www.zenbu.com

"It is understandably difficult to maintain a long-term view when, faced with the penalties for poor short-term performance, the long-term view may well be from the unemployment line."
Seth Klarman

Overheard: "Bear Market? Do they sell bears?"

Indirectly from Travis:

Once upon a time in a village, a man appeared and announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for $10 each. The villagers seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest, and started catching them. The man bought thousands at $10 and as supply started to diminish, the villagers stopped their effort. He further announced that he would now buy at $20. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again.

Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to their farms. The bid increased to $25 each and the supply of monkeys became so little that it was an effort to even see a monkey, let alone catch it!

http://www.danielstrading.com/resources/education/lessons/hand-signals.php

I asked my friend's daughter what she wanted to be when she grows up.

She said she wanted to be Prime Minister some day.

Both her parents, Labour supporters, were there, so I asked her, "If you were the Prime Minister what would be the first thing you would do?" She replied, "I would give food and housing to the poor and all the people on benefits." Her Parents beamed and said, "Welcome to the Labour Party!"

"What a worthy goal!" I told her , and continued, "But you do not have to wait until you are Prime Minister to do that. You can come over to my house, cut the grass, do the weeding, sweep my drive and I will pay you £25. Then I'll take you over to the homeless man who stands in front of the shops. You can give him £25 to use toward food and housing."

http://www.economist.com/node/18529721

From The Economist:

http://xkcd.com/radiation/

http://fleep.com/earthquake/

http://www.japanquakemap.com/

A Thing of Mayo

I really should have written one of these to myself years ago. I really should still write one now.

There is so much good information and humor in here that quoting it all would exceed fair use.

"Long ago, Charlie laid out his strongest ambition: “All I want to know is where I’m going to die, so I’ll never go there.” That bit of wisdom was inspired by Jacobi, the great Prussian mathematician, who counseled “Invert, always invert” as an aid to solving difficult problems. (I can report as well that this inversion approach works on a less lofty level: Sing a country song in reverse, and you will quickly recover your car, house and wife.)"

SURGEONS GENERAL WARNING: Shorting this market has been determined to cause Tourette’s Syndrome in otherwise healthy traders.