March 06, 2004
With blue towels, in honor of Martha
Heard this morning that Martha was convicted on four counts. What ever happened to those Enron guys? What ever happened to the traitor who outed Valerie Plame?
Note: I have been protecting the interior of my brain from outrage for the time being, (organdy curtains and tulips only) while I'm fooling around with that fourth dimension stuff. My exposure to the latest is limited to ten minutes on NPR at 5AM while I'm waking up, whatever blog visiting I do, and chatting with my friends who read editorials in the Times. Be assured, I have not given up voting.
Back to Martha. I don't think I mentioned that I was a stock trader/broker in one of my iterations, nigh on many years ago. (So was Martha, I bet she obsesses about her hair too). I brokered so many years ago that there were no computers and the pink sheets were really paper. An inch wide, longer than legal, stapled together stack of pink paper, with teeny tiny stock quotes for the over the counter market, arrived every morning. (Really, this is like my mother telling about the days before there were telephones or something. I'm old enough to be my mother, horrors!)
If you wanted to buy or sell a stock that was traded over the counter, you made a phone call to one of several brokerage firms who were making a market in that stock. I was the person on the other end of the line that made the trades for our little company. I wore a green visor (just spent a half hour looking for an image of Bob Cratchit at his desk with visor and sleeve garters, to no avail. Oh well, you'll just have to use your imagination). I actually wore mini skirts, so you can guess the era.
The real point of this is that insider trading is a slippery thing. If you are making a market in a stock, or if you have wealthy customers who are all excited, and there is a sudden flurry of activity around a certain item, you know somebody probably knows something about something you don't know about. You are sometimes tempted to ride the wave. I forget just what the limitations to riding the wave were in the olden days. I was a real girl scout, though. I only bought mutual funds.
Let me say one more thing about being a stockbroker/trader. Mention your occupation at a party, and they're all over you, pleading for a hot tip, begging for your number--- perhaps it was the mini skirt. (This is in contrast to working in a psychological area, where those at a party look at you suspiciously, ask if you can read their mind, and avoid you when you say, "Yes").
Stocks sell themselves. The thing I hated about being a stockbroker, in addition to all of those numbers, was when the market fell apart. I felt bad. All those people who twisted my arm for hot tips, losing money because of me. Not a profession for an empath. It was fun for a few years in a bull market, but I high tailed it back to school when the market turned around.
Here's my stockbroker platitude. "Be a bull, be a bear, but never be a pig".
Want to see some great photos Be persistant, they're a bit buried, but it's worth the hunt.
Look what I found when googling Underlying Reality-- advice from an old hand.
Photo note: I seem to have a penchant for shooting down corridors, hallways and alleys. I will have to watch that.