jam caused by a donkey cart. Then I had to go to 4 different stores to find pudding. This doesn’t quite illustrate the sheer insanity of Kabul but stretch your mind a little. Now, actually I like Kabul. I did not really like Saudi or the UAE. But I like Kabul. I think part of what I like is the sheer anarchy. It’s tasty.

Apparently you are statistically more likely to get killed in Chicago than Kabul, which is interesting. I would like to actually see these statistics rather than rely on word of mouth. I find it hard to believe considering I occasionally hear shooting at night. But then again, I remember in Milwaukee I also occasionally heard shooting at night (lived on the Marquette campus, not the best neighborhood).

As most of my readers are aware, I am a linguist. I don’t advertise this fact a lot, primarily because I have never been the most academically ambitious linguist. (If I was ambitious I’d have finished my PhD and be teaching at Stanford, you see.)

Anyway the impossible dream of every linguist is to discover a new language and write a syntax. This dream was possible 50 years ago but now entire generations are trained of linguists who can never actually attain the goal of their trade. But guess what? The impossible dream came true recently, a new language was discovered in the Himalayas. Exciting. I hope you don’t need a subscription to read this link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703843804575534122591921594.html?mod=WSJ_hps_sections_world

I’m waiting. The stock indexes had a big rally.Gold continues to push higher and the dollar sinks lower every day. Gold is rising on fears of inflation at the moment, plus, I strongly suspect, investor exuberance. As I said in the trading plan, I am going to look for signs of a very high volume buying frenzy. Still waiting. Also the Fed and the Bank of Japan have not aided my plan. As with some of the best laid plans, this one might not be implemented in the end. Nevertheless I stand behind my assessment of gold and I agree with George Soros, who calls it”the biggest bubble in history.” So anyway I’m waiting for the right moment to enter, might be tomorrow, might be six months from now.

So as I mentioned, we have satellite internet, which is affected by weather and sunspot activity. Today I got in my email a schedule of “anticipated solar events” which may cause the internet to go down. Only in Kabul. Apparently we use ultra-low frequency satellite which is very secure, however, it must e very expensive. Can’t somebody just string a fiber-optic cable from Delhi, or something sensible like that? Maye the problem is the Taliban would cut it.

The internet and satellite TV (ie CNN and SHowtime) were out for the whole weekend at my house, because the satellite dish needed to be repaired. This made for a rather depressing weekend. Cut off from the world.

The knuckleheads who backed out of our offer to buy their house are apparently back in the market and came knocking on our door asking if we’re still interested. I’m so irritated with them I’m tempted to say no. However I do want a cheap “home base” which this would be. So we’ll see what happens.

Going to go home for the next Eid, which is Nov 12. Ticket costs a grand. Spending a lot just to hug Tristan (this actually is the main reason, so it’s an expensive hug).

That’s about it from Bravo 13 in the wilds of central Asia….