Gyroscopic Investing

ZeroHedge is often silly ("gold bitchez!"), juvenile ("implants bitchez!"), and alarmist ("canned food bitchez!"), but I find it highly informative and entertaining.

It's sort of like a mix between a frat house and a hedge fund manager's watering hole.

Any other fans?

I love it, and stop in compulsvely now.  There is so much content, I burn up hours every day.  I tried to follow it once before, but couldn't because the writing is loaded with "trade-lingo", mysterious acronyms, and "inside baseball".  In my experience it was not decipherable to a beginner or even intermediate level investor.    The consensus or tilt there is very pro-gold, and bearish everything else at the present time. 

I like it mostly for the entertainment value. Much of the writing is cheeky and who can not at least smirk at the sight of "[any word] bitchez!"  If I could sum up the site in one word, it would be "noise."  About 1 in 100 articles has real insight or actionable news.  The rest is a lot of jibber jabber. 

I like it.  Read an interesting article today on consumer deleveraging - http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest- ... e-collapse - the thing is, I don't trust 100% of the information I read in these articles, but it gives a nice counterpoint to the traditional financial media.

If you look at the bullish mainstream media like CNBC, and counterpoint it with the bearish ZeroHedge, somewhere in the middle of those two extremes there is some truth.

One of my favorite recent ZH quips about the Fed is "Bennie and the Inkjets."

MediumTex wrote: One of my favorite recent ZH quips about the Fed is "Bennie and the Inkjets."

That's hilarious. 

I like it that they're not mindlessly cheerleading like CNBC.

But the volume of posts is hard to keep up with and there's also quite a bit of "crap" in it.

PP bitchez!

Comment post from zerohedge:

[quote][/quote]by cougar_w
on Thu, 10/28/2010 - 14:48
#684314

Here is a really important development: my ass hurts.

I ride my bicycle to work every day, 60 miles a day r/t and 300 miles a week, and by the end of the week my ass hurts.

It's not even Friday. But my ass already is sore. I got another day of this. I want all you useless fuckers to know, my butt hurtz.

Seat padding, bitchez.

MediumTex wrote: One of my favorite recent ZH quips about the Fed is "Bennie and the Inkjets."

deadly

ZeroHedge used to be on my RSS feeds. I took it off recently because it had gotten too juvenile.  It used to be only Marla was really silly.  Now there are two or three authors who do things like MaKeAlLsOrTsOfUnReAdAbLePosts, link porn all over the place, or just spew vulgarities.  There's also the MadHedgeFundTrader guy who seems similar to Forrest Gump in that he somehow has been present in every historical event in history.  Even Tyler Durden's writings have reduced in quality (I think they added some additional authors to the persona who are not as strong as the original guy(s)).

Nowadays I read The Market Ticker if I want rants, Mish for regular commentary, Yves if I want left-leaning commentary, and TraderMark for more tactical observations.  None of them are juvenile, Forrest Gump, or full of porn/vulgarities, and the quality of information is just as good imo.

I like The Big Picture.

MediumTex wrote: I like The Big Picture.

I just took Ritholtz & Mish off my RSS today.  Both were drowning my feed with content filler.  The quality to quantity ratio was so low on both I just couldn't stand it anymore.  I'm starting to really shorten my leash with bloggers.  I highly value the few that post once every 2 weeks with something great to say over the ones who make you drink out of a fire hose for good information.

No. I took Zero Hedge off my feed list once I found someone that knows what he's talking about - Kid Dynamite.

Here is one example:  http://fridayinvegas.blogspot.com/2010/ ... -tons.html

And another: http://fridayinvegas.blogspot.com/2010/ ... ne-on.html

I don't have time or energy for financial "entertainment".

D.

I'm impressed by the two Kid Dynamite articles, going to give him a shot (gotta find the RSS link on his page - where is it?).

Wonk wrote:
I just took Ritholtz & Mish off my RSS today.  Both were drowning my feed with content filler.  The quality to quantity ratio was so low on both I just couldn't stand it anymore.  I'm starting to really shorten my leash with bloggers.  I highly value the few that post once every 2 weeks with something great to say over the ones who make you drink out of a fire hose for good information.

Any particularly good examples of this you would like to share? The wheat to chaff ratio on the net gets smaller exponentially with time.

fnord123 wrote: I'm impressed by the two Kid Dynamite articles, going to give him a shot (gotta find the RSS link on his page - where is it?).

Go to http://fridayinvegas.blogspot.com/ and at the very bottom of the current post you will find a subscribe link. Or if you use FireFox click on the RSS subscribe button in the wonder bar (e.g. address bar).

6 Iron wrote:
Any particularly good examples of this you would like to share? The wheat to chaff ratio on the net gets smaller exponentially with time.

Tell me about it.  Sometimes I think bloggers feel obligated to slap something up because they have readership.  Zerohedge has this problem.  IMO, less is more and credibility is paramount.  To be honest, Ritholtz and Mish were the last two big bloggers I took off the list.  I have only a few small "newsy" feeds at the moment. 

In the gold space, I listen to what Jim Sinclair has to say.  I don't read the trading updates or reader mail posts--both just noise.  I only read his new commentary--maybe one post every two weeks or so.  I like what Eric King at King World News is doing for the most part.  He has higher-quality guests on with track records: Rickards, McEwen, Sinclair, Sprott, Turk, Salinas Price are some guests I like to spend some time on.  I stay away from some others like Celente who I think is more of a charlatan.  Mises has some interesting stuff from time to time.

I'm particularly interested in Jim Rickards from a macro/global viewpoint and Rob McEwen in the mining sector.  I find Rickards analysis spot on and refreshingly free of hype...might be confirmation bias though.    McEwen is a champ in the mining sector and is also very level-headed.

I am more of a Mises and WSJ kind of guy.  A lot of these other blogs give me serious doom-overload.  What do you guys enjoy about reading them?

I find The Market Ticker particularly unpleasant to read.  I have a friend that will occasionally send me blog entries from there and they always seem to be filled with end-of-the-world rhetoric and are positively boiling over with impotent anger.  One that he sent me was this one that literally stated that we'd see an imminent total collapse of American society and violent civil unrest throughout the streets: http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=163410.  (In case you haven't been following the news, none of this actually happened or came close to happening.)

KevD wrote: But it truly wreaks havoc on the psyche to read Denninger day in and day out since he riles everyone up but gives no outlet for changing the system that he riles about.  I personally don't care to be reminded that I am a helpless pawn in the face of the criminal bankster-driven oligarchy, so I choose not to dwell on it for too long.  :D

I think most of what we think of as "reality" is simply our own peculiar way of sythesizing the information from the world that makes its way to our senses.  As a result, there are two built-in biases in what we each think of as "reality."  First, we are limited by our own belief filters, and second, we are limited by the flow of information that makes its way to us in the first place.

I used to think that soaking up the doom narratives gave me an unvarnished peek into the future.  After abusing myself in this way for quite a while I began to wonder if I wasn't starting to suffer from "Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder", which is emotional uneasiness brought on not from past trauma actually experienced, but rather from future potentially traumatic events that begin to be perceived as inevitable and thus you begin reacting to them before they actually occur.

To be fair to the doomarazzi, I don't know if they have a well-developed sense of what they are doing to people (if they did maybe they would stop), but one way of softening the edges of the latest doomer narrative is to remind oneself of how many past doomer narratives turned into nothing (and how most REALLY bad things weren't preceded by a gaggle of wailing doomers anyway).

MediumTex wrote: I used to think that soaking up the doom narratives gave me an unvarnished peek into the future.  After abusing myself in this way for quite a while I began to wonder if I wasn't starting to suffer from "Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder", which is emotional uneasiness brought on not from past trauma actually experienced, but rather from future potentially traumatic events that begin to be perceived as inevitable and thus you begin reacting to them before they actually occur.

I won't embarrass myself by quoting your entire post, but it's all excellent.

I suspect that the hardcore doomers really do believe what they are telling people and think they are helping.  I am sure there are a few psychos that just enjoy the idea of pushing people's buttons and making them weep at the thought of their world catching on fire.  But these very definitive predictions rarely come true.  Not one of the articles that my panicked buddy has sent me has ever amounted to anything actionable (or, frankly, anything that has actually even happened.)

KevD wrote: But he has done some stellar research into the mortgage-gate/foreclosure-gate/securitization-gate issue that is probably one of the most important issues in our market/economy today.

I wasn't aware of the investigative work on MBS.  That sounds useful.  Most of the links I got from there were about how the stock market was going down in flames, how gold wouldn't save you, we're all gonna die, and how very very angry this person was about all of it.  I mean, like really, dangerously angry.  But probably the more extreme stuff is what really makes the email rounds.

KevD wrote: With Denninger, however, it's not just the dire predictions about the future.  It's the unrelenting exposure of the criminality in our system and that nothing is being done about it.  We all know this, but he manages to not only identify serious wrongdoing that is not reported in the press, but presents documentation by bankers/ex-bankers where they ADMIT to committing thse crimes.  Yet nothing is being done about it.

If this fellow is the only one who is talking about this stuff, there's your problem.  If there's any "there" there (and I'm not educated enough on MBS's to know whether there is), a better, more sober spokesperson is needed.  Nobody is going to listen to the guy who said that the streets would be running red with blood by the end of 2009.  Saying these kinds of things (and having them not come true) is like walking around in a "The End is Nigh" sandwich board with a rubber glove on your head.

KevD,

I think the larger point that Denninger overlooks is that the world is a corrupt place.  I often think that he imagines that merely shedding light on something is all that is necessary to correct it.  Obviously, there is a lot more to it than that.  There is something almost child-like about Denninger's rants.  It's like he just recently woke up to what a screwed up place the world is; his outrage has a Don Quixote-flavor to it. 

I think it's great that Denninger has uncovered all of the bad behavior that he has.  Perhaps some plaintiff's lawyer or prosecutor can convert these findings into justice or punishment (or both), but I wouldn't want to wager on when or if this might happen. 

IMHO, a more productive use of energy is to simply accept the world as it is, and construct your life in such a way that as few of the idiots and thieves as possible can harm you.

Harry Browne talked about the futility of going to rallies with the intention of changing the world.  He did, however, say that going to rallies can serve a useful role as a "consumption value"--i.e., it's a great place to meet like-minded people and work out some aggression.

I would like for the world to be a less dishonest place.  I would like people to see large scale thievery for what it is.  I would like the system to function more efficiently.  However, since the world seems to be in no danger of changing in the ways I would like, the question then becomes how I can configure my life so that the reality of the way the world is today will inflict as little harm as possible on me and the people I care about.

The bottom line for the individual contemplating the PP is whether any of Denninger's observations (or anyone else's) undermine the soundness of the PP stategy.  I don't think they do.  That's really all the actionable intelligence I think there is to be gleaned for the PP investor from people like Denninger.

Porter Stransbury is less than honest IMO.