Thanksgiving

You may have noticed that I have not made many entries recently. My doctor suggested that I rest my little finger that has been giving me some problems. It seems better. So, I will use it and perhaps make it worse.

We are leaving tomorrow morning for Monterey, where we will have Thanksgiving with our daughters Nancy and Elizabeth, son John, and their families. We will all be staying in hotels or with friends or relatives. Arrangements have been made to have Thanksgiving dinner at the Monterey Country Club.

We will return on Saturday and pick up Allison at the Oakland airport. She will stay with us for a few days and return to Boise on Tuesday.

What a day!

Yesterday was a very strange day. The market was up about 1.3% an hour after the opening with gainers outpacing losers by roughly 2 to 1. It stayed that way for hours. It appeared to me that the market was expecting Bush to win. Tradesports and the Iowa futures market, where people bet money on the outcome, gave Bush about a 65% chance of winning as I recall.

About an hour before the close, the stock market began to break down on rumors that Kerry was getting stronger voter support than expected. I went on to the Internet to find out what the rumors were. Newspapers were not saying anything but there was a lot of chatter among the bloggers about higher than expected turnout in Democratic wards and exit polling favoring Kerry. Some political analysts and pollsters were predicting a Kerry victory although the Newspaper web sites were not reporting that.

During dinner time, Bill Mohr, the instructor of my Investment Real Estate course called me. He asked me how things were and I told him about the polling place rumors. I checked Tradesports and saw that the betting odds on Bush were about 33%. ( That's 3 to 1 against his winning.) I passed that on to Bill.

By the time that I went to bed, the odds on Bush were 96%. Amazing. Someone who put money on Bush at dinner time could have tripled it in four hours.

(I am only saying that to depict how wildly expectations of the election outcome changed yesterday. I do not advise betting on elections.)

Speculation

Inside the body of this 68 year old prudent and careful investor, lies the heart of a fourteen year old day trader crying to get out.

I could not resist any longer. I bought a straddle on the market - the NASDQ 100 to be specific. If the market goes way up after the election or goes way down after the election, I make money. If it stays the same, I lose. My hunch is that we will not know the election results for a week or so and that uncertainty will drive the market down.

You do not know what a straddle is? Google it!