Briefly Speaking

日期:2014/05/21

1. Marion Tinsley, the greatest checker player of all time, had a favorite proverb of Wiswell's: "Moves that disturb your position the least, disturb your opponent the most. I believe it has a wide application in all games, and markets. I mentioned it to my new friend Ken Roman and he immediately said, "that's exactly what General Foods failed to consider".

2. One is reviewing the invaluable and unique cache of 10,000 proverbs that Wiswell faithfully wrote for me over a 20 year period, 20 to 40 a week. They are magnificent and timeless. It is unfortunate that few except kids play checkers anymore in the US, and that the British Empire where checkers was king has faded, as they would make an invaluable contribution to posterity.



I pick out one I like at random from the first of four 200 page books of them I have: "after you lose a tough game, there is only one thing to do: set them up and start all over again". Right below it is: "No master is so great that he has never lost, and will not lose again" and "the player who records his losses today won't repeat them tomorrow" and "the player who never takes a chance may be taking the biggest chance of all".

3. Crude and Gold are in a negative feedback loop with each other as are so many other pairs of markets. Does anyone agree with me that 95% of TV advertising is done for entertainment and not selling, and that the worst commercials are those of Geico which has the same superior, supercilious contempt for its viewers that the sage himself has for anyone else trying to improve his lot or make a fee in the world.

4. It is difficult to maintain one's equanimity on days that the Fed minutes are released knowing that the minutes are distributed to 100 important bank executives and public relations firms and other flexions on a "need to know" basis hours before it's released to the public. At least one can bite into the negative serial correlation that pervades such releases.

5. The movie "The Lunch Box" contains a beautiful depiction of food distribution methods in India. "Harvard studied it and found it totally efficient and flawless". And a beautiful literary romance adds to the poignancy.

6. The play "Act One" currently at Lincoln Center has an uplifting theme and heroic view of mankind that is worthy of the 5 successors that dominated musical theater for the next 30 years, Kaufmann, Rogers, Hammerstein, Hart, and Loesser. As Hammerstein said, "I never could write anything that didn't have a positive and optimistic view of humanity in it".

7. Corn and crude has been bouncing around the round numbers like the old ping pong matches where the women sometimes played a point that lasted 30 minutes, during which Marty Riessman could start and finish 3 of 5 match before the women finished the first point.

8. The Knicks will never rise about 500 in the standing until they get rid of the worst player in the league, JR Smith, who has an unholy friendship with Melo that exacerbates the weaknesses of both.

9. When you trade over night, if they give you a small profit, you would have made 5 times as much if you held to the close.