The Brickyard – Great Ideas Can Win… Even in Shitty Markets

If your best friend asked for money to start a retailer in late 2009, you would flick him in the eye. Than you would laugh at him. That is the environment we are in, yet the reatil index $XRT is humming right along like it’s 2006.

How dumb is it to have an indoor batting cage in industrial San Diego when it is 70 degrees and sunny everyday. I found out yesterday that it’s insanely smart.

My son Max loves baseball. He is getting good pretty fast. It is really fun to watch. His team went to practice at a batting cage last week and he could not stop raving about it, so I took him yesterday and got blown away.

I mean how simple is an indoor batting cage that has great equipment, working candy vending machines and baseball fanatics running the joint. After 20 minutes and $20 (it seems very high but you could not get a spot on a Tuesday), I was asking about franchise opportunities.

We need a lot more creative and simple ideas like The Brickyard to fix commercial real estate and get people to spend money, but while you are busy hiding out and laughing at investors, great ideas are hatching and good businesses are being launched.

That is the America I am hoping to see more of.

Pep talk over.

Basically….It’s Over!

Such a great title for an article in Slate by the uber smart Charlie Munger . The juicy ending:

Basicland’s investment and commercial bankers were hostile to change. Like the objecting economists, the bankers wanted change exactly opposite to change wanted by the Good Father. Such bankers provided constructive services to Basicland. But they had only moderate earnings, which they deeply resented because Basicland’s casinos—which provided no such constructive services—reported immoderate earnings from their bucket-shop systems. Moreover, foreign investment bankers had also reported immoderate earnings after building their own bucket-shop systems—and carefully obscuring this fact with ingenious twaddle, including claims that rational risk-management systems were in place, supervised by perfect regulators. Naturally, the ambitious Basicland bankers desired to prosper like the foreign bankers. And so they came to believe that the Good Father lacked any understanding of important and eternal causes of human progress that the bankers were trying to serve by creating more bucket shops in Basicland.

Of course, the most effective political opposition to change came from the gambling casinos themselves. This was not surprising, as at least one casino was located in each legislative district. The casinos resented being compared with cancer when they saw themselves as part of a long-established industry that provided harmless pleasure while improving the thinking skills of its customers.

As it worked out, the politicians ignored the Good Father one more time, and the Basicland banks were allowed to open bucket shops and to finance the purchase and carry of real securities with extreme financial leverage. A couple of economic messes followed, during which every constituency tried to avoid hardship by deflecting it to others. Much counterproductive governmental action was taken, and the country’s credit was reduced to tatters. Basicland is now under new management, using a new governmental system. It also has a new nickname: Sorrowland.

Unfortunately, it won’t be widely read and understood.

My pal Cole from Blackstar Funds , a grumpy optimist, who passed me the link had this to say to my reply ‘Maybe, but we have baseball’:

True, but the process of a cancerous death is painful and ugly. It’s a warning story about the choices and priorities of today and how they will effect us going forward. Unleash the human capital and innovation of America to solve the energy problem and fix the massive inefficiency of the government and you can buy us another 200 years, keep the status quo and we croak in 50. The country was badly in need of a bitch slap to get our priorities back in line and stop with the casino sector (finance) nonsense , it’s back to basics, hard work, innovation, production of useful things and lowered expectations.

He is way too young to be that grumpy and mostly right.

Please chime in politely….

The Economy is Sick…BUT Stocks are Not.

I was out with my pal Tom in downtown San Diego last night and oh boy the city is sick.  You could fire off a cannon in most of the restaurants and only hurt your ears.  In a city with great weather and beautiful people, that should not be.  It is massively overbuilt.  I truly have no idea how it can be fixed.  It will just take time.

The stock market does not care right now.  The beautiful thing about stocks is that they are forward looking.  Sometimes waaaaaay forward.

Stocks still feel underowned.  Forgetting about broken stocks for the moment as I do not fish in that pond, there is a thickness of trending stocks and stocks on the verge of greatness.

I don’t trust the financials or government at all, so leverage is out of the question, but you should be out there mixing it up right now.

If only I had more time and money.

What’s Hot: Intuit INTU

It seems like Intuit $INTU is really becoming a monopoly of your financial data.  There are no contenders and with the acquisition of Mint.com, even the cool kids are on board.

Very impressive how Quicken has completely dominated the personal finance software space and beat or bought everyone.

Bill Gates was right in trying to buy them way back when.  I am eyeing this great company now.

Go Ticketfly….Inventory and The Web is Always a Good Opportunity

The team at Ticketfly.com has been killing it since they started but starting to get some real recognition.

My fund and Social Leverage have been backers from the beginning as disclosure.

I have had good success with early investments surrounding inventory and the web, first by no skills of my own (Rent.com ), than by learning from that success Golfnow.com (purchased by Comcast), Limos.com and now Ticketfly.com.

In their own words, Ticketfly is ‘a next-generation ticketing and marketing company from the first folks to sell event tickets online‘.

They have not been at it too long on this go around, but were just named a ‘Top 10 Innovative Music Company ‘ by Fast Company and have been landing big accounts .

Andrew and Dan believed there would be huge fallout from the Ticketmaster/Live Nation conglomerate and it is happening. Good on them.

There is fallout everywhere from the conglomerate mergers and web startups everywhere are feasting.

There are pilot fish and Great White Sharks in the ocean and if you know where you sit in the food chain, you can survive and thrive.

Now go swim.

Apple is a Store – OWNED by Smart People – WITH RULES

I don’t own $aapl the stock for the moment, but my kids do.

There is a new brouhaha about the store rejecting certain apps. Thank Goodness.

Maybe because I don’t think I will ever need them. Maybe because I am glad Apple has some rules for their store. Stocktwits has some ‘House Rules’ as well .

Apple is not owned by the government. Stop with the First Amendment nonsense. From this ban, it seems they don’t want apps that really do nothing .

I heard of a consortium set up by Verizon, T, Microsoft and your Mumma, started in Spain this week, that will compete with Apple. Go support them. They will support boobies. Go back to using your Nokia and StarTec.

Better yet, just wait for your Droid phone and that ‘open’ flesh accepting borg called Google.

Or, get a job, because there are plenty of people ahead of you in line with who will kick your ass while you are whining about this .

This conversation is nonsense and I hope you have a great day talking about anything but this.

The iPad and the Financial Web…To Infinity and Beyond

I have not seen or touched the iPad. I may or may not read more and my iPhone seems fine for music. BUT, there is no doubt that the web will be a better experience and I will speculate with all my heart that the Financial Web is about to be transformed.

Moods Drive Markets. The iPhone changes moods. Life is not as bad with an iPhone. Life will be even better with an iPad….if you like losing money that is ☺ .

There are only a few companies that don’t make the financial industry look clunky and old. Interactive Brokers ($IBKR) is one of them. They have been daring from the get-go and if you are a professional trader, they are the Gold Standard. From their lack of human touch to their ‘Dutch Auction’ IPO, they have broken the mold.

It is IMPOSSIBLE that there will not be more Interactive Brokers.

Gambling, Social Gaming and Facebook all fascinate me. Mostly because I do not fully understand them yet.

The US is still fascinated with equities. That may never change, but in the flat world in which we live, Forex has come on strong. Bloomberg is writing about the fortunes to be made in Forex .

Forex markets are 24/7/365 and young people will appreciate them as they are used to things being open all the time on the web.

Because the markets are global and intertwined like never before we are seeing that NEWS does not conveniently break during market hours. The Forex markets and the software that drives them are in a fantastic position.

As costs and spreads come down even further, the winners in the Forex market will be those with the best execution, those most open and simple to use (get money in and out).

In the consumer world of the masses, execution will not matter as much as user experience.

As for fraud, Bernie Madoff had to eventually steal as he took in more money and was faced with performance stress. That is the professional market for you. Performance stress is why cost and execution matter most. There is no performance stress if you are trading your parents $100 at 40 times leverage against millions of others around the world for seconds at a time, knowing your upside and downside the minute you press ENTER.

In Israel I met with Yoni Assia, the founder and CEO of eToro. Since meeting him, I have seen the Forex light. This company seems like an unstoppable force of nature. If you don’t believe me, log on, open an account in a few seconds, and place your bets on your parents Visa card (not you Max!).

In 5 years, your 20-year-old kid will be quoting the Yuan, Dollar, Yen and Euro (maybe) in the same way they talk about social gaming and photo sharing. They will be trading during class. There will be a million Jim Cramer’s. Though Jim Cramer seems tired and old to us ‘professionals’, the circus has just begun.

I have NO doubt that the iPad will amp things to a level not thought possible in the financial markets..

Will the average person make money….NO.

Will that matter…NO.

The business is about keeping the next generation trading longer. Get it yet?

I need a cold shower to temper my bullishness.

Stocktwits Getting The Love…What Does it Really Mean

Stocktwits has been getting some great press. As a Company, we feel we deserve it. The product is getting better everyday and we are organically adding members to the community that are chipping in and following the basic rules. Because of the structure of the business, we are getting instant feedback and can be pro-active on features and community issues, rather than reactive. As I like to say, ‘SOCIAL’ is in our DNA.

Michael Arrington of TechCrunch gave us an insanely good review , but he does not himself trade or invest in stocks. Mike likes the product, the platform and the concentrated activity (idea) flow. Mike knows product as he sees and uses so much of what is new, so that means a lot to us.

Of all the reviews we have gotten as a product/company/community, my fave comes from contributor Josh aka ‘Reformed Broker ‘. He is a stock fanatic and though I don’t trade much anymore, I am a fanatic too. I love the movement in prices. I love the idea of our ‘HUman Ticker’. Here is Josh’s post:
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Memo to “business” journalists who are busying themselves with clever little pieces on “The Death of the Equity Culture” – not only is it not dead, the Equity Culture is more connected and vibrant than ever before.

How do I know?

How about a little miracle called StockTwits?

Forged in the depths of the most brutal bear market in living history, the StockTwits community has given an identity and an outlet to those of us who are madly in love with stocks. There are over 100,000 of us obsessing over equities 24/7 after little more than a year. How many more of us will there be in 6 months?

And this week StockTwits cut the ribbon on a shiny, new, digital Temple to the Equity Culture in the form of their new Beta site. Anyone who is serious about the markets, from options to stocks to currencies to ETFs, now has a slick, fast interface to all of the best charts, quotes, videos, blogs, news outlets and commentary imaginable – all from one web page!

So maybe this is death, because as a stock fanatic, I am truly in heaven.

Long live the Equity Culture. Thank you StockTwits.

The good news for our community is that the platform has allowed for Forex, Futures, Macro and Financial News Nuts to aggregate as well.

Thank-You Josh and Mike for the reviews and all the others in the stream making this an educational, fun and profitable place to spend my trading/investing days.