Haiku - Oil

The topic of this haiku is inspired by President Obama's decision to allow oil drilling in new areas of the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic Ocean. Story here. I think the tone of this haiku is a bit liberal, and if you know me, then it doesn't reconcile with what you do know. Or thought you knew. No, just kidding. I apologize for the inconsistency. I only wrote it tongue-in-cheek.

Bye pretty shoreline

Oil drilling now good to go

Onward! For progress!

-JDW

Haiku - Money Honey

I've watched a lot of CNBC in my short (ish) life and so I have witnessed the Jeff Van Gundy-like aging transformation of "The Squak Box's" Maria Bartiromo. So when Dealbreaker ran this article, I felt my muse calling me so I wrote a haiku about her. This one has a joker-ish feel to it.

The Money Honey,

Maria Bartiromo,

why not so hot now?

-JDW

4 easy steps to becoming a billionaire

A hilariously tongue-in-cheek archival post from Long or Short Capital:

1. Take outrageous risks with extremely high upside.
2. Be the 1 out of 500 million for whom it pans out. This one is key so focus on it.
3. Attribute your wealth creation to your own hard work, your own genius and the power of your business plan. Be sure to stress how your wealth was singularly made possible by your unique endowment of elbow grease, street smarts, common sense, all of which your competitors obviously lacked (proven by how poor they are compared to you).
4. Buy a mega yacht and/or athletic team.

Good stuff. I'm with the author, and Nassim Taleb, in viewing the predominance of luck as the most underappreciated factor in determining success.

Haiku - Options Lesson

My gains are plenty

lock them in with a collar

limits the upside.

-JDW

Haiku - Lehman

I've been stuck writing haiku revolving around topics in the news lately:

Tool to hide losses,

Lehman's use was just exposed,

repo 105.

-JDW

Haiku - $GOOG

Hooray for Google!

I am fully behind you.

Censorship is wrong.

-JDW

My periodical reading list

I think it would be fun, for posterity's sake, to catalog the amount of non-book reading that I do daily/weekly/monthly. I'll start with monthly magazines: Wired, Fortune, and a new, online, options-oriented journal Expiring Monthly. Weekly I read the Economist. And on a day to day basis I start off on the train with the Wall Street Journal, then ease into a blog roll that includes: Abnormal Returns, Marginal Revolution, The Reformed Broker, The Big Picture, Felix Salmon, Calculated Risk, Freakonomics, Ben Casnocha, Greg Mankiw, and for fun, Dealbreaker. One important thing that I have learned since I developed this line-up is that it has become easier and faster to read all the blogs that I've listed as I have become accustomed with the authors' writing.
-JDW

Haiku - Line Item

Fav P & L line?

MBAs love EBITDA

For me, gross profit.

-JDW

It's actually net income excluding extraordinary items, but that is twelve syllables and this is a haiku.

Haiku - In the News

Today's headline news:

Google defies Chinese state -

no censored searches.

Oh, healthcare reform,

divider of my country,

will you improve things?

-JDW

Goals - the cornerstone of achievement

I would characterize myself as goal-oriented, but I have a bad history of not following through with goals that I haven’t written down. In an effort to expect more accomplishments out of myself, this is my attempt to increase my level of success by not only writing them down but publishing them online. I’ve divided my list of goals into three categories according to the length of time that they segment into. Short represents the upcoming weeks to two years, medium best describes a period of time from two to seven years out, and long term is anything beyond that point.
In no particular order, my short term goals are:

§ Pass the CAIA Level 1 exam (September 2010), pass the Level 2 exam (March 2011).
§ In October, repeat being awarded the largest bonus possible per my grade level.
§ Find and start playing on a 4.0/4.5 tennis team.
§ Read the Intelligent Investor – a book that I have recommended to multiple people but that I have been intimidated to read. Also, I have a reluctance to read substantial books because I don’t want them to be finished and ask, “that was it?”
§ Plan and take my girlfriend on a vacation worthy of her…
§ In May, travel to Omaha for the annual Berkshire shareholder meeting.
§ Pass 10 Twitter followers – I am currently sitting at a very robust 1, which happens to be a New Zealand financial spammer.
§ Write a blog post that 1 person can connect and identify with.

Medium term:

§ Start a family - engagementàmarriageàchildren – in that order.
§ Earn the CFA designation - I will not let one failure set an immovable barrier in my path. I will study harder, enroll in a study program, and pass it.
§ Move back to KY/IN/OH to be closer to my family. (This will probably delight my wonderfully supportive grandmother.)
§ Get into a PhD program in finance.
§ Write a finance paper worth of 1 person’s praise or, even better, gratitude. “Thank you for writing this” is one of the highest compliments an author can receive.

Long term:

§ Surpass a $1 million net worth, after that it reevaluates by a factor of 10.
§ Start a business. Currently I want to start either a VC firm in Kentucky that would serve to add jobs to a struggling region or start a value investment company, although they aren’t mutually exclusive.
§ Travel to Oktoberfest, Spain, Egypt, Amsterdam, Munich.

Now that I have completed a list I have one major observation: by the frequency of bullets, it seems my short-term focus dominates my long-term outlook. I think that a proper long-term goal list will require more than just the half an hour that I’ve spent. I will continue to think about this list, refine it, and post updates in the future.