Insomnia Indicator

I used the insomnia indicator today.

If a position keeps me awake, even if I believe in it, I close out or neutralize half.

I did that with IOC, buying stock to cover half of my naked short calls that were part of the 60-70 strangle I sold a week or two ago.

The stock keeps banging its head against $75, but if the bulls finally blow through that resistance, there’s no telling how high it will go afterward.

The Blame Game

When I set out to write Mortgage Market Mayhem in late 2007, I could see that the avalanche had already started, and that nothing was going to stop it. The chapter below was written in March of 2008, at about the time Bear Stearns collapsed.

Roots of the Meltdown

In the following chapter from my book, I lay out the roots of the mortgage market meltdown, and point out one huge policy decision that probably drove more of the “bubble” than just about any other factor. Strangely enough, that policy, repeated tax-free capital gains on house sales, has gotten virtually no press, nor any treatment in the dozens of books that purport to explain what happened and why.