The Craziest January Ever (aka Rando notes)

I guess I should’ve known when my drunk uncle fell down in his own kitchen. Right in to me, seated at his kitchen table.

I should’ve known that would’ve sparked it. New year’s day. Puking for over an hour at 4 am. Why couldn’t I have predicted all of this? I guess that’s what makes it fun? At the least, I’ve woke up every day since the new year trying to make sense of the partial mess my life has become.

Well, maybe not mess. But more like messy. (Pronounced Mess-E for effect).

So I think I can say with all confidence, 2 hours left, that at the age of 25, I hope I don’t see a January like this again. Or if I do, I just hope I’m better prepared next time.

Where to start…

We’ll get the business out of the way first. I ended the year, December 31^st, 2007 trading up 25%. Not too shabby. Not spectacular, but still good enough for my first 6 months of real trading. I keep crossing my fingers that this isn’t dumb luck.

Little was I to know that through 30 days of January, we would see the largest fall in the stock market in January ever. On December 31^st, the Dow was at 13,200. Mid day on January 22^nd, the market hit an intraday low of what I remember seeing of 11,400. That’s a swing of more than 13%...which is A LOT for the Dow in any direction. Luckily the Fed saved us with an emergency rate cut of .75% and then another cut yesterday of .5%. Well, maybe they didn’t save us. But whatever. We’ll only be able to tell when we look back on this time. The market narrowly avoided the worst January ever today by 1.6%. We had to rally a good 200 points in the Dow to make it there too.

And through all of that, all I lost was 4%. It took a lot of guts on my part. On the 22^nd of January I woke up knowing the market was going to be bad. Overnight there was news that had come out about a French trader who had hacked the trading system and had covered up over $7 billion dollars in losses. That was more than the revenue the French bank that he “worked” for earned in 2007. All gone. Along with the fears of recession in the U.S. economy, the global markets fell an average of 5%. I woke up, turned on CNBC, and saw that we were down 500 points in the Dow pre-open. Since I’ve been watching the market (for the past 10 years now – more seriously over the past 3) I have never seen a move to one side – down or up of 500 points.

I thought that was it. I thought we were done for. I thought that not only was recession upon us (which it already is) but depression was coming too. I had images of bankruptcy and eating chicken broth from a crusty pot in some homeless tent camp after the markets had lost over half it’s value in one week…luckily that was just me daydreaming while I was sipping my morning OJ and texting my friends about how I was losing my fucking mind about it.

I like to think back to the days before I was trading. Where I didn’t really care what the price of a barrel of crude oil was, or an ounce of gold, or the federal funds rate or what the 10 year note was yielding. But then I like to think of how many options I watched move at least 100% in less than a day. How many options I watched move 500% in a couple days. And how many options I watched move 1000% to 9400% over a week. And I start to think that one of these days I’m going to catch one of those. And I can’t sleep thinking about it. 9400% X $10,000 invested is almost a million dollars. Of course I’m not going to catch that kind of move. But I honestly think a 1000% move is feasible. I just saw one today in the AMZN $75 call option February expiration. That’s right. $10,000 invested in ZQNBO at 6:30 am PST this morning, at $.50 and selling at $5.70 at 1 pm PST would’ve made you (me) a profit $104,000. Today. Less than 8 hours. And sure, I know, there are plenty of people that make that money on interest in their sleep (or more). But I’m not one of them. Yet.

For some reason I have this crazy confidence that I’m going to catch one and hit it out of the park. Call me crazy. I can’t wait for that party I throw when I do catch one though. If you are reading this right now you’re auto invited. I’ll buy the plane ticket for those of you outside of the state.

Ok, enough market talk. That could go on forever.

My mom turned 50 years old on the 25^th of this month. The big five-oh. Just thinking about how many things have changed in my life, I can’t imagine what seeing double that would be like. My mom has lived an awesome and respectable life. I am so lucky to have her as my mother. Hopefully one day I can show her how grateful I am for everything that she’s done for me.

We’ve been trying to plan a party for her. And it doesn’t help that my dad is with her in Hawaii (lucky dogs – they go every year). Trying to plan it without him isn’t of much help because we’re fronting most of the costs right now. We’ve been trying to find a place to host at least 80 people – which has been a struggle. Trying to print invitations. Trying to figure out food and entertainment…but…

THE PARTY IS NEXT WEEKEND.

So we’ve kind of procrastinated about it over the past 2 weeks (seeing as how we’ve barely had time to celebrate our own lives) and now we’re paying for it. If we pull this off successfully it will be a small miracle. Pray for me that nothing goes wrong (I’m putting the probability at 30% right now – I hope it declines the closer the party gets).

Of course I want every thing to be perfect. My mom deserves to be showered in love and happiness from all her close friends and family.

So while trying to plan that party, we’ve also been working on trying to plan a little poker party get together at our house TOMORROW. It’s not that big of a deal – definitely no renting of venues, plates, chairs or looking in to catering like my mom’s party…but it’s still an extra thing to plan for. Had to go out and buy food for the party and of course good poker chips (because it’s always “only the best” for me). Provide directions to patrons and coordinate times…and of course it’s going to require cleaning on February 1^st…which I am not looking forward to.

Side note: Everett Mall is freaking ghetto. This is where I bought my poker chips. Literally if you go there, you feel depressed just walking through. If you own a business there, how do you stay afloat? I really hope they remodel it like they did with Alderwood. The place needs a big shot of collagen or botox or something…complete makeover.

On top of the two party plans I had going on, I threw on the planning of a 2 week expedition to Europe in May. Really, the hard part was being a cheap ass and applying to 3 different credit card companies for a 0% rate interest card (can you tell how cheap I am yet?). I had to purchase my tour by today in order to receive an early bird discount (and hopefully get my flight cheap). Luckily, my 0% interest credit card came in the mail yesterday after haggling and begging with the credit companies to offer me up some free money. So it’s settled. And I’m more than 3 grand in the hole for the trip of a lifetime. Let’s hope I make it to my 26^th birthday and beyond! After this I only plan on going to Vancouver (the northern one) and Oregon (the other way) for vacation for a few years. It’ll probably be all I can afford. As of today I count 101 days until I am on a plane bound for London. That looks really weird to read…I have never been away from Bothell, let alone outside of North America for more than 10 days. This should be interesting.

We got stupid snow in January. Stupid snow is where it snows just enough to make the roads icy but not enough to make me stay home. That seems to be the theme here lately with the snow. “Here’s a piddly amount just to annoy you!” Seriously? Can’t we get a foot or more around here? Something I actually wouldn’t feel stupid playing in as an adult? Thanks God. And to all you weaklings that stayed home: Good for you, your $100-$250/day job isn’t worth you crashing your 3 series.

So as a side job (and for fun) I’m a secret shopper. Maybe this requires it’s own post? Anyway, I did two secret shops this month (that’s a lot for me, I usually do a shop every 3 months). One for Centex homebuilders (which was pretty interesting) and another for Garlic Jim’s. I love getting paid to give my opinion. And free pizza is always nice too. There are no complaints about the secret shopping, just another added item to the crazy January.

My Boeing basketball team is still undefeated – but we’re going to be missing our best players for next week so that should be some trying times. My flag football team is still defeated (read closely – all losses), but we had a “moral” victory last week when we only lost by 1 point on the final play. Heartbreaking. Oh which reminds me, out of nowhere last Saturday night my upper back started hurting pretty bad. And it hurt for about 4-5 days. I didn’t do anything to aggravate it. Maybe it was just the stress from this month? Possibly.

Lastly, on that Saturday we went to see a few comedians perform at the Laugh Comedy Spot in Kirkland. It was a “Girls night out and bring your husbands too” for one of my wife’s coworkers. Anyway, the comedians were pretty good. But here’s the great part about the night: Supposedly the comedians that night were billed as “clean comedians”. So of course you had a bit of the older, (and easily offended) crowd that showed up that night. And obviously they got nothing but dirty jokes! One angry crowd member was heard yelling, “When’s your flight home?” and when another angry guy had his wife pleading with him not to say anything we heard “No I will not stop! This is terrible!”

You can only imagine the kind of laughs I got not only from the comedians being funny (and PG-13 offensive) but from seeing the reaction of the poor souls who were in for some very G rated jokes. Talk about a crazy January…It’s almost sad to see it end.