There hasn't been much easy scratch in my usual market neighborhood lately. Last year, I could take three bucks off the table by placing an order at 8 pm, putting the baby to bed and magically waking up at 3 am to close out my position. Nowadays, I am happy to grab a buck and a quarter. It's almost insulting.
I figured a change of scene would do me good, so I ventured last night into one of the more liquid grains markets.
Hmmmm. I shall merely observe that few experiences in the stock market can rival seeing 1 bid against 40,000 offered, with absolutely no way out. That's a limit-down grains market for you. By contrast, the stocks are miraculously liquid; limit-down is possible, but happens maybe only once in 20 years.
The bottom line is, I went to bed with a little profit on two contracts, determined to let my winnings run for once, only to check in at 10:30 a.m. to see a rather major loss happen in about 30 seconds.
I called a friend of mine who has a bit more experience in the grains markets -- a few decades more, to be precise -- and confided that I was learning an important lesson in commodities trading.
"Well, I have to hand it to you, trading in front of the June crops report."
Pause.
"Did you know there was a report?" he asked.
Well, shoot. In my market, reports are typically leaked and discounted. They're for fading, not trading. We don't need no stinking reports! It never occurred to me that a lousy government report could achieve an impact above 6 on the Richter scale.
"Just take your loss and forget about it," my friend counseled. "And take the grains off your monitor."
Yeah. As bad as the stocks are, grains are worse. Don't cry for me, Kansas City.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Two Prehistoric Things About New York
New York may lead the nation in culture, taxis and good eating, but the city is decades behind in four areas:
1. Voting machines. New York City's aren't just retro; they look they date back to Tammany Hall. You make your choices and then swing a huge lever to punch them in. No hanging chads here.
2. Garbage disposals. I was on the phone with my 83-year-old aunt Louise in Santa Monica, California, yesterday. So Cal Edison had a power outage that day, and she couldn't use the garbage disposal. That brought her to reminiscing about the Fifties, when people actually were afraid to put anything down the disposal. I was laughing because garbage disposals are as rare in 21st-century Manhattan as real beaches.
3. Supermarkets. There really aren't any. Southern Californians would dismiss what passes for supermarkets here as dismissed as mom-and-pop stands. With the exception of the Whole Foods stores, which don't count as real supermarkets because of the greenily correct exclusion of such basic American brands as Tide and Crest, aisles are so narrow in Manhattan markets that you have to beg pardon to pass. In rush hour, the elbows come out. I think back to the spacious aisles of my childhood and sigh.
4. Wide streets. From Battery Park to Harlem, most east-west streets of the grid are two-lane. It only takes a crosstown trip in a taxi to realize that Manhattan is basically a small city with big-city pretensions. Making matters worse, Manhattan parking regulations are so convulted that nobody knows quite when or where it is permissible to park on the street. While I gave up my car long ago because taxis are so readily available and economical, my driver friends tell me that some signs say both that you can and cannot park at the same time.
None of these endearing quirks are enough to make me stop loving Manhattan. Taxes? That's another story.
1. Voting machines. New York City's aren't just retro; they look they date back to Tammany Hall. You make your choices and then swing a huge lever to punch them in. No hanging chads here.
2. Garbage disposals. I was on the phone with my 83-year-old aunt Louise in Santa Monica, California, yesterday. So Cal Edison had a power outage that day, and she couldn't use the garbage disposal. That brought her to reminiscing about the Fifties, when people actually were afraid to put anything down the disposal. I was laughing because garbage disposals are as rare in 21st-century Manhattan as real beaches.
3. Supermarkets. There really aren't any. Southern Californians would dismiss what passes for supermarkets here as dismissed as mom-and-pop stands. With the exception of the Whole Foods stores, which don't count as real supermarkets because of the greenily correct exclusion of such basic American brands as Tide and Crest, aisles are so narrow in Manhattan markets that you have to beg pardon to pass. In rush hour, the elbows come out. I think back to the spacious aisles of my childhood and sigh.
4. Wide streets. From Battery Park to Harlem, most east-west streets of the grid are two-lane. It only takes a crosstown trip in a taxi to realize that Manhattan is basically a small city with big-city pretensions. Making matters worse, Manhattan parking regulations are so convulted that nobody knows quite when or where it is permissible to park on the street. While I gave up my car long ago because taxis are so readily available and economical, my driver friends tell me that some signs say both that you can and cannot park at the same time.
None of these endearing quirks are enough to make me stop loving Manhattan. Taxes? That's another story.
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