Trades - March 9th, 2009

First see today's intraday update.

Up early this morning, I sold the extra SRS that I had bought on Friday at 99.00. This morning's *Dow futures down 100* gave me the opportunity to dump it at 104.00. [Actually, a couple of points higher!]

Ya know, there was a time when the pre-market and after-hours trading kicked my butt.

But these days, I'm dominating!

For trades today:

I bought STP at 5.53. Remember I flipped this one nicely last year - from 5.80 to 11.80 or so.

And I traded AMZN a bit.

I shorted at 62.30 and 63.11, covered at 61.50.

Then I shorted again 62.42 and covered at 61.31.

Lastly, unable to help myself, I bought at little SRS back at 98.50. My position in this ticker was effectively reduced by two-thirds today.

There was some real good trading out there today. Michael Davey had a couple of killer trades. I particularly wished I aped his AAPL short this morning.

An Aggressive Flattening

This morning I did something I seldom do.

I wiped out my big positions.

I sold my GE and I sold my SRS - at 7.80 and 98.57 respectively.

I've had a spectacular run this year and just want to hold on to the dough.

Also, the daytrading is too good to be saddled with positions.

The SRS, as much as I think it could go to 200.00, was making me nervous. Hopefully the market will rally and I can re-enter at better prices.

I really just wanted to dump SRS, but since I let that out, I couldn't justify holding the GE.

You watch, the SRS will close at 120.00 today. But that's okay. I had to do the prudent thing.

Note at the exact moment I dumped it, Atilla Demiray bought it!

Hiding In My Bunker - Dodging Shells From Uncle Sam

No posting today.

I crawled into my bunker this morning and put in ten hours on my Schedule D.

It looks like I made roughly 500 trades in 2008 - or 250 round-trippers, one for each day the market was open.

So far, I don't like the numbers I'm getting. But that doesn't matter as relatively high gains this year will just produce a lower tax burden in 2009.

But try explaining that elementary nuance to the Morons who go frantic trying to find *losers* to sell each December.

Thank God It's Friday - Signed, The Bulls

The market rallied on the close simply because......

....it didn't spectacularly crash!

THAT was the only bullish catalyst of the day/week.

I hate to get pulled into these pontifical debates but here goes.

What will be the sign that the market has bottomed?

Extreme bearishness?

How exactly do we quantify that?

How about high volume for a bottom signal? Lots of big mouth bears are demanding to see a volume spike before they cover their shorts.

Yes, IMO, the market is awash in negativity. BUT, it's also fully warranted.

Layoffs are just starting to happen. So many people, so many businesses, consumers, and *governments*, have been drunk with denial for the past year or so, that the backlog of pain is enormous.

This economic retrenchment isn't just trimming a little fat out of our lifestyles.

It's slaughtering herds of pigs! It's wiping out entire industries.

E.g., auto, banking, malls, student lending, retailers, restaurants, home improvement, REITs,...,hedgefunds.

[The VIX is an important, if difficult to time, sentiment indicator. Ignore the *put/call ratio* and any Moron citing it.]

I myself am not worrying about *the bottom*; I'm not drawing lines on historical charts; I'm not polling hack mutual fund managers; nor am I proffering examples of bear market rallies in the 1930s.

I simply watch the tape and try to identify good short term risk/reward bets.

Today the market tried to rally on the open but failed.

And why exactly wouldn't it, fail that is?

This morning I wisely bought FAZ at 92.50 (down 7 bucks right off the bat) and made four points in 14 minutes.



While my entry point was heroic, my exit was more than a little wussy. This crazy ETF rallied all the way up to 115.50 later in the day!

A 92.50 FAZ spoke to me. It said, "Buy me, I'm 5 points of downside risk versus 10 points of potential upside."

Today I also added to my EEV position at 60.20.

And I initiated a new *double short* ETF position. This time taking aim at China.

I bought a smidgen of FXP at 41.72 - for starters anyway.

Lastly, as the market rallied at the close, I had to watch SRS, my biggest position, fall apart:



Yeah, from 110.00 to 100.00 in the last 30 minutes....that took a substantive chunk out of my paper gains for the day.

Undaunted, I bought some more at 99.00 after the close.

Do any of y'all expect good news on Monday?

Didn't think do.

For Friday's song we're going with THE *wage slave* ballad:



And for the *proprietors* like Slow Rion:

On Job Discrimination

Sure, there are chronic categorical victims.

But it's not always that way.

For example, my wife had to pick a couple of people from her staff of forty to layoff. Here, she was obviously playing *god* with people's livelihoods in this imploding economy.

When it came down to a few married people (with children) versus someone who was single she picked the latter based not insignificantly on that very distinction.

This case defies the perception, generally speaking, that family-men/women, because they can't travel as much and work as late, are discriminated against in the workplace. Perhaps family people have a leg down in the hiring process but fare better once they're on the payroll?

Here's another example from my real estate agent buddy in Naples. He recently hired an assistant (and then another). One of his 50 applicants was incredibly qualified but over-the-top gorgeous and built to boot. She was among other things a former yoga instructor. Despite resounding competence, and absolutely *begging* for the job, my buddy refused to hire her.

He's a married man and probably wants to keep not only his focus at work, but his thoughts *pure*, and wifely suspicion to a minimum.

Poor girl. But at least she can still speed with impunity when she drives - for a few more years anyway.

I've also heard whiny complaints from some *hot* women that men are often intimidated by their looks; that dudes are afraid to approach them at bars and whatnot. Whatever, these broads remain far down, maybe at the bottom, of the sympathy chain.



On correlating *good looks* with *workplace competency* I have one personal anecdote:

As an undergrad at UPenn, I was a manager (work-study job) of some residential facilities. I had to hire 9 other students to work for me. I must have gotten 50 or so diverse applicants. Yet my staff ended up being 8 chicks and 1 dude. What I did was glaringly obvious to everyone but I didn't care one bit. I was 20 and wasn't exactly focused then on philosophy, religion, and the state of world affairs if you catch my drift.

As it turns out, if you were to stack-rank my employees (the dude excluded) on job performance, and then again on *qualities important to the superficial male*, the lists would be perfectly inverted. And at the extremes, the young lady who was easiest on the eyes turned out to be a lazy, entitled b*tch; while the homeliest one was a world-beater.

One of my good friends ended up marrying the world-beater. He himself was considered a very handsome man - and always had plenty of *social* options. We all shook our collective heads at his choice. What the bleep was he thinking?

Turns out, he made a sagacious, farsighted decision. As a profoundly lazy person himself, in choosing the ugly, sturdy duckling, he set himself up for life!

Mrs. C-Nut maintains that her *pretty boy* employees have, over the years, been some of the worst.

And Will Durant asserted that *extreme good looks* were a handicap in life.

Whatever, I shall overcome.

See also - Nanny Criteria.

Thursday Trades

Aw, man....

Too bad I didn't hold my SKF or my FAZ....(or my short COF, short LEH, short FNM, short HBC, short FED...)

Anyway, I can't complain. I can't complain one bit.

Came in short the NASDAQ today and covered it first thing at 8am. See earlier post.

I also covered the Goldman Sachs I shorted yesterday - buying back at 80.33 for a nice little 7 point flip.

And I added back the Ultrashort long term Treasury ETF - TBT - I let out the other day. I re-bought at 44.58.

I want to position myself for a bounce/squeeze. Loading up on GE was part of that strategy. But I'm having a really hard time finding other *long* candidates. As much as I wouldn't be surprised by a reality-defying bank rally, I just can't bring myself to get long any of them. Maybe I'll buy some BAC tomorrow - maybe. Or maybe I'll buy the lot of them via FAS - the triple long financials ETF.

Buying TBT is a way to make a diversified bet on a market rally. It allows me not to have to pick my poison. In fact, though I already have a bunch, I really should probably *back up the truck* and get some more.

As well as I've been doing lately, check out Attila from Xtrends. Below find his open positions:



Click to enlarge if you're blind.

Eyeballing the numbers, it looks like Attila is up $880,000 (on paper) in the past two weeks. (After making $1.4 million in Jan/Feb.)

Now, I have no idea how much of a bankroll this dude is playing with - whether or not he has investors. But there's a good chance he's just an independent trader like myself.

Regardless, this guy definitely has one set of iron balls. He rode out that FAZ, right after he bought it at 64.40, down to 47.00. Today Attila looks like a hero with the FAZ at 100.00. Tons of aspiring young traders are all over his jock at the moment.

Me? I'm definitely impressed. Though I'd need to see him topless first.

And now, finally, is our Thursday song.



Obscure but not half bad.

[Maybe it's not *obscure*; maybe I'm just out.]

Manhasset, NY - Underperforming, Bloated Public Schools

[Note that Manhasset is a very wealthy town. It used to be a real bastion of Wall Streeters. Bill O'Reilly actually lives there currently.]

A reader emailed an *independent* report on their local school system on Long Island:

Salary Plus Benefits

Average salary without benefits $101,339.
Median salary without benefits $104,278

Average salary including benefits $149,404
Median salary including benefits $153,736

Pension Costs

Today if a teacher retires after 30 years at $126,000 the average pension is $88,200 (assuming 70% payout).

If a teacher receives a Pension for 25 years the cost will be $2,205,000. The teacher will make more in retirement than they made while working. This plus the Medical Benefits they receive in retirement you will see clearly why.....school taxes are out of control.

$2.2 million???

For each teacher???

Look at the ridiculous salaries of the administrators:



Look at the town's academic *underperformance*:



Other rankings:

On *Living Environment* and *Physics*- they placed 8th locally.

And in *Global History* and *US History* - Manhasset placed 9th locally (out of 9!).

Yet first in *Cost Per Student*!!!

Those results were published, no, not by the school board, but by a local group calling themselves Manhasset Proponents for School Accountability.

That organization is doing, well, what you would expect. It's trying to shed sunlight on what they think is a horrible, expensive school system. I say good luck to them - because they won't likely make much progress.

Schools are beyond reform for so many reasons. Sure, this organization might stall additional spending; it may even wrest some administrative fat trimming and wage concessions....

But as you can see above, from the already promised pension benefits ($2 freaking million per teacher!), this school district is already way beyond financially bankrupt.

Furthermore, the system is educationally bankrupt. Well-intentioned Manhassetites are trying to keep up with the standardized test scores of surrounding towns yet that has nothing to do with competently preparing youth for ethical, productive, INDEPENDENT living. (And/or maybe they just want tax relief?)



Can y'all imagine that they call science/biology - "Living Environment" - now?

My source hyperbolically informs me that Kaplan Testing is the most booming business in Manhasset these days. It looks like Kumon is there too.

While the magnitude of the spending in this tony town will seem extreme to non-New Yorkers, I'm quite sure they are in the same financial proportion as your own local school district.

Breeding Contest - I'd Win

Hah!

Who do y'all think would pick up more broads today - if we weren't both married, of course???

Me, pictured in the upper right corner of the page? (or here)

Or that pasty white, flaccid, pretty-boy quarterback for the American football Patriots?

At best, he's a *before* pic....

....while I'm a definite *after*.

Cashing In Early

Posting was light last night due to a last minute *call to the bar*.

As I said I would, I took off my QQQQ short early this morning. I bought it back at 26.86.

Yesterday I had shorted it at 27.12 and 27.47 - and I didn't feel too good about the position.

I'm waiting for a big move in the market. If it drops like a stone, I'll get long. Another rally like yesterday, and I'll gladly sell into it. It's time to step away for a bit and not get caught doing anything stupid.

[On a GE rally, I'll look to sell some calls against my now decent-sized long.]

Humpday Trading

First, visit yesterday's update - Tuesday's Trading, Gone.

Wacky but good trading day this Wednesday.

Wacky, because General Electric was dumping amid all sorts of nasty rumors/facts - in fact it traded as low as 5.87 this morning before bouncing a bit. Also, JP Morgan and Wells Fargo each got hit pretty bad (threat of debt downgrades or other such nonsense). So with those biggies, those bellwethers taking a beating....

Everything else levitated!

Today I bought my new friend, the FAZ - the triple short financials ETF - at 70.62 on the opening bell.

I jumped in the shower (cold) and found my shares gone by the time I put my tighty whiteys on. I sold them at 76.00 at 9:49am.

Have I ever seen a better trading vehicle than FAZ these past two weeks?

Nope. Not even close.

Guys (and gals) must be making a killing just throwing out simultaneous buys and sells to scalp. The thing moves like it's depraved. Just look at the past three intraday charts:



That graphic doesn't do full justice to the point I am trying to make but it gives you an idea anyway. One really needs to watch that ticker flicker for full comprehension.

I also tried to scoop more SRS on the open but missed it. It rallied a full 8 points in the next 45 minutes!

GE on the other hand, that POS was easy to buy. I doubled up my position at 6.41.

I sold into this NASDAQ strength - shorting the QQQQ at 27.12 and 27.47 in equal parts. I don't really like this position and am tempted to cover it early tomorrow.

I bought a little more EEV - the double short emerging markets ETF. My price was 59.60.

In the final hour I bet that the rally would fade a bit. I grabbed some more SRS at 85.40 which I sold nicely at 88.50.

And, I shorted Goldman Sachs at 87.58.

The only reason I shorted that is this guy - Centrifugal.

He's a really sharp, and experienced trader I found recently. But he was dead-@ss wrong today. Everything he did was horrible. Finally, at the end of the day, when I saw him post this on his Twitter feed:

Added 11% long GS, 87.34

I JUST HAD TO SHORT IT!!!

Look where he bought it:



GS dropped down faster than a Jersey girl on Prom night.

Alright, it wasn't that bad. I just wanted to use that line that's been burning a hole in my chock-full head.

Centrifugal hit the confessional this afternoon - Mia Culprit. As bad as his trading was today, he said he's still up for the week. Go through his disastrous trades today and you'll see how impressive his *net* is. Seriously.

His style is different than mine - to put it mildly. He's more of a momentum guy - more of a traditional daytrader. I always wanted to become that type of trader but it just never suited my disposition or my talents.

Why spend 150k on college to become a certified *clerk* in a wage slave economy when one could sit home all day, learn for free from a veteran (20 years?) trader over the Web?

Y'all will have to learn from him because there's no way I'm going to live-stream my trades.

ETF Leverage - Test Case

As we discussed before, leveraged ETFs decay in trendless markets. Against the negative of decay is the positive of some hyper-compounding when the underlying moves in one direction for several days in a row.

Consider the S&P 500 - It has fallen in 11 out of the past 12 days. Here's its price action alongside the SDS, its double short ETF.



So from February 12th's close to today, the S&P 500 index has fallen:

(835.19 - 696.33) / 835.19 = 16.62%

Therefore minimally, on a discrete one-day fall, the SDS should have appreciated by:

2 * 16.62% = 33.24%

That would bring the SDS up to:

1.3324 * 78.41 = 104.47.

As you can readily see, the SDS today closed at 109.36 so an *11 out of 12-day* dive added about 5 points in leverage.

Is it worth it?

I'm not convinced at all that the decay risk is offset by this bit of increased leverage.

I mean, 11 out of 12 days is too rare, too extreme, to provide so little boost.

Leverage, for this index/ETF anyway, will be better purchased with futures or in the option pits.

After all, if you're really sure a ticker will decline or appreciate for the next several days, then why not just grab some front month option contracts?

Related posts:

ETF Daily Compounding

More On ETF Decay

Measuring ETF Decay

Leveraged ETF Risk

Tuesday's Trading, Gone

The markets tried to rally but couldn't hold on in the final hour. That's the type of price action you'd expect in a bear market. (Yeah, it's indeed a bear!)

Yesterday's trading update - Another Manic Monday - For The Bears Anyway - talked me into buying General Electric today.

I bought at 7.67, 7.27, and again at 7.25. The POS is trading at 6.81 after-hours. Hopefully it will tank tomorrow so I can buy more.

Here's my dimwitted strategy - if it bounces quickly, I'll let it out. It will have been a *trade*. If it wallows here or crashes further, I'll just maintain that from the get-go it was an *investment*!

Seriously though, these days I won't make any substantial trade that I'm not comfortable holding for a while and averaging into.

Bear in mind that when I buy a substantial chunk of market bellwether GE, it won't entail the same risk as you or most others would. I have ZERO long exposure to the markets. And I'm talking retirement accounts and whatnot. Z E R O.

I did make one roundtrip trade today.

I bought SRS at 87.87 and sold it at 92.00.



It looks like my baby, er largest position, traded up to 99.49 today.

I did not see that apex as I was at ballet with Princess C-Nut.

I'm thinking about getting a Verizon Wireless AirCard for my laptop. Does anyone have any experience with that thing? It looks like it's $100 to buy the card and then $60 per month with a 2 year contract.

This way I can blog from ballet, karate, the library, or the park. Rightfully, Taylor should pay for it, no?



No music tomorrow. Apparently there are no Wednesday songs!

Reverse Digestion - Eating Puke

Sort of looks like your bathroom floor that time you ate a fully loaded pizza and then chased it with too much vodka, doesn't it?

It's some *healthy crap* my wife made and is eating all week long. Yeah, lunch AND dinner, all week.

Her mother, my MIL, as an anti-healthy glutton as there is, while not yet in her grave, she's spinning nonetheless. She'll probably even drop her bag of cheese doodles seeing the picture above.

I remember once, back in the summer of 1994, covering the entire coffee table of my apartment (39th and Chestnut, Philadelphia) one morning with vomit. I was astounded at how intact the green peppers from the prior night's pizza were. It was almost as if I *inhaled* the thing!

[87% chance Slow Rion emails me on the side for the recipe.]

Brown Collar Work

Almost a year ago I put up a post that covered some of the *worst jobs* on this planet.

Today I found another fit for that category:



There's another video here where it looks like the *manipulator* sticks his whole head in!

I'm sure there are worse jobs out there, so I'll keep looking.

See also - Real Estate Agent - The Second Worst Job In America Today.

Another Manic Monday - For The Bears Anyway

It certainly seems like Mondays have been treating longs cruelly, doesn't it?

Earlier today, in my intraday update, I said:

On a sharp moved down today, 300 Dow point or more, I'm going to dip my toe into the long side. I think the bears are a little too giddy these days.

Alas, we fell only 299 points. I hope I can buy (or sell) something tradeable tomorrow.

How about this one:



General Electric might be worth buying-and-forgetting-about. It closed at 7.60 today.

Though I admit I have 'LIKE NO' enthusiasm for long term bets.

If I buy it, I'll be out at 9.00 or 10.00.

Booming Sales, Busting Prices

My buddy down in Naples, FL is doing a mad business these days selling foreclosures. In fact, he's so busy he just hired two assistants.

I'm on his *list* of potential buyers so I get spammed with not only a daily listing of new bank-owned property, I occasionally get hit with his real estate propaganda.

Today he sent an email out with the header I've cropped out above.

Sales surge?

I knew exactly what was going to follow - some news story about the *volume* of transactions in SW Florida.

Yawn.

Stone-breaker that I am, I replied that he ought to check out the volume on shares of Citigroup these past few days. On Friday, it traded 1.8 billion shares! One might even say, "Sales of Citigroup shares SURGED last week!"

Of course, the one-time largest bank in the world fell to $1.20 per share.



The volume of real estate transactions only matters to, well, real estate brokers.

See also - $42 Per Square Foot and Knife Catching In Cape Coral, Florida.

A Flailing Boston Globe Resorts To Raunch

It's a well known fact that the Boston Globe, along with its parent the New York Times, and every other agitprop newspaper is imploding.

The Globe is shamelessly trying to pump up their website hits as if that will help. The other day they posted a gallery of scantily clad, contorting chicks trying out for the Patriots' cheerleading team. What journalism!



No comment section for that one. So there's no proof of feminist outrage - yet again.

Unfortunately, it's probably way too late for the Globe. They needed to sex up their content with facts; and they needed to do it long ago, before everyone moved.

There Are People Funnier Than Me

Investigation Continues Into KFC Prank Call

Employees Left Standing Naked Outside Restaurant

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- Police Friday were continuing to investigate a prank that left some Kentucky Fried Chicken employees naked outside the restaurant Thursday.

Investigators said the workers at the Manchester restaurant were victims of a mean and dangerous prank.

A manager pulled a pin for the restaurant's fire suppression system, which rained chemicals on her and others, because she was told to by a man on the phone claiming to be her boss from the corporate office.

"And then they were told by this person on the phone to go outside and disrobe and actually urinate on one another to decontaminate each other," said Lt. Peter Bartlett.

Police said that somehow, the prankster managed to keep the employees on the phone for 10 to 15 minutes. Only when someone in the parking lot called police to say a woman was standing in the doorway naked did police and fire show up, and that's when the prankster finally hung up.

Employees at the KFC didn't want to talk to reporters about what happened.

Police said that anyone receiving unusual instructions over the phone should try to verify the person's identity.

"If you're not sure about it, hang up, and make a phone call," Bartlett said. "And if you're not sure about that, call us."

Investigators said no one was injured in the prank.

Police are still trying to figure out who made the call. Many Web sites and blogs are reporting that it may have come from a man in Canada who often makes similar prank calls and posts them online.

Many thanks to Kfell for this laugh. I wish to God we had some video footage!

March 2nd - Intraday Update

Slow motion crash?




I've spent most of this morning outside shoveling about a foot of snow. I'm only about 1/3 of the way done!

I came in to cover my NASDAQ-100 short. I sold the QQQQ at 30.07 and 31.46 in the beginning of February. I just bought it back at 26.91.

So my shorts (and longs - see Friday's trades) are really getting whittled down to nothing. Too bad my money market is yielding .22%!!!

All I have left on the short side, and I mean ALL I have left is a decent sized position in SRS, a smidge of EEV, and, I almost forgot, a moderately sized short XHB position.

On a sharp moved down today, 300 Dow point or more, I'm going to dip my toe into the long side. I think the bears are a little too giddy these days.

Marginalizing Wii

Twice in the past week or so I had to endure that childish video game, Nintendo's Wii.

Once while my four-year old played it at a friend's house.

And the second time at a *Wii party* the other night with a bunch of 35-40 year old men.

Did I play either time, of course not. I sat down, enjoyed *premium beer*, and pondered societal decadence.

As a general rule of thumb, I try to stay away from the entertainment, pastimes, and toys designed to enthrall small children.







How bad do these lazy @sses look next to the nursing home 'old coots' and 'old bags' who dropped canes and walkers to stand up?

Wii fit, anyone?

Point of fact, I haven't touched a video game console since the first Nintendo (with Super Mario Bros. in 1990). That's right. I never even touched a Playstation or whatever the other popular console was back in the early-mid 90s. Nor have I ever even seen an Xbox.

So no iPod, no Facebook, and no video games. If you want be me, you're going to have to shed the frivolous amusements!

HSBC - Should Have Stayed Short!

Right now, Euro-Asian banking giant HSBC is trading at 27.85 after announcing a massive dilution and assorted other crap.

Even though, as I wrote last May, that I knew it was going to start the long, slow spiral down the toilet....I covered my short prematurely.

I bought it back at 53.74 in October. See - Stock Markets Crashing.

And I also did quite well on some puts last year.



Note - the graph will look even worse after today's plunge.

Remember, I don't read balance sheets; I don't spend millions on research like Fidelity and Ken Fisher; I don't draw lines on charts; I don't do any of that crap.

I inhale the collective wisdom of the masses. I read blogs!

Here's my prescient prediction from last year - HSBC - A Long Term Disinvestment.

Marginalizing Ken Fisher - An Unapologetic OPM Loser

Today, while treating myself to a fantastic, well-earned, solitary lunch, I was flabbergasted, shocked, and awed by the stones of Forbes' Ken Fisher and his latest column - Anticipate the V.

For those of y'all unaware, this perma-bull's perma-bull got his (investors') clock cleaned last year. He didn't just recommend stocks that *underperformed* - he picked tickers that essentially zeroed out!

In this early year issue of Forbes, it was his turn to visit the confessional and to publish his 2008 *performance*. And let's just say he undertook the task with less contrition than O.J. Simpson!



He writes:

This year has gotten off to a bad start, with the S&P 500 (as of Jan. 20) down 10.7% to 805. This just makes me more determined in my bullishness. I like stocks for 2009 precisely because they did so badly in 2008.

There is such a thing as legitimate *contrarianism*, BUT what we have here is a classic case of *denial*.

This is the type of illogic Morons use in offering *government failure* as an argument for *more government*!

Did we hit absolute bottom Nov. 20? Maybe, but I can't be sure; no one can be sure when a bear market is really over. Those who think they have some formula for precisely calling bottoms are fools. What I am pretty sure of is this: When the market rebounds, a lot of its gains will take place in a very short span (like two months or less), and people who are too cautious will miss most of these gains.

Bottom-callers? Who are these strawmen exactly?

This is really just cover for Ken to trot out the stock money-manager BS sales pitch....

"Just keep buying, every month, so that I have predictable skim revenues. Just keep dreaming thinking about the long run. In fact, don't even look at your statements. Thanks."

By the way, a mere month after the ink on this column dried, both the Dow and the S&P 500 have breached their November 20th lows.

Bear markets have been typically followed by bull markets in a V-shaped pattern. The steeper and bigger the decline, the sharper and bigger the subsequent bull move. The few exceptions to this pattern in the past century have involved the emergence of completely different bad forces than the ones that created and contributed to the bear market.

Errrrr, what about Japan?



First of all, Ken predicted a year ago, that "America should do well in 2008". Read his 2008 forecast - We're Too Gloomy and recall that the market dropped a whopping 38.5% last year.

Secondly, Ken, after getting his *forecast* totally wrong, displayed a complete ignorance of why the market fell apart. For example, he recommended Citgroup at 25.00 which promptly imploded (now 1.50); then with the banking sector's problems even better advertised, he STILL pumped Bank of America at 34.00 late in the year. (BAC traded 2.51 two weeks ago!).

So even though he couldn't foresee or even identify last year's *bad forces* while they were smacking him in the face, Ken arrogantly brushes off the risk of any new ones coming down the road. He's unbelievably self-unconscious!

How were my results last year? In line with the market's--which is to say, not good. Starting with 1996, Forbes' statistics department has prepared an annual accounting of each stock-picking columnist's picks versus the S&P 500. Over those 13 years my column has lagged the S&P 500 three times, and 2008 was one of them. The others were 1997 and 2002.

His long term record? I thought this column was about his 2008 *performance*?

Watch, the hair-splitting has only just begun:

During 2008 I recommended 57 stocks. Equal money in each of my picks when first published less a 1% haircut for transaction costs would have lagged equal amounts in the S&P 500 by 1.1 percentage points (without a commission haircut).

So what exactly was that percentage-return that he lagged by a mere 1.1% return?

Of course he won't say. You see, due to the way Forbes calculates this number (i.e. equal amounts invested in the S&P 500), his gross percentage return could have been even grosser than the 38.5% annual drop in the S&P 500 index (a benchmark number which he conveniently leaves entirely out of his column). I'm sure if it was better, he'd have mentioned it three times - at least. Note John Rogers posted the full data in his mea culpa.



More hair-splitting:

That lag came from the first column (Jan. 28), which had my two worst stocks. AIG collapsed 97% because of losses on credit default swaps at a time when accounting standards demanded quicker recognition of such losses. Brazil's Aracruz Cellulose lost 84% as demand for its pulp shrank in the face of recession.

My picks were a hair ahead of the S&P until Dec. 29, when Rohm & Haas shriveled amid fears (unfounded, it now seems) that Dow Chemical (nyse: DOW - news - people ) might not complete its takeover of this company. Despite this setback, Rohm & Haas was my best pick, up 36%. Other double-digit winners for me last year were NTT Docomo, the Japanese phone company; Logitech International (nasdaq: LOGI - news - people ), a maker of cordless pc devices in Switzerland; Repsol, the Spanish oil company; and Travelers, Wal-Mart (nyse: WMT - news - people ) and John Wiley & Sons.

In an overall down-40% year, he wants to highlight his double-digit winners? Is he freakin' sick? Does he think his readers and investors are Morons?

And, how about him using the expression *a hair ahead*?

Hah! I guess even he admits to the hair-splitting.

So IF you ignore his first worst pick - AIG - and IF you ignore a DECEMBER 29TH DOWNTICK in ROH, but one of HIS 57(!) REC's.....then he would have gained a full percent back and.....[drum roll].....tracked the market!!!

Is that what he's paid to do? Track the market????

Ken, down 38.5% or 40%....WTF is the difference?

You bloody-well killed your investors!

The very least you can do is admit YOU were wrong - and apologize.

I also mentioned Ken Fisher back in November in - Yee Haw!!! - Riding the Wall Street Bull.