The Intergalactic Cowboy

The market has not done much during the past couple of days. The institutional investors didn’t take the bait on the other day when the home gamers and a few day traders took the money and ran, bringing the market down 243 points. Stage two of this corrective process won’t happen until the fund managers bring this market down 500 points. That will be my next opportunity to buy at least one equity at a low price, to be sold later at a high price. I hope that this event happens tomorrow (Friday) afternoon during the options expiration. Whenever this critical moment happens, it will be the moment when I can make the majority of my income for the year. Since my alertness is never guaranteed, I have accepted a second new guitar student to help bolster my income.

With watchfulness,

I.C.

A better than average sitting begins my day today. I don’t have as many early morning distractions today due to a big financial decision having been made yesterday. I sold a stock for a 25% loss. This stock was purchased about a month ago with the hope of providing me with income this year, obviously. Over the weekend, an internet report came out concerning some monkey business occurring among five of the managers of the said company. Actually I haven’t said the name of the company. It would seem that these five individuals cashed in their chips and withdrew over a billion dollars worth of investment money from the company’s financial assets; a terrible sign….  I got out yesterday morning with mixed feelings about it. Giving up on a stock is a little like giving up on a relationship; a relationship that you had hoped would be long term and beneficial. Although human relationships are more spiritual than relationships with corporate entities, the money that I lost could have paid for some musical activities this year. It would have paid for four nights in Europe as well as some valuable contributions to charitable causes. Today I had to postpone my contributions to the American Heart Association and the Atlanta Union Mission, which I contributed to last year. The only consolation that I have today is that the stock that I sold has gone down another 4% in value this morning. So at least I avoided a 4% decrease in income this year.

Working through mild disappointment,

I.C.

2 p.m.  The stock that I sold yesterday is now down 7% from where I sold it. If you want to know which stock this is, just watch Fast Money on CNBC tonight. They are going to be comparing it with another stock.

On Friday night I ran sound for a wedding rehearsal at the Methodist church. Fortunately, the family members and even the minister were jovial, relaxed and kind hearted toward me. I set some basic volume levels for the microphones, piano, and CD player, allowing me to frankly, get most of the work done ahead of schedule. I was even invited to join the wedding party for their wedding dinner, there at the church. I have never been given this offer before. Seated at my table was the minister who was performing the ceremony. He is a very sharp individual in his fifties with grey hair and a beard; kind of ex-hippyish. He seemed liberal enough for me to talk openly about unorthodox religious subjects, such as his own radical religious beliefs. He believes that all chronic illness is the result of fear affecting the immune system. He believes that the elimination of fear is the result of loving oneself and being loved by God. At least that is my quick understanding of his message. He quotes scripture to back his ideas up. He has published numerous books and has conducted many seminars around the world. He felt a certain amount of accomplishment that his church had 180 employees and that his average attendance on Sunday was 350 people. I asked him what city his church is located in. I was flabbergasted to find out that his church was here in rural Upson County! I can’t believe that I have never heard of him or his church before! I told him of the healers that I know who sometimes become ill after helping another person release their energy blockages. He says that that has never happened to him. This makes me a little skeptical of him, but it was an intriguing conversation to have at a wedding dinner in this backward, rural, culturally deprived community.

Today, Saturday, the pre-wedding photo session lasted for two hours. I only had thirty minutes to do the final sound check. After rehearsing the vocal solo with piano, it was time to rehearse the vocal song with CD instrumental accompaniment.  So, I said, ” now lets rehearse the other song, where I start the CD immediately after the lighting of the matrimonial candles.”  The soloist said, ” no, I sing this one during the lighting of the candles !” I said, ” the order of worship says that the candle lighting is first.” The soloist said, ” They don’t start lighting the candles until the CD starts playing and I start singing.” I hate it when I am given confusing information ! It’s a good thing that I asked. If I hadn’t, then during the actual wedding I would have created a lot of dead air waiting for the candles to be lit and the bride and groom would have waited for an eternity for the music to begin. After we rehearsed this song, I went down to the front of the church and re-confirmed the order that the ceremony was to proceed in. Fortunately, the service came off without a hitch and all of my detailed efforts brought for the rewards of a job well done. Although music performance is an area where I value relatively imprecise passion, whenever I run sound, I do serve perfection in every way that I know how.

The audio reinforcement at the wedding reception was run by the minister’s son in law, with his own p.a. system. The son in law gave me a copy of one of the minister’s books on the subject of healing. I begin reading it tomorrow night.

More later,

I.C.  

A quick but effective sitting this morning. Later, as I was taking out the trash, I remembered that this could have been my job for the day today. So, once again, I performed the remainder of the job with relaxation, attention and quality. Maybe tomorrow…

The stock market has not done much today, despite the good jobs report at 8:30 a.m. The U.S. added 97,000 new jobs in February and the unemployment rate fell to 4.5% .  This means that there are 97,000 more people spending money in this country. In three months time, these people will have health insurance and will start supporting the health care system. Surprisingly, the investors out there showed cautious optimism in their acquisition of equities today. They must have been reading my diary ! The stock market was even a little bit down when I checked a few minutes ago. I hope that they continue to keep a cool head until stage two of the correction finally happens. Perhaps there will be a big selloff next Friday when the current stock options expire…

My new student began his guitar lessons last night. He would like to learn how to play Led Zeppelin (sp?), Nine Inch Nails, Jimi Hendrix, Tool and Deftones. I taught him a simplified way of playing “Whole Lotta Love” on the 5th and 6th strings of the guitar. He plays the D on the 10th fret of the 6th string with his little finger, which is a good exercise for strengthening that finger. Next week, when I show him the major chords, I can teach him how to play ” Head Like a Hole” using those chords. The next week when I show him how to play a pentatonic scale up at the 12th fret, I can show him the lead part to ” Purple Haze.” After that I can use a Tool song as a motivation to learn how to count in 5/8 or maybe even 7/8. Then I can use a Deftones song to teach him about syncopation and rhythmic accuracy. This lesson plan will be quite challenging for an absolute beginner, but hey, I won’t hurt to push him in the direction that he has told me that he wants to go in.

Have a good weekend,

I.C.

Up at a normal time for sitting, coffee, guitar-vocal practice and housework. In the middle of one of the tasks I remembered that this could be a job for the day and then completed the job with relaxation, attention and quality. I guess that doing half of a job for the day is better than none; or does doing the second half of a task, as a job for the day, constitute a job for the day. I will assume not and remember to do another job for the day from the very beginning.

My afternoon was waylaid by an unexpected, two hour visit to the Upson County Sheriff’s Department. I was applying for a firearms permit. I can tell you that I was intimidated more than I have been in years. The young deputies were swaggering around loudly making boisterous remarks with a tone of voice that communicated to everyone there that they could lock any of us up for any reason that they wanted to or for no reason at all if they wanted to. Not legally of course, but because no one could stop them. I felt like the Sidney Portier character in ” The Heat of the Night.”  I was not only fingerprinted with ink but by some kind of digital photography device. They asked me to rub corn husker’s lotion on my finger tips to help make a better impression on the imaging device. The prisoners who were in individual cells with large, plate glass windows were watching me go through this procedure. It was the only visual entertainment that they had and I didn’t mind. In the middle of this procedure, they brought a young female prisoner up to the desk to use the phone. She was about 18 years old; Caucasian; short; with her long blond hair tied up in braids. She was wearing a black and white striped prisoner’s uniform. She called her mother to come get her out of jail. The mother apparently told her that a woman named “Bobbie” was coming to get her out. The prisoner said, ” Mama, Bobbie spent her paycheck on drugs and she just told you that she was coming to get me to satisfy you!”  When she shouted out the expletive s**t, the sheriff employees told her that she could not use that kind of language with a non-employee like me around. The prisoner then asked her mother to please hurry down there and to bring her property bond and her last years income tax records and to please hurry. The mother must have asked the daughter what the conditions were like in the county jail because the daughter said ” It’s ok I guess” and then burst into tears. I got the impression that the mother had lost control of her daughter and had decided that becoming scared straight was the daughter’s only hope. I really wish that I didn’t have to intrude upon this tragic family situation.

I did not get much of a chance to monitor the stock market today. It does not seem to have done very much anyway.

Safe at home now,

I.C.

Yeah right ….

Both the Asian and European markets increased in value overnight last night. So what does the American media do ?  They put a panel of four experts on the tv to talk about what direction the stock market is going to go in. Three of the experts said that the Subprime Mortgage collapse was just a blip on the radar screen and that the correction was probably over. The one dissenter recommended caution because of his concern about the Subprime Mortgage problem spilling over into the economy as a whole. He was ridiculed by the other three panel members.

So, if you believe what the media wants you to believe today, you should empty out your savings and checking account and buy any stock that you can get your hands on. If you own a home, you should get a second mortgage on it and throw every cent of that money into the market. If you listen to me, you should do the following :

Sell any stock you have that has gone up in value at all; even one dollar a share. Keep this cash money on hand for the good deals that occur just as soon as the market correction continues. If you do yield to the heat of the moment and buy some stock, sell it the very same day. If you own stocks that have gone down in value, they will probably not go down as far as the total market will in the next stage of the correction. They will go up in value after the actual market bottom occurs and the institutional investors throw a few billion dollars back into the market.

In the spirit of moderation,

I.C. 

Monday a.m.

Up early for a productive sitting of progressive relaxation and living presence.

S.B.C. is in France ! How cool is that ! She is a lucky woman. I sympathize with her difficulty with the European keyboard. By the time that you finally hunt and peck a diary entry, there is not enough time left in the day to actually do anything to diarize about.

After sitting I could not resist the impulse to turn on the computer and t.v. and find out what the Asian markets ended up doing last night. The Japanese market went down by 3%; the Asian market went down by 4%.  Was this going to be the day ?  I quickly placed an order to buy a biotech stock if the price went down two dollars a share from yesterday’s price. The danger in this is that during a crash, the price of the stock could actually go lower than the price I agreed to buy it at and I could actually lose money immediately. However, the danger of waiting until the market starts crashing is that I probably wouldn’t be able to get in touch with my stockbroker until after the stock had reached its lowest price and already headed up in price again. This is what happened to me last week.

The market ended up not crashing, despite the rather large selloff in Asia. This would have been a wonderful excuse for the institutional investors to start the avalanche of panic that is inevitable if anyone is going to make any money this year. Fortunately, a few more individual investors were allowed out of the market today, with a market loss of 63 points if I remember correctly. So why didn’t the fund managers initiate stage two of the market correction ? Is it because the American public is becoming desensitized to Asian selloffs ?  The following is my guess as to what will happen next :

The media will begin over-sensationalizing the Sub Prime Mortgage collapse and create investor panic over it. The sub prime mortgage industry is a segment of the mortgage industry that sells mortgages to people with bad credit. The mortgages have a higher interest rate than the average mortgage has. It is true that there has been an increase in the foreclosures in this industry recently. I predict that the media will over publicize this story so as to make it seem like the biggest threat to the U.S. economy that has ever reared its ugly head. They will have experts on the t.v. talking about the catastrophic effects of this devastating phenomena. Of course the networks will have one or two people saying the problem is not that big of a deal and that it has happened many times before and that it will not hurt the economy very much. When the individual investors start selling, the institutional investors will then yank a few million  shares and then initiate stage two of the upcoming correction.  So why would the media bother to take part in this lose / lose situation for the small time investor ?  A news story like this will attract people to the t.v. stations that broadcast it. Thousands of people will nervously be wringing their hands in front of the t.v. at the thought of how much of their retirement money will be disappearing before their eyes.   Other investors will be salivating in front of their t.v.s, calculating the exact moment to re-enter the market and hopefully watch their purchases gain in value over the next few months. All of this increased viewership helps the networks to convince their clients to continue buying commercial time. The stock price of the network then goes up in value. I should add that the only stock that the people on CNBC are allowed to own is the stock of the network that they work for, which is part of their retirement package. They are not allowed to invest as individual investors because it might create the impression that their stock market it coverage is “prejudiced.” We can’t have any of that now can we….

So, to sum it all up, if the media and the fund managers create a wave of panic selling, it is a win / win situation for the media and fund managers and a lose / lose situation for the naive individuals who are still in the market. I have not even looked at the Asian markets yet tonight. It would seem that they have outlived their usefullness in this devilishly contrived manipulation of honest people’s life savings.

‘ till tomorrow,

I.C.

As of 9 p.m. Sunday night, the Asian markets are selling off a little bit more. I don’t know if this will be enough of a catalyst for the U.S. markets to continue their correction or not. The U.S. market will have to sell off about 600 more points before any of us can safely invest our money. How do I know this you ask ?  I am only speculating, but since most of my income for the year depends on the accuracy of my speculation, I have put a certain amount of thought into it. Please allow me to explain :

The economic data suggests that the U.S. economy is going to decelerate this year. Companies will make less profit and the earnings per share of their stocks will go down. The stock market as a whole will not go any higher than it was two weeks ago. The only way for investors to make significant money in stocks is for the stocks to go down in price significantly so that the stocks can be re-bought at a low price and then re-sold when the market goes back up to its levels of two weeks ago. The mutual fund and hedge fund managers have millions of dollars to play with in this dramatic game of ecstatic gains and disastrous losses. These people can sell millions of shares of stock with one phone call and cause thousands of small investors to lose millions of dollars. The fund manager who does this first loses the least amount of money with the fund manager who does this last losing the most amount of money. These fund managers have constant data on who is selling and who is buying. They each have a hot-line to the stockbrokers which allows them to buy and sell huge quantities of stocks at the first indication of another fund manager doing so. This is what happened at 2:59 p.m. last Tuesday when the market dropped 300 points withing 30 seconds’ time. The small guys like me were not able to act as fast as we needed to and consequently were not able to buy any cheap stocks until they had already been bought up by other people.  There is a fine line between the practice of fund managers keeping close tabs on each other and the act of colluding with each other so as to manipulate the market. If they collude with each other they will go to prison. It is difficult to prove when the act of keeping close watch on each other crosses over the line into the area of collusion. The best strategy for small investors is to make an educated guess as to when the fund managers have completed the act of selling and then purchase however much stock they can afford.

What every investor wants is for the market to go down 10 %, so that they can buy stocks at a reduced price and then make 10 % when the market goes back up to the previous high. Although these fund managers have the power to induce this artificial correction, they, with the help of the media, would rather initiate the avalanche and let panic fill the hearts of the small investors who are afraid of losing everything !  If these small investors don’t get back into the market when it hits bottom, they will indeed lose everything or at least 10 % of everything, which would be a good year’s worth of income and a fantastic return on their investment !

I would talk some more, but I need to post this and see what the Asian markets are doing.

With a watchful eye,

I.C.

Today I took my Mom to Walmart to find toys for a couple of young friends of hers. While browsing, I picked up a children’s book that touched me deeply. Each page showed a mother’s unconditional love for her child in the different stages of the child’s life. The book started with a baby in a loving mother’s arms. Then it showed a two year old getting into everything in the house and creating a mess. The caption said that the mother still loved the child after behaving this way. The next page showed a  teenager engaging in embarrassing behavior in front of his grandmother. The caption said that the mother still loved him even though she became angry with him frequently. The book then showed the mother embracing her adult child and still loving him.

Although this children’s book showed a more ideal family situation than I have experienced, it did make the point that unconditional love is a good and sweet thing and that it is a worthy goal to pursue in one’s life. This simple book reinforces my belief that my decision three years ago to begin assisting my Mom was the right decision; the right decision despite the interruption of some of my own personal goals and enjoyments. My Mom’s condition may oneday need help from a person with more skill and training than me, but I am glad that I have been available to assist her for the last three years.

With reassurance,

I.C. 

It’s a bit tornadoish here in Georgia tonight, so this will have to be fast.  Awakened by thunder and lightening this morning, a good sitting was experienced by this musician. Then the rain came, with occasional storminess and high winds. After a good workout and a nap, the tendinitis reappeared in my right hand, with the usual pain. Thank God my new student postponed until next Thursday !

The media are now saying that consumer confidence in the economy are preventing them from engaging in a full blown panic rally, but that the correction will not be over until fear and panic destroy the market significantly more.  I have a little money to invest when this market capitulation finally happens; or at least, when I think it has happened….

More lightening !

I.C.