Archive for February 2007

That would be the NFL: The NFL is telling Fall Creek Baptist Church in Indianapolis that the church’s plans to use a wall projector to show the game at a party for church members and guests would violate copyright laws. NFL officials spotted a promotion of Fall Creek’s “Super Bowl Bash” on the church Web site last week and sent pastor John D. Newland a letter — via FedEx overnight — demanding the party be canceled. Initially, the league objected to the church’s plan to charge partygoers a fee to attend and that the church used the license-protected words “Super Bowl” in its promotions. Newland told the NFL his church would not charge partygoers — the fee had been intended only to pay for snacks — and that it would drop the use of the forbidden words. But the NFL wouldn’t bite. It objected to the church’s plans to use a projector to show the game on what effectively was a 12-foot-wide screen. It said the law limits the church to one TV no bigger than 55 inches. I, for one, will not be watching a single second of this week’s game — nor a single second of any of…

Being a trader on daily basis (and I am making a distinction between trading and investing) is a great study in public opinion and perception. It also demonstrates to what extent people base their actions on hopes, feelings, delusions, and whatnot, as opposed to sound reason. At best, we as a species seem to plod along in the dark, the only thing lit being where we’ve been, and we’re somehow able to make decent corrections along the way based on that knowledge. Nobody knows the future, but everyone believes they have an idea of what it will bring, based upon the past. Fortunately, it seems to be an imperfect but certainly useful guide. The real key to being successful as a trader is to understand the past, know that you cannot predict the future, but also realize that everyone else thinks they can. It’s not so hard to know what people think is going to happen; they’ll tell you. Then you just have to figure out how to profit from them being wrong — which they almost always are. My favorite trading blogger is a mathematician guy out of New York, Carl Futia. He is, without it even being close,…