The Intergalactic Cowboy

I successfully got out of the stock market yesterday as hoped. My sitting this morning was pleasantly free of financial concerns and market strategies. Good will was sent to the Guitar Craft community and to the families of the British sailors, one of whom has apologized, after having been ‘questioned.’ I wish safety and strength to all parties involved in this terrifying situation. Having a family member in harm’s way is one of the most stressful life experiences that one can undergo.
The Iranian government is now threatening to put the sailors on trial. I would assume that the jury pool over there has already been contaminated with news stories that contain ‘proof’ of the sailors’ guilt. The judges probably watch Iranian tv as well. The rumor of this possible trial will cause the price of oil to go up and the price of equities to go down on Monday morning. Although I have been waiting for an opportunity to buy a few cheap equities, I would never want to do it at the expense of the British sailors’ life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. I would rather that the sailors get released and that the market stagnates. Here I am thinking about the stock market again…
Safety to all,
I.C.

No, this is not an entry about an insight into music or craft. This is another insight into the volatility of the financial markets. As I said in a previous entry, I expected the fund managers to pump up stock prices tomorrow afternoon, creating a short lived selling opportunity at about 3:45 pm. 4pm tomorrow is the end of the first quarter of 2007 and the fund managers have a stake in making their funds’ performances look artificially strong; and then selling like crazy on Monday, bringing the stock prices back down to a reasonable and rational level. This Iranian hostage crises has turned the whole thing around. Oil prices have risen to about 66 dollars a barrel in the fear of a supply disruption in the Strait of Hormuz. Two nights ago, oil prices shot up to 70 dollars a barrel for a few short minutes over the rumor of an Iranian ship shooting over the bow of an American ship in the gulf. These higher oil prices decrease the net profit of most corporations as well as the net income of all consumers. My current prediction is that investors will get out of the market by 3:45 pm tomorrow (Friday) and that I should have gotten out today. Investors will not want to wake up Monday morning to find that war has broken out between Iran and another country and that oil prices have gone up to 80 dollars a barrel and that the stock market will immediately crash. Why didn’t I realize this today before 4pm ? I sold one of my Nasdaq stocks after hours for a small profit of less than 1%. A couple of other recently acquirred laggards will have to wait until tomorrow morning because they are traded on the AMEX during normal trading hours only. I will try to sell them at a minimal profit or loss by 9:45 am. Now if this Iranian crises settles down before 4pm tomorrow, the market could rally before the close tomorrow, but the odds are more in favor of a stalemate or worse in my opinion. Perhaps if I succeed at this attempt at damage control I can then direct my energies to the suffering family members of these British military members who have been “questioned” by Iranian authorities. From reading my diary you might never know that activities such as music and eldercare are a big part of my life, but the financial decisions that I make over the next six weeks will determine my income for the rest of the year and these decisions have to be made with precise, educated exactitude ! It also wouldn’t hurt to do this work in a relaxed, attentive state until the work reaches a state of completion. I do wish for the safe return of the British military personel and for the peace of mind of their families and the entire British people.
Carefully,
I.C.

Today began with a private sitting in a motel room in Atlanta. Since no one was listening I practiced going through the sitting verbally, out loud. I had a good time last night. My guitar practice this morning was done on a hollowbody electric, so as not to wake my neighbors in the adjoining rooms. Hollowbodies are not as loud as acoustic guitars. I then feasted on Cuban food and hit the road back to Thomaston.
My mom had an outpatient surgical procedure done on her right foot today, so I have been assisting her with her recuperation this afternoon and evening.
The stock market sold off a little bit more today. The media have cooled off in their enthusiasm about Ben Bernanke’s testimony before congress tomorrow. A few pundits still say that he will give only positive, reassuring news about the economy tomorrow. (Wednesday) If he does give only good news, it will be the first time in history that a Fed Chairman has been allowed to do so in front of a congressional committee. I still insist that they will badger Mr. Bernanke into making some insinuation about the possibilities of inflation and recession. Whatever insinuations Mr. Bernanke makes will be on the front page of the Wall Street Journal the next day, regardless of what the bulk of his testimony says. In the middle of a financial quarter, this could be used as an excuse to crash the market, but Friday is the last day of the first quarter of 2007 and whatever a fund’s cumalative gains or losses are on that day will be considered to be the fund’s gains or losses for the entire quarter. This means that Friday would be an inconvenient day for Stage Two of the correction to occur.
Still waiting,
I.C.

My audio job today involved re-mastering more Nobz recordings for possible release this year. The Nobz were the punk / new wave band that I was in during the late seventies. Despite the three hours of work that mastering engineer, Kevin Glenn, and I spent on these recordings, it is going to take a little more tweaking to get them into a releasable state. On the studio recordings, the bass guitar is too loud and boomy on the first two songs, yet not quite loud enough on a couple of others, despite the fact that all of the studio recordings were done at the same studio. One live song needs the vocal frequencies boosted. This job is starting to resemble some mixing jobs that I have done in the past where each successive mix is worse than the previous one… No… I can’t really say that. I did improve these mixes today. I will just have to be careful when adjusting the offending frequencies during the next session, whenever that is. The studio is in Duluth, Georgia, which is a two and a half hour drive from where I live.
My ears are gone,
I.C.

Last night I attended the Friday night service of the mysterious church that has the healing ministry. I arrived at 7pm and found my way to the former gymnasium of the elementary school that the church uses as its headquarters. A woman outside the door escorted me inside and introduced me to three family members of hers. The inside of the gym has been made to look like a church, with the gym walls covered with curtains from ceiling to floor. The floor was carpeted, with about four hundred padded chairs set up. At the front was a podium with band instruments behind the podium.  There are a few reclining lawn chairs around the room, which have padded, lawn chair cushions on them so as to accomodate any church goers who were too weak or disabled to sit up. This church uses both karaoke technology and open mic technology in their presentation. After about two hundred people arrived the Pastor Donna began explaining the order of worship for the benefit of any newcomers that were there. Then the karaoke screen lit up with lyrics to the songs that began playing through the hidden speakers of the p.a. system. It was fairly loud rock music playing that I was unfamiliar with; plus, I was not wearing my glasses and could not read the words on the screen. The congregation would hold up their right hands and slowly wave them toward the stage as if they were waving to a person who was a great distance away. Their spirited singing morphed into jumping up and down and then into dancing in the aisles. Then a mass of about one hundred people ran to the area in front of the stage and began dancing as if on a dance floor of a club. This eventually morphed into a huge line of country line dancers, dancing to ” Spirit in the Sky” by Norman Greenbaum! I have never seen a spectacle quite like this in a church before. This ritual went on for about forty five minutes. Since I was not singing or dancing, I was rather obviously an outsider within this group.  The closest thing that I can compare this event to would be a Pentacostal worship service; but without the faith healings and the speaking in tongues. If you have never been to a Pentacostal service, I doubt that that explanation will help. Although many of these people do have faith and have been healed, there was no annointing of oil or rapid fire speach involved in this service. This part of the service went on for about forty five minutes and I had to sit down and rest before the next part of the service began. The second part of the service made use of the open mic microphones. People were welcome to step up to the mic and witness as to how they had been healed by the ministry there. One woman was cured of deafness. A man was cured of manic depression. Another woman had been cured of alcoholism and of a lump on her tendon. This part of the service ended after about forty five minutes, although it does traditionally last as long as it takes; sometimes until midnight. This service ended at 9 pm. I said my polite goodbyes and drove to Taco Bell for a quick meal.

I then drove home; changed clothes and went to the local music venue where Rehab was playing. Rehab were in top form, with the singers voice sounding strong. The audience was fortunately good this time. They were waving their hands in the air with a gesture that I do not know the meaning of. ( A lot like the religious people at the church) They were familiar enough with the lyrics of the songs to sing along during the choruses. ( Also like the religious people) They were dancing and enjoying themselves and enjoying life in a way that had a lot of similarities to the church goers. Some people might call me a hypocrite for running out of church and driving straight to a rock club but I enjoy moving from one world or universe to another. One place is for people who want to party in a clean and sober situation and the other place is for the drinking and drugging crowd. There was a lot of energy at both places and lot of celebrating of life. I enjoy exploring different atmospheres as if I were some kind of intergalactic cowboy or something.

 Tomorrow, I have an audio job.

 Have a good weekend,

I.C.

The market isn’t doing much today despite my predictions of rallying until March 30th. Even financial analyst Abbie Joseph Cohen prophesied today that the economy was good enough to send the S + P 500 up to the 1,500 level by year’s end. What must be going on is that Ben Bernanke is going to be testifying before congress next week. At least one senator is going to grill him about impending inflation and another will grill him about impending recession. They will not stop until he acknowledges that some small blip in the economy could possibly cause these two scenarios. The media will be so desperate for news that they will have to publicize these statements for one day and the market will probably sell of a little rather than rally as I had hoped. You just never know…

Happy careering,

I.C. 

Today, Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, tilted the investment world on its axis by insinuating that the Federal Reserve Bank might be cutting interest rates in the near future. This announcement was made at 2:15 pm this afternoon. It took the markets about ten minutes to believe what they might have just heard and then they took off with a rally of buying that has not been seen since the last media hyped speculation, one week ago. I was dozing in an easy chair until the realization dawned on me that some short term money could be made over the next week as a result of this. I rushed to the computer and re-bought a stock that I sold the week before Stage One of the market correction. My reasoning is as follows. Mutual funds are judged according to what percentage they have increased in value as of the last day of the quarter, which would be March 30th.  I would assume that hedge funds are judged the same way, but I do not know how to find out what the performance of a hedge fund is. I believe that the above mentioned fund managers will use this speculation on potentially lower interest rates to artificially pump up the values of their funds between now and March 30th so that their funds’ performance will look good on paper for the first quarter of 2007. They can do this by buying up the stock of any companies that are positioned for profit growth this year. I plan to sell the stock that I bought today on March 30th at 3:45 pm so as to take the short term profit before the next business day, which will be Monday, April 2nd.  I then believe that Stage Two of the correction will be engineered to take place between April 2nd and the next Fed meeting which will be May 2nd. (I think) It is possible that the Fed will actually lower interest rates on May 2nd, which will make a correction in the stock market practically impossible for several months after that, because an inevitable rally will occur after an interest rate reduction or two.  If the correction takes place before May 2nd, the starting point of the rally will be at a lower price level and the subsequent gains from the rally will be greater. This devious manipulation of the retirement monies of the hard working people of this country can only be achieved with the cooperation of the media and the fed chairman. The media will have to focus on the positive financial news only for the next week and the fed chairman will have to keep his mouth shut for at least a week. Mr. Bernanke has a habit of making a positive statement on one day and then saying on the next day that his comments were misconstrued.

The drama continues,

I.C.

Today I visited the bookstore of the mysterious church here that has the healing ministry that I mentioned in a couple of earlier diary entries. The church is located in a former elementary school in rural Upson County. The building is a one story brick building with an adjacent gymnasium that is now being used as a sanctuary. The former classrooms of the former school are now set up as shipping and receiving, CD / DVD manufacturing, classrooms for training in the healing ministry, video production, cafeteria and finally the bookstore. There were about twenty employees scurrying up and down the hallway with big smiles on their faces, looking quite inspired about the work that they do. They knew instantly that I was an outsider, so, I acted more humble and respectful than I usually do, so as not to arouse any suspicion about myself. Fortunately, I ran into the soundman / dj from the wedding reception who helped me to find the bookstore. Even he had to swipe a card-key in order to walk down the hallway for some reason. I don’t know if this was a security precaution or if he was clocking into work after his lunch break. The experience of entering and leaving this facility could be compared to visiting the Claymont Barn, but with a lot more people quickly walking in and out of the different rooms. The people were dressed a lot more upscale than I would have expected in a rural Georgia church. Some of the women had perfect hair, which is a rarity around here. The bookstore lady told me that not many people from Thomaston attend this church, but that a few people from Europe and Africa moved here to attend it. Quite curious wouldn’t you say ?

The stock market was up a little bit a few minutes ago. This morning the media had an analyst on, saying that although the Asian markets may sell off, the Asian economies are strong and will keep the U.S. economy strong. I have just thought of another possibility that might initiate Stage Two of my predicted market correction. Tomorrow the Federal Reserve Board will announce their interest rate decision and will make a statement after the decision. My prediction is that the statement will be mostly good but with a  comment about how the Sub Prime Mortgage Problem might possibly have a slight effect on the U.S. economy. Perhaps a few day traders will start selling when that comment is made, giving the institutional investors an excuse to pull a few billion dollars out of the market. If this capitalistic abomination goes down, it will begin at about 2:20 pm tomorrow.

Let the games begin,

I.C.

In the absence of any insights or amusing anecdotes, I will tell you what books are on my bookcase. Actually, the bookcase and the books are in storage, but if they were currently displayed, you would see :

The Electric Koolaid Acid Test by ( was it Kesey or Wolfe or whoever wrote that)

Be Here Now by Baba Ram Dass

All of the books by Carlos Casteneda

A few books by the humanistic / transpersonal psychologists such as Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow.

A few musico/psycho/philo/ self improvement books such as Through Music to the Self by Peter Michael Hammil.

A few books by and about Bennett, Gurdjieff and Ouspensky.

The Guitar Craft Monographs.

A few practical and informative coffee table books like An Incomplete Education, The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy and The Autobiographies of Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell.

No books about political science or fictional literature or any of the literary classics . (Nobody is perfect you know)

There must be a lot of my books that I have forgotten about because I have four boxes full of them in storage.

Later,

I.C.

It has been a regular weekend of sittings, readings and market strategies. My sitting today was the least distracted sitting of the week. I haven’t remembered to do a job for the day lately, not even in the middle of a job; rather slack, I have to admit. I have read the book by the local minister who has a method of healing chronic illnesses. The first step of the process is to forgive everyone who has ever hurt you; from the family members all the way down to the people who cut you off in traffic. In principle, I am in agreement that this is a  good strategy. This conforms with what the Methodist Church teaches, but with a big difference. At this healing minister’s church, you have to promise God in prayer to do this, in front of the minister himself, with the understanding that you will be monitored occasionally to re-confirm that you are still forgiving everyone. This first step toward healing would make it impossible for me to accomplish a few goals that I am currently working on. Sad but true. I am not ready to completely end my defensiveness against certain attacks. At least I am being honest about it.

The Nikkei Index in Japan was up a little bit a few minutes ago. I have not received any information yet about the Hang Seng in China. No significant money can be made in the U.S. markets until the correction over here continues. The media is still beating the dead horse of Sub-Prime Mortgages. Perhaps this coming week they will find a new ’so called  catastrophe’ to manipulate the markets with…

Until the ‘morrow,

I.C.