Morning Post

Pressed Flower Art - Balance

Giclee Print

by Shelley Xie

As I have no feel for this market, unwilling to make any upside or downside bets, I've been mostly on the sidelines. In anticipation (that's a really nasty word I think!) of a bounce, I let go of my DIA SEP $125 puts as well as my BWA JUL $50 puts).

Under the guidance of M. Musashi's rule #9, "Do not do anything useless", I've been spending time going through charts--perhaps too much time as my eyes and neck remind me.

Over the past few days, the HMO stocks have gathered some strength. Yesterday that strength was punched away due to some changes in the Medicare Advantage Bill being passed. For all of the big HMO's, there is no one left to buy. Accordingly, growth in membership is tough unless you find a new pool. That new pool was Medicare. The bill that passed ended up to be a shark in that pool.

The point that I found interesting is that the run up almost seemed a bit of a feint. Here are thumbnails. It might be worth watching to see if these prices hold.

I've been enjoying getting re-acquainted with The Book of Five Rings. I did put my hands on Sun Tzu's The Art of War (Trans. J. H. Huang). It was languishing in my son's room--and I do mean languishing. It was stuffed in the bookshelf with the cover and about 10 pages folded over backwards. Half of the book is the translation, and the other half of the book is comments on the translation. It was odd to see my penned notes in the margins as they related to business strategy. The applicability of these texts to investing/trading is extraordinary.

There is a natural rhythm to everything, and these texts reminded me of that. In the translator's preface, Sun-Tzu's quotation as follows is highlighted:

"Not battling" is a form of strategy.