There is, right this moment, a man in my office having a mental breakdown.  I don’t even know his name – he’s some engineering manager in a function I rarely deal with.  I have no idea what caused the breakdown – merely that he’s sobbing at the top of his lungs from his office “I don’t know what my fucking problem is!” and similar vaguery.  Thankfully a co-worker who’s better at this sort of interpersonal relationship thing than I am has closed his office door and gotten him a tissue.  I say thankfully not because his breakdown is resolved but because I no longer have to listen to him.  Harsh?  Maybe, but read on.

Meanwhile, another guy across the office is having an argument with his wife about buying the expensive backpack at REI vs the cheap one at Walmart.  He’s in favor of the Chinese cheepie.  She’s in favor of the gold plated one from REI (which for all I know may also be from China).  Given the tenor of the conversation, I fear his marriage is not long for this world regardless of which backpack they buy.  But mostly I just want him to shut the fuck up about backpacks or at least use his indoor voice.  Personally, I’d be embarrassed to spend half an hour arguing about a $50 consumer goods purchase and wouldn’t want anyone to hear it.  But shame doesn’t seem to be a major gating factor here.

Now, given my current circumstances, you want to guess how much work I’m getting done right now?  If you guessed “not a damn thing” you win a prize. Continue reading →

About two weeks ago, I stumbled onto something that I frankly thought didn’t exist.  It appears that I’ve found a pricing equation type inefficiency in a major derivative market.  It’s not quite a pure arbitrage, but it’s not far off.  The profits to be made appear to be in the 7-8 figure range, and the capital and execution capability required to make them is surprisingly low.

I would very much like to write about the topic as it would certainly be the most interesting material to appear on this blog to date.  But the fact of the matter is that the opportunity is big enough to enrich a few people, but not a few hundred people.  Having dedicated more than a decade of my life to the pursuit of trading profits, I have to see this through to a conclusion.  And I’m going to have to do it without the readers of this blog being in the loop.

So unfortunately you’re going to see a lot fewer posts out of me.  I’ll update the speculative alternatives portfolio occasionally.  If the bug strikes me to write something else, I will.  And when this is all over one way or the other I’ll have a cool story to tell (tentative title if I make millions: “Wall Street Can’t Add”).  But in the mean time I’m going to be scarce.  Wish me luck…

With the demise of Google Reader, it seems clear to me that the writing is on the wall for RSS as a push technology to connect people to this blog.  Not that some people won’t continue using RSS, and I’ll keep supporting it, but clearly it’s no longer a way to reach many people.  Which leaves me with two choices for an alternative: Twitter or Facebook.  Neither seems particularly palatable to me, but Twitter looks like the better of the two in terms of being a simple, transparent pass through.  Enter the new Off-Road Finance twitter account.  My current plan is to simply use it to notify people when I’ve sent out a new article.  So if you’re on twitter and follow this site, follow me to get the latest updates.