Announcing Investment Poetry!

My new website, http://investmentpoetry.com/, is now ready for prime time. Thank you to Dan Hung, The Curious Investor, for creating a wonderfully useful site for investors.

Please visit, make suggestions for improvement... and subscribe, if the site proves of interest.
-- David M Gordon / The Deipnosophist

Of trends and traditions

Support and Resistance
Think of share price fluctuations as a skirmish between buyers (bulls) and sellers (bears). The price at which bears and bulls reach a consensus and a trade takes place is the clearing price. There is a level at which bulls think the price will move up and which bears are not willing to sell. From that point, below which bears won’t sell and bulls are willing to buy, the purchases are the kinetic energy that generates higher prices, and trend. And, of course, vice-versa.

Thus, support levels indicate the price where the majority of investors believe that prices will move higher, and resistance levels indicate the price at which a majority of investors feel prices will move lower. Resistance is the opposite of support. It’s the point at which sellers take control of prices and prevent them from rising higher.

But, over time, investor expectations change, often abruptly. When a share price rises above the correctly identified resistance level, they tend to do so decisively, resolutely, and with alacrity. A significant increase in volume accompanies the breakout (above resistance), and convinced that the share price would remain above its breakout, more investors are willing to buy at higher levels, thereby creating the new trend; i.e., both price and volume rise. Similarly, sellers who previously sold when prices approached resistance also begin to expect prices to move higher and are no longer willing to sell, and instead began to purchase shares. More buyers, fewer sellers, and fewer shares for sale sum as a powerful new trend!

Supply and demand
There is nothing baffling about support and resistance; it is supply and demand. Supply manifests the quantity — i.e., the number of shares — sellers are willing to supply at a given price. When prices increase, the quantity of sellers also increases, as more investors are willing to sell at these higher prices. Demand shows the number of shares that buyers are willing to buy at a given price. When prices increase, the quantity of buyers decreases, as fewer investors are willing to buy at higher prices. And, theoretically, as prices decline, the quantity of buyers should increase… but fails to; likely because human nature takes hold, and subverts the symmetry of this notion.

As investor expectations change, so do the prices buyers and sellers believe are acceptable to satisfy their objectives. A breakout above a resistance level is evidence of an upward shift in demand as more buyers become willing to buy, and at higher and rising prices. Perhaps the best method to track changing expectations following a breakout is with volume. If prices break through the support/resistance level with a large increase in volume relative to its recent average volume for the examined periodicity, it implies that the new expectations will reign. Low to moderate volume — again, relative to that  periodicity’s average volume — on the breakout implies that very few investor expectations have changed, and a return to the original expectations — and original, if not lower, prices — is likely.

Resistance becomes support
When a resistance level is successfully breached, that level becomes support. Similarly, when a support level is successfully penetrated, that level becomes a resistance level.

Knowledge and portfolio management
To generate consistently successful investment results the investor must consider the following...

Vision: the macrocosmic, or geopolitical, social,and economic perspective. This type of analysis is more than mere mind candy; the investor gives thought to those factors that are larger than his specific portfolio needs but have a direct bearing on his investment’s corporate results. In the present market environment, arguably the most critical geopolitical factor is the next major direction for the US$.

Strategy: the microcosmic, or market perspective. The investor who studies and understands market cycles and history has an advantage. Attention paid to greater epochs —periodicities measured in decades — can offer substantial reward. This means the belief that the market’s rising trend continues forever is folly. That  moment was the appropriate time for the shrewd investor to re-think his or her strategy, and to follow through with new, more correct portfolio tactics. And there is the truth of it: when I enjoined, "Prepare to have your assumptions shattered, or have the market shatter them for you…” I referred to the general predisposition for a bullish mindset, which continues today.

Tactics: the implementation of strategy, or day-to-day perspective. Portfolio management follows the investor’s market strategy. Either the investor patiently awaits the next major market trend, or he proactively determines a portfolio strategy and a market strategy. If the market perception is bullish, the investor will purchase each dip or breakout. If the market perception is for one that trends sideways, the investor would purchase dips and sell rallies.

A key requirement for successful portfolio management is the ability to make decisions, and finally to abide by those decisions without self-recriminations. Investing in all market conditions, but especially in fast markets, entails split second judgments based upon rapid recognition of the problem at hand and how best to deal with it -- without second guessing the decision. To adapt and embrace changing market conditions, to embrace change itself.

Critical thinkers and successful investors are honest with themselves, can resist manipulation, overcome confusion, ask questions, look for connections between subjects, make judgments based on evidence, and are intellectually independent.

Barriers to effective decision-making
Indecision: To avoid making decisions in the hope of sidestepping risk, fear, and anxiety;
Stall: Obsessive gathering of endless facts; refusal to face the issue;
Overreact: Let a situation spin out of control; allow emotions to assert control;
Vacillate: Reverse decisions; half-heartedly commit to a course of action;
Half measures: Muddle through.

Errors of omission vs. errors of commission
Unfortunately, it seems that most market participants either lack deep market understanding, do not deploy a sense of perspective (market history), ignore the market’s perdurable oscillations, do not explicate their investing strategies, or suffer a failure of imagination. Investing is not done in a vacuum — awareness of geopolitical, social, and economic factors is critical, as well as apprehending where the market is within its current cycle, the age of its current trend.

So is the awareness of the possible unreliability of his portfolio investments; bad or wrong decisions — corporate risk, market risk, event risk, etc — do occur, and must be corrected. After having discerned his objectives and goals, understood the market’s mechanisms, discovered those companies whose shares will help achieve specific investment goals, it is insufficient to hesitate and not act decisively and resolutely, instead praying that a (or any) market trend will remedy errors. Having made the initial investment decision (purchase or sale), the responsibility, the decision, is the investor’s to make. To make one decision ("I am an investor") is wholly insufficient to the task at hand. Decisions must be made always; i.e., whether or not to take profits, stop losses, buy this, sell that, even that a specific investment is proceeding nicely but a new one seems to offer greater potential profit. To shrug off the importance of these necessitous and omnipresent decisions is tantamount to poor money management — itself a term that denotes the process rather than the event.

If breaking up the one decision (to take action) to a sequence of smaller decisions is helpful, then do so. The decision process is now more emotionally digestible because it is more holistic, no longer monolithic. No longer fraught with having to make the one right decision but a series of smaller ones better enables the investor to forge ahead to his true goal — to make money, not be right.

Minor periodicities
Though there exist distinct minor trends within greater periodicities, no market leader will break out and trend to new all time highs without the market emerging from its high level consolidation. Of course, the market will not emerge from its base without the new market leaders commencing their new trends. Critical to this notion is the understanding that the new leaders must emerge as a group (drugs, grocers, telecom, et al), sector, or theme. Isolated instances of new highs during a lengthy high-level consolidation or bear market are common — as is the inverse — and are not a true signal. How do the other companies in that group or sector fare? The example of one company’s shares (in a sector of ten) emerging to new highs is insufficient to generate a true signal.

Because all true patterns are replicable in all periodicities, the investor should time purchases at optimal moments of low risk and high reward. Recognize, though, that the half-life of any trend is directly proportional to the studied periodicity. To accumulate shares with full recognition of the market’s trading range. It is not always necessary that markets decline in  devastating bear market fashion. It is probable that the current instance of a now 12-years lengthy high-level consolidation evident in the Dow 30 Industrial Average and S & P 500 will continue, at least until corporate earnings can catch up to current valuations to again create an undervalued and perhaps under-appreciated market. The prerequisite for success is not to know precisely where prices will be in the future — but to improve the odds. So the shrewd investor not only seeks market leaders, but simultaneously pays heed to the market’s message; if the market is discerned to be trading in a high level consolidation and at the top of the correctly identified range, not only is risk present, it is heightened.

Determinism vs. deterministic behavior
"Psychology is both the reason for the consistently superior performance of the methods the financial academics cannot explain, as well as the consistently poorer results of those approaches that fail.” -- David Dreman

Our world is neither static nor absolute. Everything is relative. Change is the only given, nothing remains the same, and all standards are relative. We are born, we mature, we grow old, and we die. Only the fact of change itself is unchanging, the sole reality. So it is with our investments. Buy low, sell high; buy cheap, sell dear. The investments we consider do not come into being the moment we first notice them. In some form they have always existed. Recognition of this continuum allows the investor to place appropriate emphasis on what is important and critical, not merely urgent.

Charting and technical analysis offer neither science nor black art of predictive ability, tiresome claims of the naysayer notwithstanding. These analyses are the science and art of observation. Of discipline, patience, and diligence. Samuel Johnson said, "What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.” This moment — here, now — is equally good for the tactical and strategic investor to learn how the market works, to set into place that recognition as foundational portfolio behavior, and to profit from the increased percipience that recognition brings.

When a market or company shares breakout from a High Level Consolidation, that sudden volatility has the potential and possibility to transmute as a new trend — either up or down, but no longer sideways. And then age accordingly.

Markets are not living proof of determinism. However, trends do have a discernible life that age in a time-tested manner. The ability to discern trends — how they birth, live, age, and die — helps alert the investor to heightened risk or increased opportunity. As a result, it is not the ad absurdum claims of determinism in the markets but the investor’s deterministic behavior that ushers in portfolio success. Investing is about odds, chance, actualizing possibilities. None of this is possible without choices selected, decisions
made.

Where now, blue DOW?
As bull markets crescendo, the investor must change his time frame and focus on the signals generated by the lesser periodicities. Conversely, at bear market or trading range lows the investor seeks guidance from the greater (longer term) periodicities. These tell-tales offer alerts far in advance of market pundits whose prognostications are too-often awry. Though market and share volatility can help with minor, short-term errors, do not allow these errors to magnify beyond proportion. Think before investing. Develop a contingency plan. “If (the market does) this, then (I do) that.”

For the past ~12 years, it is the high-level consolidation that best exemplifies the current placement of the Dow Industrial Average and S&P 500, assuming correctly identified trend lines. For however long this condition persists, this trading range manifests as opportunity for the patient investor. Low risk/high reward opportunities prevail at Major Trend Lines. Particularly tempting are those company shares found either near their own Major Trend Line, or now experience an important and actionable breakout. The investor who recognizes this pattern will be better placed to apprehend the shift in reality before it occurs; that is, the understanding that the major channel lines are inflection lines but the maximal and optimal inflection points occur on breakouts through these correctly identified lines. All else is noise, in any periodicity.

Don’t pursue opportunity; allow opportunity to come to you
To gaze at a chart of financial assets can be, for most, an experiential moment of consternation, even heterodoxy. “What do I see? What am I supposed to see…?” might best sum the tyro investor’s first glance at a stock chart. Too many investors erroneously identify volatility for a trend; they are not synonymous. When the understanding that specific patterns recur across the spectrum of investment assets but especially publicly traded shares, then the cardinality of the relationship between volatility and trend becomes clear: within any studied periodicity, all volatility is circumscribed by the extant trend but it is only volatility that can end that trend. Because most investors require certainty, they jump aboard the trend late. How many data points are required to delimit a trend? Hence, watching for increased volatility as a harbinger of a trend’s end is critical to improve the investor’s odds for success.

What is the value of correlating news to current prices when the data is already old, only now collated, and the market has already factored this news into current prices? The markets are a discounting mechanism — the investor buys today to sell tomorrow for a profit because the invested company is perceived to make more profits in the future than today. The investor that considers insufficient data or studies an insufficient periodicity exposes his portfolio to added risk. To chase after a rising share price (bid up) to purchase what is, in all likelihood, mere volatility can be hazardous. More helpful is to discern where the shares lie within its trend, and the age of that trend.  So the patient, disciplined investor allows the price of his considered investment to come to him, to gravitate lower to his eager, strong hands. Again, know thyself. What are your goals and needs?

Fortune favors the bold!
-- David M Gordon / The Deipnosophist

Update re McDonald's/MCD

Business Week (via Briefing.com) reports McDonald's/MCD missed this year's robust stock market rally. While the is up S&P 15%, shares of the co are off 3%. But some savvy pros regard the lag as an opportunity. "McDonald's is the only new name we added this year to our portfolio," says Edwin Walczak, U.S. portfolio chief at Swiss bank Vontobel. From a 52-week high of 64 on Jan. 6, the stock has slipped to 60.34. Part of investor concern is McDonald's lower forecast for store openings, mostly in China, Japan, and Eastern Europe. At this depressed price, says Walczak, "the stock is a bargain as McDonald's continues to innovate in its core menu and business structure." He figures that with estimated earnings of $4 a share in 2009 and $4.50-$5 in 2010, it is worth 75. Using its "prodigious excess cash flow," he notes, McDonald's has been buying back its shares. Sara Senatore of Sanford C. Bernstein, who rates McDonald's outperform, says the modest decline in store openings simply reflects a temporary weakness in demand. She's encouraged by McDonald's decision to expand in its growth markets, including Australia, France, and Russia. "We see ample room for unit expansion in most of McDonald's markets."

Market Volatility, Liquidity, and You

Electronic Communication Networks (ECNs) now account for approximately one-third of all NASDAQ trading, especially with the advent many years ago of deep-discount commissions via on-line transactions. A battle back then began to brew between the buy-side (pension and mutual funds) and the sell-side (old-line wirehouses such as Merrill Lynch). When the buy-side began demanding drastically reduced commissions on executions and the sell-side tired of caving in, the sell-side began to whisper to those who might listen, “Hey lesser commissions are great; but really, just how good is the quality of your execution?” Terms such as slippage, the concession over the current market quote to buy or sell the investment, gained greater currency. In time, both sides commissioned academic studies to support their argument. Ultimately, a consensus was reached that was perceived as elegant, but which, in practice, is anything but.

The theory now widely accepted is a default strategy wherein a variety of techniques will be employed to average the acquisition or disposition of assets, thereby ensuring there would be no bad executions. Of course, the Law of Unintended Consequences dictates the inverse: no bad executions means no good executions. The most commonly utilized of these strategies is VWAP, or Volume Weighted Average Price.

To determine whether the sell-side did, in fact, provide fair executions, the academics decreed that at the end of a trading day, the stock in question should have its price range averaged, and weighted. Then the claimant could state: 
“If you executed my order at a price worse than the VWAP — well, consider yourself and your firm as fired!"

This means the buyers or sellers have become interested in getting average prices, only. When coupled with the desire to make transactions only with the herd, one begins to understand the difficult position each side found itself in. These strategies are counter-intuitive in that they remove the decision from a decision-making process. The buyers pass up bargains because they cannot buy when alone. The result? Their indecisiveness makes the market less efficient.

Akin to VWAP is the participate order, which means: “I want to buy/sell XYZ at $50 -- but only if someone else is buying or selling at that level. I know I am not good enough to decide on my own to buy XYZ, but if someone else as credible as me buys as well, then I cannot be criticized for my decision.”

Compare how Wall Street actuates its buy/sell decisions with how you transact your own.

Market makers and specialists
Though we, as retail investors,  might believe we enjoy a pleasant and profitable relationship with NASDAQ market makers and NYSE specialists, we do not. Unfortunately, since the Crash of 1987, market makers have been issued a mandate to be less a service provided and more of a profit center. The result is an adversarial relationship between the needs of market makers and specialists, and our own.

There is a very clear difference in responsibilities between market makers and specialists. Yes, market makers are there to execute your trade but that is not their sole job responsibility. They do have a decree from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) to maintain orderly and continuous markets. To the degree that the market makers are required to take the other side of a one-sided market, they risk their own capital by doing so. Their position obviously is not risk-free. However, NASDAQ market makers buy on the bid and sell on the offer; you and I, on the other hand, must buy the offer or sell the bid. That is one way market makers make their profit — by trading the spread between the bid and ask. When working with the retail investor, the market maker will always get their vigorish — the extra money from the spread or other arcana — usually via the retail investor’s misunderstanding of the following: 
1) The mechanics of market and limit orders;
2 ) "Fast” markets; 
3) Rotation (churn of the order book); and
4) The dynamics of the market’s opening and closing hour.

Consider:
A market order is one in which a trade execution is guaranteed, but not a price.
A limit order is one in which a price is guaranteed, but not a trade execution.

This major difference is not as startling as these orders’ similarity; each allows the market makers discretion as to when (time) your trade execution is reported, which in turn grants the market maker the opportunity to report the worst execution to the customer, retaining the best executions for himself.

This can happen to you. Next time you place an order during a busy market day and your broker says: “ACORN!” (Advise Customer, Our Responsibility None); or fast market, fast tape, orders ahead, and assorted variants, you will understand your order’s importance, the bottom of the pecking order.

During “fast markets”, the market’s opening rotation can be especially hectic. Due to an order imbalance, the NYSE specialist will delay opening the security for trading until a clearing price can be found; NASDAQ market makers simply raise the bids or lower the offers till a trade occurs. This is one reason for the changing pre-opening prices one sees on NASDAQ.

The market’s closing rotation is commonly referred to as being for professionals. Why? Because market professionals know why they buy a security and so are comfortable holding that position overnight. Too, the market professionals trust themselves to do the right thing, should their position be working against them. This is one reason a strong market or stock might open down but close higher. Of course, it follows that a weak market or stock is one that opens higher but closes down.

Remember, three parties participate in any transaction: 

1) Your broker, who gets commissions;
2) The brokerage that executes your trade, and which profits from the spread between bid/ask; and 
3) You, who hopes to profit from the trend.

Far and away, you have the most potential for profit -- or loss.

It once was true that buyers and sellers would place orders with their brokers who would route those orders to market makers for execution, matching the orders one-by-one, by hand. Today, orders are matched by computers; however, market makers can and do trade for their own accounts based on this critical information. Market makers know how high the bidders will bid, and so can profit from that knowledge by trading against us, their clients. Imagine knowing how many orders exist at any given price level. With this knowledge, market makers know the stock's short-term trend.

Consider the profit centers known as payment for order flow and internalization. Each is a means of making more money for the brokers at the expense of the individual investor.

Payment for order flow is the practice whereby ECNs and some market makers pay brokers to route your order their way – it does not necessarily follow that your order will receive the best prevailing price. For example, imagine XYZ currently trading at $50 bid by $50 ¼ offer when you enter your market order to sell. To you, market order means $50/share or better; but to your broker, the best bid might be a market maker or ECN with whom he does not have an existing payment for order flow scheme. What will he do? He will route your order to the market maker with whom he does have an existing relationship, even though your market order has now been executed at $49 ¾/share. Though he makes only $.25/share, these hidden charges do add up. For example, Knight Securities paid, in prior years, $.005/share for American Stock Exchange orders and $.0225/share for orders on the S&P 100. These seemingly insignificant pennies aggregated to $139 million in order flow payments during a recent year.

Internalization is another practice whereby your broker matches your order against his inventory, in effect acting as a principal to the transaction, rather than as your agent.

Neither of these schemes has your interests at heart. You can halt them by issuing specific instructions with your broker.

The cost of liquidity
Market makers will argue that payment for order flow and internalization are the payback they (market makers) deserve for providing necessary liquidity to the markets. But remember, as mandated by the SEC and NASD, the market makers must risk their capital to ensure continuous pricing and continuous markets; however, ECNs need not guarantee liquidity because their raison d’être is simply to match existing limit orders.


Liquidity is a coward
Ray DeVoe said this many years ago and it is as true now as it ever was: Money will flow to where it is best treated. If the markets should be declining, then the potential buyers can step aside, allowing the markets to fall into a vacuum created by their absence. This process becomes self-actualizing as lower prices generate margin calls, which begets forced selling, more impatient (and frightened) sellers, and ever-lower prices.

This process can result in market (price) discontinuities, wherein prices gap from trade to trade, sometimes on very few shares actually being traded — an opportunity for the astute, patient investor who has time and cash on hand. The markets’ price trends are not something that happen to us; rather we are the market. Since we are the market, we can regard these discontinuities as times to act, rather than sitting passively. In other words, you are in charge of the market. The market is not in charge of you.

Discontinuities are in essence a function of The Law of the Marginal Buyer/Seller. This Law states that when an order is paired — say, 10,000 shares to buy, 10,000 shares to sell — it is the marginal (additional) shares that tilt the clearing price to a specific price level. In the example above, the 10,000 shares might be paired at $50 but an additional 100 shares to sell might cause the entire block to trade at $49 ¾, which impacts the quality of execution for the larger lot size.

Impatience affects both buyers and sellers, but for different reasons. Sellers grow impatient because they are time sensitive: there are margin calls to be met, Rule 144 and 145 Sales, etc. However, buyers can become impatient because they are price sensitive. The stock's rising price trend often manifests as incaution on the part of many buyers.

So where are we now?
Due to their flexibility, the institutions have bollixed themselves; they have taken a subset of price momentum theory and refined it, now unable to act decisively and in a timely manner. Previously, buy orders would be placed in stages below the market so as to be executed as the decline progressed, if a tradable were declining in price. This was helpful, as it smoothed volatility (and the intra-day charts), and lessened the opportunity for extreme market moves.


Today, however, when a stock is declining in price, most institutional buyers simply step aside without entering any orders to purchase. The result is a vacuum, a black hole down which prices plummet in gaps from one trade to the next. These institutions will not re-enter the fray with buy orders until the intraday chart shows a clear bottom, and the price now rises. For the markets, this means declining prices becomes one-sided, as buyers step away and the market is left to the sellers. When, instead, it rises, the buyers then, and only then, step in to buy, causing the price to move higher in gaps as the sellers now step aside. (The sellers are sold out anyway.) Though popularly termed volatility, in fact it is the market’s mechanisms and dynamics at work.

In their desire for better executions, lesser commissions, and lessened volatility these strategies which the institutions have deployed have had the diametrically opposite effect from what was originally intended: the markets now suffer from more volatility, less efficient markets, and worse executions.

So what’s an investor to do?

In brief, during each trading day, one is presented with the following possible actions:

1) The opportunity to buy;

2) The opportunity to sell;

3) The opportunity to do nothing at all;

4) The opportunity to panic.

The market does not control us and we cannot control the market, but by knowing ourselves as investors, and as individuals, we can take advantage of the occasional mess the markets become. Accept the fact that no matter what you do, you will be wrong. Remember that both sell-side and buy-side institutions are captive to a cage of their own design. We, you and I, can profit from their misguided notions. We can learn how to read these opportunities, and to seize them as they occur. As such, we remove ourselves from being the victim of the market’s vagaries.

There are some other things you can do to become an investor who embraces the uncertainties of the market. 

1) Stop watching CNBC. Stop scanning for news. Moreno’s Law states, “You will always be the last to hear the news/rumor,” so why insist upon confirming that fact?
2) Remember that the markets’ pricing mechanisms are a reflection of what we do not know, not what we do know. We invest today based upon our perception of tomorrow —for the company, its product, the sector, and the economy. Price itself is merely the memorialization of what occurs underneath the surface. There are market constituents who do the necessary investigative work to determine true value. Price itself is not value; it is risk. 
3) When you assess your investment opportunities, remember that profiting from the market’s trends is only one road to wealth, as it offers the opportunity to sail with the wind at your back. 
4) Begin to determine exactly why it is you purchase stocks. If your answer is because “they go up,” then consider what you will do when go down. Discern who you are so you can better invest your money/savings. As Warren Buffet asked, “Why should I risk what I have and what I need for what I don’t have and don’t need?”
5) Remember, too, why you are here. Incredible as it seems, not everyone invests or trades for the purpose of making money. Some prefer to spell profit as prophet.

Determine who you are. When you know who you are, the pain of being on the wrong side of the market will dissipate. You then can view all trends and Wall Street’s various schemes as opportunities that provide you with better executions than their elegant (but ineffectual strategies and solutions) ever could.
-- David M Gordon / The Deipnosophist

Six reasons why Google Voice is cool

Published in Delta Airline's Sky magazine, I read the article below on my flight home from London. I agree with everything author, Bryan Gardiner, notes -- but for the fact that he fails to mention all the reasons that make Google Voice helpful, resourceful... and cool.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
6 reasons why Google Voice is cool
Ever dreamed of having your own personal switchboard operator? Google Voice, a new calling and voicemail service from the online search giant offers just that. While it’s available by invoite only, the service is already garnering a vocal and devoted following. Here’s a rundown of what you can do with Google Voice and why it’s a must-have for frequent travelers or anyone with multiple phones.

One phone number for everything.
At its core, Google Voice is a call-forwarding service. But don’t let that fool you. This is still one powerful online tool. While you can’t use any of your existing numbers for your main Google Voice number, Google will let you choose a number (in any U.S. area code) when signing up. After that, you just link it to all your other existing numbers.

High-IQ call forwarding.

Not only can you choose to forward calls to as many numbers as you like, you can even forward incoming calls to different phones based on who’s calling. Take those dreaded calls from your boss. If you’re feeling brave, you can choose to have them ring to your mobile number – not your home, where family could answer. Or you can have them sent straight to voicemail. Google Voice also lets you compile entire groups of callers to send either drectly to an online spam folder, voicemail or block altogether.

Find out who’s calling.
Everyone gets them: Strange alls from unfamiliar numbers. With Google Voice, you can have these callers stat their name before being patched through to you. If they don’t hang up, Google will tell you exactly who’s calling and give you the option to take the call or send it to voicemail.

Make free calls.
Google Voice lets you make free calls to anywhere in the United States. Best of all, these calls will appear to originate from your main Google number, even when you’re calling from your mobile phone or landline. It’s a great way to avoid divulging your personal numbers when shopping online.

Get voicemails via e-mail.
Perhaps the coolest feature in Google Voice’s arsenal is its ability to automatically transcribe all your voice messages. True, the transcription aren’t always spot on, but ti’s a great way to check messages online since that’s where many of us spend the day anyway. If that doesn’t suite you, Google Voice will also let you receive your voicemails as actual text messages or e-mails when they arrive. Not only is this faster than listening to those long-winded messages from friends, family and co-workers, but it also gives you a permanent written record that is easily stored for future reference.

Switch phones in a snap.
Worried about using up all your mobile minutes? Google Voice lets you transfer your calls to another phone with a push of a button – right in the middle of a call, if need be. When you’re on your mobile phone, simply press the “*” button, and all your other phones listed on the account will instantly ring. Simply pick one of them up and continue talking. Minutes saved!

My list does not end with the 6 reasons above; for example, when AT&T caves, and the app finally is available for the iPhone... And never forget the cool factor itself!

Full Disclosure: Long Google/GOOG.
-- David M Gordon / The Deipnosophist

Sounding a note of concern

The beauty of investing is its necessity to recognize and embrace change; change (volatility) is the fodder that creates investors' profits.

No question: the market environment today, internally and externally, is far different than during October, November, and December 2008 when I counseled readers to invest; to fear not the market's panic sell-off. I note the market indices now begin to labor, breathe hard, use up a lot of internal strength while making little upside price progress. A point of maximum change likely nears, although, as of this post, it still could be weeks or months away.

More anon, after more study. (And more health.)
-- David M Gordon / The Deipnosophist

Diagramming Won’t Help This Situation

The poem below is not only excellent, but clever as well. To conflate sentence diagramming to the poem's text, from its meta sub-text, delivers a whole new context and meaning. Of course, any poem that includes grammar and syntax (lessons) would hold extra appeal for me!

The author's meaning is direct, but read the poem again to get its subtle shadings. One clue: pay attention to verb tense. (Oh, and that sledgehammer clue in line 3!)
-- David M Gordon / The Deipnosophist

Diagramming Won’t Help This Situation
by Kevin Brown

Grammatical rules have always baffled
me, leaving me wondering whether my
life is transitive or intransitive, if I am the
subject or object of my life, and no one
has been able to provide words to describe
my actions, even if they do end in –ly.

But now the problem seems to be with
pronouns: I am unwilling to be him
and you are unable to be her, so we
will never be them ~ the ones talking
about what they need from the grocery

store because the Rogers are coming for
dinner tonight; the couple saving for a
vacation, perhaps a cruise to Alaska or a
museum tour of Europe; the two who meet
with a financial advisor to plan their children's

college fund while still managing to set enough
aside for their retirement ~ and so we will
continue to be nothing more than sentence
fragments, perfectly fine for effect,
but forever looking for the missing
part of speech we can never seem to find.

Bizarro, indeed!

Perhaps it is my mood, my generally twisted nature, or even my default personality setting, but I find the cartoon below very funny!

I hope you do as well.
-- David M Gordon / The Deipnosophist