whirl wind

/ 2008-10-04 / 1223165891 / @c_p_g /

The Dow was up 300 or so "on the bailout expectations." Then the vote came, everyone on the floor watched, it passed, and then the Dow sank 400+. Nice.

The Cubs were favored on Tradesports to win it all coming into the playoffs. Right now they're 5% bid - the Red Sox are trading around 30%. Even down 0-2 right now they're about 11% to win the pennant and 19% to win the series, and 55% to win tonight.

On Friday at the BOT futures-style Cub's playoff win contracts traded between 1.25 and 2 (buyer pays contract in dollars in exchange for $1 paid back for each Cub's win). Two things happen with Chicago sports betting - people usually overpay for the home team (overconfidence) and sometimes they don't mind the emotional hedge and paying out if their teams happen to win (which is why there are sellers at 1.25).

And speaking of Intrade related stuffs, they've listed some binary options on their most popular contracts - namely the polical/presidentials. There's no liquidity and no one trading them so it there's no way to guage accurately the implied volatility of the presidential contracts.

Harry's been getting misc. gigs - including one where they painted him up like a Picaso. See below.

ooOO

/ 2008-10-01 / 1222917508 / @c_p_g /

Ann Arbor highlights:

"Banana" puking in row 57 of section 26 during what would become Michigan's second biggest comeback; "largest U-M combeback in Michigan Stadium's 500-game history"
Crew.
Cafe Habana (very good) and Real Seafood Co (also very good).
Borrowing the Raptor swing. Forever.
Family stuff: The Tigers losing a Classic 2008 game (late) and a poor shwag day; sailing.

Other:

Both Chicago teams are in the playoffs at the same time for the first time in 102 years.
The VIX closed about 40. Everyone in pop-finance quotes it - no one can explain it (or no one tries to).
The Cubbies lost game 1 - Wrigleyville was in a depressed but "Just the first game" mood.
VP debate airs tomorrow.

research program

/ 2008-09-27 / 1222531912 / @braden's house /

If Amtrak is at all consistent, it's that they're consistently late. And always odd excuses: track fires and freight trains in the way and signal lights not working and sleeping conductors. You would think that since we're dealing with tracks and schedules that they'd be able to get people to their destinations on time.

We rolled in a bit before 1am last night - Jim, Jeremy, Brian and I hung out on Jim's roof after taking a little tour of the ameteur hour that is bar closing time in AA. Jeremy and I are going to watch Michigan likely pickup their third loss against Wisconsin and Harry's in town this evening. Wisconsin is 65% to win and the spread is about 6pts on Tradesports.

Snooze:

Todd Jones has had enough. As nice as he is, so have I... '"So this is it," Jones wrote in this week's magazine. "If you're a Tigers fan, I'll never stress you out again. If you're not a Tigers fan, you'll never have me as your ace in the hole, convinced I'll blow a lead against your team."'
Obama is back up to 56% to win the presidency on Intrade.
I missed the debate.

too many times before

/ 2008-09-21 / 1222011875 / @c_p_g /

Man on Wire had the highest rating of all of the indie flicks available at Century City this weekend (namely: 100%). It's about Philippe Petit and his crew tackling the project of tightrope walking between the WTC towers. It seemed a little longer than it should have been, but it was different and entertaining. 3.75 of 5 over here.

There's a giant wikipedia page on the subprime mortgage crisis. It's too long to focus through, so I'll put up some quotes from the eerily similar Panic of 1907:

"Its primary cause was a retraction of loans by some banks that began in New York City and soon spread across the nation, leading to the closings of banks and businesses."
"The panic was sparked after an attempt to corner the market in a copper company collapsed in October. The failure of the corner prompted runs on banks that had loaned money for the scheme. This spread to affiliated banks and trusts, leading to the downfall of the Knickerbocker Trust Company, New York's third largest trust company, a week later."
"At the time the United States had no central bank to provide liquidity. The panic may have been worse if not for the intervention of New York's most famous banker J.P. Morgan, who convinced other bankers in the city to provide a backstop for the crisis."

Fed to Provide $85 Billion Bridge Loan to AIG: Source

/ 2008-09-16 / 1221610389 / @c_p_g /

Y! Finance apparently isn't equipped to handle 1B+ volume days. AIG is showing up with a volume today of "1230,089,283" right now. As the world comes to an end: another one bites the dust.

Oh the agony!

/ 2008-09-15 / 1221534193 / @c_p_g /

I spoke briefly with a LEHman girl on the bus this morning. She wasn't sure what was to become of the situation. We're still above

Bonds rose 128 ticks and then some when all was over. A normal "big" day is plus/minus 32 ticks or more.
Dow down 500, S&P 59 and the Nasdaq 80.
The VIX had some real plus-30 prints (not just on an open) for the first time in a while.

swing

/ 2008-09-15 / 1221453218 / @c_p_g /

Tropical depression Ike made for an entire weekend of rain. The White Sox maybe wanted as many people in the stadium as possible for ESPN Sunday Night baseball - people with tickets to either of yesterday or today's games were pushed to come to what became a pure doubleheader. Tina and I went to the last few innings of the first and most of the second. Live by the grand slam, die by the grand slam - there's always next year.

Links:

The Cubbies' Zambrano threw a no-no against Houston in Milwaukee. First Cubs no-no since 1972.
The financial world continues to fall apart: BoA to buy ML for $44B, the death of Lehman, and bonds up 2 points.
Lions' rollercoaster.

but you don't know how

/ 2008-09-11 / 1221186922 / @c_p_g /

Harry gave sixteen hours warning before he came for the night on Tuesday. After work all of the cool computer science majors from a few of the trading firms - and Harry - got together at Cactus for $5 Blue Moon pitchers. And after this we went to Jen's for the new Entourage.

Matt Sklut only gave five and half hours warning - he showed up after the close yesterday. Through our connections, Tina and I had passes to a pre-screening of Righteous Kill (Pacino, DeNiro). Unfortunately Matt got on the 135 rather than the 156 and totally smashed my dreams of the prescreening (something I much enjoy). So Tina and Alina went while the boys drank beer over South Park.

To keep the streak alive Tina has four former roommates visiting for the weekend showing up tomorrow.

Links:

LEH has all but died. CNBC has their S&P, Dow, and Oil tickers going on the top of the screen - today they added LEH.
Palin says she's ready to be president. God help us.

name of

/ 2008-09-08 / 1220914891 / @c_p_g /

Another dinner rotation - we did the Rich Bayless Jicama Salad with Watercress, Romaine and Lime-Cilantro dressing and finished with Tomatillo-Sauced enchiladas with spinach and mushrooms. Success.

Links:

UAL appeared to print $0.01 and halted after an accidental republishing of a 6-yr-old bancrupcy story spooked traders.
Some are fearful that the new Large Hadron Collider is going to end humanity.
Pariots weren't prepared for an injury to Brady. No shit.

McCain has gained a lot of ground in the political/election markets on InTrade:

make a statement

/ 2008-09-07 / 1220827178 / @c_p_g /

If a Conumer Reports type publication were to do a piece on cable and satellite TV companies and services, it might read something like: Comcast is expensive and slow; DirecTV is flakey on their commitments; Dish Network is known for lying. You'd have to choose from the least-worst option.

Our shortened story: DirecTV bailed for weather reasons on our first install and mucked up our second appointment. Comcast couldn't install for two weeks (incredible). DirecTV promised a Sunday morning install and then called to say they don't do Sunday installs. Crazy.

Anyway. Went to Flugtag with Joel and Nan yesterday. It was hyped up and came out so-so. There were what appeared to be way-too-many people there for such a small stage event. But they had monitors for those who couldn't see.

li

/ 2008-09-06 / 1220719423 / @c_p_g /

The Cubbies have hit a rough patch. They're following a seven game winning streak with a sixer on the losing side. The confidence in a lot of fans is starting to crack just a bit. I went to Tuesday night's game with Therese & Co. and Wednesday night's with SIG & Co. I got some details from a rooftop operator:

A standard 17% of the per-head fee goes to the Cubs.
Colder months go for less, but they sell out every game.
Average $125/head * 125 seats * 82 games makes for about $1.3mm in revenue.
Approximately 1/2 of the revenue is profit (includes Cubbies payoff).

It's difficult to estimate how many rooftop seats there are around Wrigley's outfield - maybe around 2,000 or so. If they average $110 per head every game the Cubs generate about $3mm in additional revenue.

I'm also told it's about a $10mm investment to buy a place and build out the rooftop for public consumption. If you discount twenty years of revenue it looks like a nice investment. But with the Cubs on the block right now (for sale) there's some risk (albeit low) of them moving from Wrigley and a real risk of them playing elsewhere for a year for Wrigley renovations.

Vic and K-Rib were in town last weekend. Below is from Vic's flickr collection - I taught him the blur.

ebc fee

/ 2008-08-31 / 1220238971 / @c_p_g /

Multiple people mentioned the soon-to-come Giant Wolverine that would show up at Duffy's for gametime. He did. And sadly, we lost. To the start of another long season...

When the price is set

/ 2008-08-28 / 1219967612 / @philly /

I had some opportunities to use the camera for constructive purposes but ran out of batteries on my first use. Said use can be seen below.

What I missed (pictures): SIG Night at the Ballpark. The company took what appeared to be about 350-700 employees to the left field deck for the Phillies-Mets game. For a game I don't care about it was exciting - both teams are vying for first place in the NL East.

I stole this mashed thought from an editorial in today's USA Today: Who'd of thought we'd see instant replay in baseball and the first African American nomination by a major party this quickly?

Tomorrow: an evening flight back to the Windy City.

drawing dead

/ 2008-08-24 / 1219629637 / @philly /

I have been reluctant to tote my camera around, sadly. Last night a few of us went to Jim's Steaks (insert cool kitchen photo here) at around 10:30p. There was exactly a forty-five minute line that snaked around the building for "the finest quality steaks and hoagies in Philadelphia."

We saw the Phillies beat the Dodgers yesterday afternoon (9-2). Both teams are very much in their respective races - it was a pretty good time. The stadium is so-so - it backdrops to so-so downtown Philadelphia. And speaking of the team with the least original team name in all of major league sports, their mascot is the Phanatic: "A fat furry green creature with a cylindrical beak containing a tongue that sticks out...".

good example of what NOT to have online

/ 2008-08-21 / 1219352713 / @philly /

Some facts about Mike Sklut:

Born: Berkeley, CA
Favorite HS moment: Taking the AC Transit home from practice and picking up the SF Examiner off the floor of the bus and seeing a huge picture of myself vs. De La Salle on the front of the sports section.
Interests/Hobbies: Bay Area Sports teams, taking my 2 1/2 year old daughter to the park.

I got a message from a friend concerned about images that were Googling up under his name posted on Vafrous some time ago. Here's the more popular Mike Sklut on the web. And here's an article he wrote. He seems alright.

I'm in Philly for this week and next doing career related stuffs. My non-business highlight so far has been playing this year's alleged winner of the World Series of Rock-paper-scissors in a best of one style winner-takes-all-[bragging rights] tournament. And I lost.

Mini archives

2008

On the daily

Friends, Colleagues

Financial

Bored