In 1994, just a few months into our family getting our first television, Miss Universe was playing on Star TV, and I still remember as if it were yesterday, how I watched with my jaw on the floor, my eyes unblinking, sighing every two minutes and feeling hopelessly in love with these fairy-like women walking in dazzling gowns to some angelic melody.

The thing about the 1994 show was that, each of the women visually represented her country, each woman was uniquely different in her mannerisms and her bone structure that you could remember who each was in a lineup, and finally each one seemed more folk-princess-like than global-model-like. The 2010 show, on the contrary is too perfect and consequently monotonous – put this way, every woman was about the same age (23-24), exact same height (5’10), i can bet the same weight give or take 2 lbs, the exact same waist (some showing a little more rib than others), exact same hair style and length (2 inches below shoulder), and even almost the exact same tan (pale white is no longer vogue), very similar cheek structures, and equally pretty facial features. In fact the similarities were so striking that a Photoshop amateur could put all their faces on one’s torso with no loss of quality. I kept asking myself how the judges quantify their perception of this perfectness to two decimal places so casually.

Think of it, this is exactly what happens to competitions over time, the winning margins tend to zero. The 500th of a second lead in the butterfly, the winning soccer goal aimed at the exact top right corner, stretching the world record by a tenth of the second in the 100m. I suppose the coaches of the Miss Universe too, have all honed their formulas over time and have come on top with more or less the same equation and hence the near-equally-perfect contestants.

If this is competition now, I can’t even imagine how Miss Universe would be in say, 30 years. There will be no choice but to replace human judges with algorithms.

In any case, I think the mosque/cultural center would have gotten built quietly without the fanfare were it not for a very small group of narrow-minded bigots, who are trying to instigate the emotions of 9/11 families almost ten years after the incident. Its amazing how much fear and loathing some of these have of people of a different faith. I come from a country where there are 160 million Muslim people compared to the paltry 3 million in the United States. And while there are occasional disagreements between the Hindus and the Muslims, and the same, once every few years, get escalated to deadly riots through devious politics, in my twenty years of life in India, I have never once heard of anybody feel threatened or fearful of Muslim people. Heard somewhere that loathe begets loathe; and maybe that is why there is always this long standing but meticulously disguised distrust between the general American Christian people and the Muslim people. Maybe seeing so many people of non-Christian origin immigrating in droves to this country is inevitably causing the old-timers to feel a little fearful. Just like most Mumbaiites felt when the Biharis invaded their beloved town seeking greener pastures. Or when Australians realized that their immigrant friends are doing better than themselves. I suppose we’ll just wait it out, the future will be too atheistic to care.

Therein starts the dilemma, what do slackers do when they are given a choice of adopting a cat or a dog. On one end, they like it when other beings (lets just say dogs for now) lick their face and shower them with sloppy kisses for doing next to nothing. On the flip side, they hate it when they are burdened with even a meager chore that they can’t write-off (say walking a dog every twice a day).

Someone once said, ‘with great powerlessness comes great irresponsibility’.  Not exactly, but what’s to stop me from assuming a double negative is not as true as a single positive. And with that powerlessness bestowed on me, I am but unequivocally inclined to say that I would prefer a cat for it embodies everything I stand for. For one, cats don’t give a shit; and while however much the rest of the world wants to marginalize such an attitude, that is eventually the holy grail of “slackerism”. With just that one shell in my shotgun, I embarked on a six-month propaganda mission to convince my “doer” wife why cats are best for the both of us. Not because I don’t like dogs, but because the slacker in me won’t allow me to be any less irresponsible than I already am. But then, by volunteering to clear the litter, I have already killed a little bit of that slacker in me. The things I have to do. If only logic had a part in them.

I think I am too used to it, where I can wake up every single day and say to myself, what am I going to create today that is going to help somebody do their job, that is going to awe somebody, that is going to make somebody smile. If I was getting paid amply even to make simple widgets, I would have detested such a profession; for that I thank the gods that have smiled onto me and bestowed me the good fortune of not having to do anything repetitive.

I have seldom had a hard time explaining to my reports how redoing something from scratch somehow helps in the bigger picture. I can’t even comprehend how my accountant friend does the same double accounting year after year without ever complaining. Maybe its just that every person is different, and just like every person seeks a different glee, he obtains fulfillment through different means too. And if it is fulfillment that we are all seeking, I have to wonder, is there a fits-all standard that we can measure against, or is it just each one of us telling ourselves to be content with what we have, for the downside could be a lot more unwelcome.

In either case, I can’t help but smile at my good fortune today. For there is nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing that compares, when you can do a job where people will come to you and say, “thanks” or “dude, that rocks”, ever so often, and you can go home and wallow in that warm fuzzy feeling and never have to look back and wonder, “what if I was goddamn accountant?”.

And all this was after a pretty grounding talk by a professor at school who had studied individual traders over years in Taiwan and in the end concluded that individuals lose an average of 5% over their trading lifetime (found the paper, here it is). If that were true, shouldn’t the losses of most day traders be a deterrent to new entrants? Yet, there are still hoards of new traders who are getting into the market thinking that they have that extra sauce that nobody else inherited. In reality, I believe that this attitude is no different than that of gamblers who are clearly aware of the advantage the house always has, and yet are so immensely confident in their skill that they are willing to let their emotion blind the simple truth and risk it all anyway.

Lets not get caught up in metaphors, lets see the underlying economics. Day traders are betting on short-term volatility, that they are going to be on the right side when the prices move. However, there is a problem with short-term bets – first, short term movements are not based on infinitesimally small chunks of new information that can be exploited, instead they are based on the collective impact of the thousands of trading actions undertaken by the hundreds of thousands of larger market players, and subsequently, short term trend based trading is on an average random at best. Second, if there were delays in the assimilation of new information into the price of a financial instrument, there is absolutely no way on earth, an individual investor will be the one making that correction. Simply, there are too many more resourceful human and machine participants with near-infinite computational and analytical resources that are trading on not just every iota of new information but also based on every possible correlation that new information might have with any pre-existing knowledge.

Finally, the question that I really asked myself was, what is the economic value of a day trader? I understand the economic value of financial institutions, that is to help in the efficient allocation of capital among the deserving firms in the market. But what of the individuals, are their day to day trading activities helping in this efficient allocation process? Maybe. One one hand, there is a possibility that individual traders as a group are simply fine tuning this allocation process that is largely done by the larger institutions. But on the other hand, there is a fairly strong academic opinion that day traders, because of their non-collective decision making are simply creating random noise as a whole that simply does not add any economic value to the market. I know for a fact that there are several stars in the day trading world, the ones that made millions out of nothing, and somehow end up selling their so-called secrets in deceptively overpriced seminars and tapes that are advertised in the wee hours of the night. They are there, and the worst part is that they make a difference, just like there are those few that strike the progressive jackpots in Reno and raise the hopes of everyone around them. And while I have nothing against people who make a living in this profession, it is only my personal perspective that individuals involved in short-term trading are no different than professional gamblers, who are trying to get a small cut from an extremely profitable industry. However, I do believe that long and medium term investment based on fundamental analysis, even by individuals, does create economic value and actually influences market prices.

At the end of the day, I like to remind myself that there is no free ride, there is no sense of satisfaction to be had in a profession that is driven solely by personal greed, and a job that possibly adds zero economic value to society. Philosophy aside, why would I waste my money betting in a random and fickle market, where my overall chances of making money are less than 1%, when the odds of winning by playing black or red in roulette is a solid 48.5%.

I just booked a bunch of more flights and hotels, and realized, I have never traveled to so many places in one year.  So, I figured, while I am still getting over the inertia to write again, I will use this blog as a travel journal. Here is where I have been in the first three months, and this is where we are heading in the next three months.

Jan 17th – Chicago

Jan 23rd – Chicago

Feb 5th – Chicago

Feb 14th – Vegas

Mar 5th – Chicago

Mar 19th – Paso Robles

Apr 4th – Irvine

Apr 24th – San Diego

May 7th – Chicago

May 14th – Maui

May 28th – Boston

Jun 19th – Vancouver

Jul 4th – Houston

Regardless, we did manage to storm through the somewhat rainy somewhat chilly Chicago weather to actually go see the parade. It never ceases to amaze me how the city can pull something like that so easily, such chaos that is, and so organized was that presentation of chaos. The Guinness might have had something to do with it, but somehow every Irish guy, dame and brat from every nook of the mid-west was there, touting their wares, whether bagpipes or some homemade float, they were there. So many random greenish people walking everywhere, some heading to the parade, some escaping it, the chaos as well as the overreaching show of pride was inescapable. That we can celebrate the heritage of a full ten percent of the country’s people with so much revelry is a show of celebration that the majority embraces.

After the parade, I had the fortune to taste some of my dame’s homemade spicy pasta, and by jove was it sumptuous. Reminded me yet one more time how fortunate I am that my wife is dexterous enough to embrace something so non-desi and come out on top. Like there wasn’t enough action for a weekend, I finished all seven of our tax returns the same day, thanks to a miraculous product called turbotax. Gone are those days when I was paying hundreds of my sweat-and-blood dollars to tax consultants, turbotax definitely stands out as one those products that I deeply admire and envy. And so was this good, productive and gleeful weekend, and so I raise one to my Irish brothers.

Sometimes we tell ourselves to be happy,

Sometimes we believe in the future and take everything in the present in stride,

Sometimes we hate that we have become believers,

Sometimes we want to sacrifice our present for the future,

Sometimes we just want to be in the future and forget the past,

Sometimes we want to think all iz well,

Sometimes we want to think all iz in the well,

Sometimes we just need that shoulder,

Sometimes we just want to hit ourselves on that boulder,

Sometimes we need hope,

Sometimes we need pain,

Sometimes we we hate the absurdity,

Sometimes we want to embrace the futility,

Sometimes we ask for too much,

Sometimes we assume too much,

Sometimes we assume that there is meaning the implicit,

Sometimes we forget to put forth the explicit,

Sometimes we indulge ourselves in the oblivious,

Sometimes we try to escape the obvious,

Sometimes we make melodies from the mundane,

Sometimes we run away from the bane,

Sometimes we wish for simpler times,

Other times we just want to wish away the sometimes.

Once was a Dude. Dude lived in his own world. Dude was unkempt. Dude was lazy. Dude was too busy marking merry with other Dudes. Also Dude was in constant denial. Dude thought no lady could stand him.

Then came Lady. Lady was perfect.Lady was opposite of Dude. Lady was exactly same as Dude. Lady worked hard. Lady did chores. Lady loved little things. Lady called relatives and friends in weekends. Lady was smart. Lady was simple. Lady was daunting.

Dude was confused. Dude did what he does best. Dude was fellow in Worldwide Association of Sporadically Toothless Entities (aka WASTE Fellow). Dude pondered. Dude didn’t want to be bothered in his merriment.

Dude finally gave up. Dude could not resist Lady. Dude was spellbound by Lady. Dude did romantic things. Dude bought flowers for Lady. Thrice. Dude sneaked off to show her around town. Dude felt at ease with Lady. Dude’s daddy already cross-examined and approved. Dude was uneasy.

Dude finally confessed love on top of tall building. Lady impressed. Dude on winning streak. Dude took Lady for fancy dinner. Dude used last of credit to buy ring for Lady. Dude got lucky break and had Lady’s attention at beach on full moon night. Dude dropped on his knees. Dude not responsible for crater. Dude proposed to Lady. Lady Happy. Dude Happy.

Lady fall in love. Lady write letter on napkin. Dude totally impressed. Dude married Lady on September 4. Lady oraganized grand reception. Dude told jokes. Lady dressed to kill. Dude killed buffet. Family Happy.

Dude getting married soon. Dude anxious. Dude not anxious. Dude is master of ceremonies. Lady heavy planning. Dude will try to follow lady. You come to dude marriage. You enjoy. Dude enjoy. We all enjoy.

For years, I needed a control variable, one that puts me in place, that gives me some inkling of a border between normal and excess, one that grounds me deep down into the chasm called reality, and now I am happy that I finally found it. And while I might have been the big bad wolf for most of my public life, I think that finally there are people that see that I have a little more to offer than goofball jokes, unneeded rants and frivolous exploits. I have lived for too long in big minutes and small victories, and now I finally get the chance to relish the small seconds and big victories.

So here’s to change. Here’s to love. Here’s to my amazing luck and incredible fortune. Cheers.