Trader58: I understand the emotion, but there are far more productive ways to help the country than staying away from the short side. The market will do what it will do, the country will do what it will do. Make a killing when the market opens, donate it all to charity, Robinhood style. Yes, it was a tragedy, a lot of people died, but as much as I hate to say this, something like this is bound to happen a long time ago, finally someone put together a military caliber attack plan and pulled it off. If I am endorsing the terrorists in any way I deserve to be on the top floor and get to choose jump or burn, but you have to understand nothing on this planet is black or white. The U.S. called air strike on those countries so many times and we have innocent blood on our hands too. Many many people lost their lives from our military operations (of course, not nearly to the caliber of the tragedy we had), it just never gets reported on TV. The U.S. stepped on way too many toes, thinking its invulnerable, and it is an elephant of a country, it can defeat the tigers, the wolfs, the lions . . . It can't defeat the ants. There is one thing a nuclear weapon will not eliminate, a group of people who are not afraid of death. Think about it with your brain for a second, they somehow, someway, found a group of at least 20-people who are not afraid to die, anyone who can execute with this kind of precision and timing can not be labelled pure religious maniacs. Think of this scenario, you are a family man in Iraq and your wife and kids died in an explosion caused by U.S. bombing, what did you do wrong? Being someone living in Iraq? Born in the wrong country? Where are you going to take out your frustration when the media of your country will inevitably brainwash you the same way our media brainwash us? Do you honestly believe the life of an Islamic is in anyway cheaper than the life of an U.S. citizen? Now you lost everything, you have no hope, no future, what do you do? When someone like Osama Bin Laden recruits, what do you have to lose? Why call those people cowards? The U.S. smacked them down with far superior technology they can't touch. They were blown out before they knew what hit them. What people don't realize is, vengeance via massive bombing will only shed more blood, yes, it was very very sick to see the Palestenians celebrate at the news of this tragedy, but these people could have lost their families and relatives too, and unlike Americans, they can't do anything about it on a country against country scale. Hatred, the most powerful emotion in the universe, when you hate a country to the point you will sacrifice yourself just to be able to do most damage to it, I have to say the other country probably pushed it too far as well. As trendy as it is for other countries to hate the U.S., the U.S. found it trendy to be the "international cop". Everything on this planet has a buy side and a sell side, just like the stock trade, there is a reason to love, and there is a reason to hate. There is no such thing as 100% good and there is no such thing as 100% evil, do you know why good always defeat the evil? Because the good side is only good because it is the strongest. There is no easy solution to this. I pray we don't do something outrageous like level an entire country the way they did WTC. It will only shed more blood. A lot of Islamic / Arabian people living in this country are in serious threats, because hatred has no bound, because hatred will only burn everything else into rubbles. What we want is justice, not vengeance, there is a difference between the two, the difference between finding and punishing the group reponsible and destroy 10 of their cities for 1 of our's . . . The elephant seems invulnerable, but it can not do anything against the parasites, especially when the parasite is not afraid of death. Say someone is skilled at making explosives, even elementary ones, he rents a basement in the worst part of the city and buys ingredients from different vendors, and then he starts to drop those in trash cans at highly populated areas, such as Times Square. A well-funded and trained terrorist with brain to skip town to town can do a tons of damage before he is caught, and I simply can't see what hell can you do to stop him. It is sad, sometimes I feel like I can control my own fate, other times I realize I am completely hapless . . . I don't know if there ever will be a safe place on this planet, after WTC, anything can happen, what a human can do, is to live every day of his life without regret, living the fullest life he can possible live, if that means shorting a falling market, so be it . . . Long: Oil (I agree about the airline situation but I still think this is a long in possible warfare against Middle East region), Gold, Defense Short: Airline (I actually thought about that, not sure why didn't I list it), Insurance I won't be in anything futures sensitive like the IBM's, GS's, MU's . . . There will be some very very violent moves, if you get chopped you are going to get hurt badly. I will avoid all first tier's, and stick to sectors I mentioned above. I will have the full list tommorrow night or Sunday night when we get date confirmation.
Telling me not to short is like telling me that I can't drive my car to the left. Being able to drive a car left and right is fundamental. Telling me not to short is like telling me that I can't walk with my left foot. Being able to walk with both feet is fundamental. Likewise, being able to trade long and short is fundamental to a daytrader. I do my part by donating my opening day profits to charity (regardless of how I acquired the profit through the stock market). MGB
Hitman, Go short or go long to your heart's content. I see little connection between the direction of your trades and your patriotism. But your neutral sentiment of the terrorists makes me wonder whose side you're on. I also wonder if you could take such a detached stand had your family been among the casualties in the WTC collapse. It disgusts me to lecture you, but the reason you can "live everyday of your life . . . to the fullest . . . shorting a falling market . . ." is because the freedom in this country allows you to do so. That freedom doesn't always come with a clean conscience, but I cherish it nonetheless, and I'm sure you do too. Try shorting some stock in Iraq. Trade any way you'd like. But if you're an American, take a stand and condemn the terrorists without qualification. There's no middle ground here.
Are you all so sure that markets will open sharply lower followed by still more sell-off? Reading this thread makes me feel it might be a non-event. It's a really sad time right now but it seems to me that it has a positive under-tone (patriotism etc.) Regarding the circumstances I don't know whether I am more pissed off at Arabs or Americans.My advice to NSA,CIA would be, give a call to Mossad guys, admit you are clueless and ask what a hell is going on!! Actually those idiots knew enough. Dumb, sloppy, lazy!!
trader58, your patriotism is admirable but your logic, imho is off. in order to have a liquid market, we must have professionals on both sides of the market. if i short and then cover in 2 minutes, which is probably my avg holding period and then repeat this over and over again i am acting as a market maker, i am providing liquidity of which these markets are going to need desperately in the next few weeks. now if i were george soros and decided to take down a certain asian countries' currency and i had unlimited backing from let's say the world bank or something hypothetical like that, then that would indeed not only be malicious but imho criminal, and would deserve the hostile criticism you sprayed in earlier post. we all think our opinions are truth, but as experienced traders we are always having our opinions proved to be wrong on a daily basis. it is those that dogmatically hold on to their own truths as law that the market unmercifully punishes over and over again. sometimes the greatest lessons come from the most pain if we are willing to be honest with ourselves.
Now, it simply becomes a matter of sitting back, relaxing and waiting for our military force to annihilate the moslem ba***ds. God Bless America and God Bless the Airforce, Navy and Army. I will short stocks if I see the opportunities. That has NOTHING to do with patriotism.
Hey Candle, that's really sick, totally apart from the fact that it's not going to work anyway, just the opposite. We can't even protect the Pentagon, but you probably still believe we won Vietnam or did a great job in Somalia. Yo, go get a Reality Check for a change, there's a PHYSICAL LAW, ACTION = REACTION, get it? And anyway, we're not talking about Moslems here, we're talking about fanatical CRIMINALS and MADNESS just MASQUERADING AS ISLAM. Bush Supports Islamic Religious Extremists Bush`s Faustian Deal With the Taliban By ROBERT SCHEER The Los Angeles Times Enslave your girls and women, harbor anti-U.S. terrorists, destroy every vestige of civilization in your homeland, and the Bush administration will embrace you. All that matters is that you line up as an ally in the drug war, the only international cause that this nation still takes seriously. That`s the message sent with the recent gift of $43 million to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, the most virulent anti-American violators of human rights in the world today. The gift, announced last Thursday by Secretary of State Colin Powell, in addition to other recent aid, makes the U.S. the main sponsor of the Taliban and rewards that "rogue regime" for declaring that opium growing is against the will of God. So, too, by the Taliban`s estimation, are most human activities, but it`s the ban on drugs that catches this administration`s attention. Never mind that Osama bin Laden still operates the leading anti-American terror operation from his base in Afghanistan, from which, among other crimes, he launched two bloody attacks on American embassies in Africa in 1998. Sadly, the Bush administration is cozying up to the Taliban regime at a time when the United Nations, at U.S. insistence, imposes sanctions on Afghanistan because the Kabul government will not turn over Bin Laden. The war on drugs has become our own fanatics` obsession and easily trumps all other concerns. How else could we come to reward the Taliban, who has subjected the female half of the Afghan population to a continual reign of terror in a country once considered enlightened in its treatment of women? At no point in modern history have women and girls been more systematically abused than in Afghanistan where, in the name of madness masquerading as Islam, the government in Kabul obliterates their fundamental human rights. Women may not appear in public without being covered from head to toe with the oppressive shroud called the burkha , and they may not leave the house without being accompanied by a male family member. They`ve not been permitted to attend school or be treated by male doctors, yet women have been banned from practicing medicine or any profession for that matter. The lot of males is better if they blindly accept the laws of an extreme religious theocracy that prescribes strict rules governing all behavior, from a ban on shaving to what crops may be grown. It is this last power that has captured the enthusiasm of the Bush White House. The Taliban fanatics, economically and diplomatically isolated, are at the breaking point, and so, in return for a pittance of legitimacy and cash from the Bush administration, they have been willing to appear to reverse themselves on the growing of opium. That a totalitarian country can effectively crack down on its farmers is not surprising. But it is grotesque for a U.S. official, James P. Callahan, director of the State Department`s Asian anti-drug program, to describe the Taliban`s special methods in the language of representative democracy: "The Taliban used a system of consensus-building," Callahan said after a visit with the Taliban, adding that the Taliban justified the ban on drugs "in very religious terms." Of course, Callahan also reported, those who didn`t obey the theocratic edict would be sent to prison. In a country where those who break minor rules are simply beaten on the spot by religious police and others are stoned to death, it`s understandable that the government`s "religious" argument might be compelling. Even if it means, as Callahan concedes, that most of the farmers who grew the poppies will now confront starvation. That`s because the Afghan economy has been ruined by the religious extremism of the Taliban, making the attraction of opium as a previously tolerated quick cash crop overwhelming. For that reason, the opium ban will not last unless the U.S. is willing to pour far larger amounts of money into underwriting the Afghan economy. As the Drug Enforcement Administration`s Steven Casteel admitted, "The bad side of the ban is that it`s bringing their country--or certain regions of their country--to economic ruin." Nor did he hold out much hope for Afghan farmers growing other crops such as wheat, which require a vast infrastructure to supply water and fertilizer that no longer exists in that devastated country. There`s little doubt that the Taliban will turn once again to the easily taxed cash crop of opium in order to stay in power. The Taliban may suddenly be the dream regime of our own war drug war zealots, but in the end this alliance will prove a costly failure. Our long sad history of signing up dictators in the war on drugs demonstrates the futility of building a foreign policy on a domestic obsession. The Los Angeles Times Hey, we've got to bring the criminals who did this to justice, but let's not go overboard and start a witchhunt blaming innocent people just because they share a religion with criminal mad men because some feel the need for vengeance. I don't want to be blamed of genocide either just because I'm a Christian like Milosevic of Yougoslavia was. Also, I think that the veneer of civilisation is just veeerrrry thin and artificial, give us half an excuse, be it because we feel that we got a bad deal, that we're being oppressed, garner that with some nationalism etc, and of we go. I remember visiting Belgrade/Yougoslavia, just an hours flight from West Europe, during Communist times, and it's just like nobody in the whole wide world would have expected the unbelievable crimes that were committed in all the republics that wanted and later got independence there just a couple of years later, by people who had previously been perfectly normal, just like you and me, then they start mutilating, cutting of peoples noses etc, raping, killing tens of thousands, all for nothing, and all in the name of stupid nationalism. I think we've just got to keep making an active effort at subduing the beast that is in all of us, no matter how badly hurt we feel. And yes, I'm just as sick to the stomach about all of this as anybody else, but that's exactly the reason why I want it to end by working for a politically negotiated solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict and not going on and on and on with hatred and violence.
Now, it simply becomes a matter of sitting back, relaxing and waiting for our military force to annihilate the moslem ba***ds. Right on Candletrader!!!!!!!!!