One Degree of Separation

Called the Goldman Sachs equity derivatives desk in New York earlier this morning to confirm some information about a trade we did with them recently. After verifying what was needed with "Dan", presumably someone I had never spoken to before, we soon downshifted and made small chat; only after conversing for several minutes (mind you, a minute is an eternity in the world of trading desks) did it dawn on us that we had met in person only six months earlier. Dan and I attended the same ISDA financial derivatives conference in New York this past January and had lunch together on the last day. Scary. The equity derivatives world is small indeed. Not quite as small (and interconnected) as the Korean American community but damn close.

Two Decades and Many Pounds Ago

Had lunch yesterday with Andrew at a familiar spot, Pasta Bene, hidden in an alleyway off of Kearny in the Financial District. It seems as though every time we meet, he gets progressively thinner. He is apparently down to 150 pounds, and at his height, that's rail thin. The last time I weighed 150 pounds, Reagan was President, Iran-Contra was in the news, Black Monday had yet to hit Wall Street, Korea was finalizing preparations to host the Olympics, and I was hitting tennis balls on a court in suburban Dallas listening to the latest Men at Work cassette tape on my cutting-edge, brick-sized Sony Walkman.

Big Day, Big Island

We officially booked our flights to/from Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii for another wedding we will be attending in early October. Should be a crazy month as our own ceremony is only a couple of weeks later. Strange, we may be the first couple ever to take a Hawaii trip before our nuptials. Should be fun nonetheless. And it should bookend nicely with our honeymoon in France.

Bursting of the Bubble?

Ken Rosen, economics professor at Berkeley's Haas Business School and Director of the Fisher Center for Real Estate & Urban Economics, was interviewed in today's CBS MarketWatch. He sees rising rates delivering a much-feared housing bust. Yes, a bust and not a "soft landing" as is the general consensus lately. According to Rosen, current home prices are simply not sustainable, and he expects sales to decline measurably from their historic highs. With the median offering price of a home in Burlingame hovering around the $1 million mark, I hope Rosen is right about the bubble bursting. What is also worrisome from a macroeconomic standpoint is the rise in consumer debt and the erosion of home equity ownership. Due to the housing boom of the last six to seven years, more people now own homes. But because of the development of home equity loans and lines of credit by banks and mortgage lenders, overall "ownership" of homes is actually being eroded as many have shifted existing consumer debt (typically, car loans and credit card balances) to these new secured credit facilities. Lenders are even making it a practice of marketing and packaging equity loans and lines of credit with all new mortgage applications. The problem is homeowners are not merely shifting pre-existing debt, but they are taking on unnerving levels of new debt. With a $30,000 to $50,000 low interest, tax-deductible line of credit, why not? And naturally, as a result, consumer spending has been robust these past few years, even as the economy suffered through higher unemployment and spikes in the consumer price index (CPI). This is all fine and good in an environment of steadily rising home prices (and appreciation). But when home values stagnate or decline, this creates enormous problems on a macroeconomic level.

Brief Update to The Big Rivalry Continues

We plucked a new marketer from the Citigroup equity derivatives desk in New York. She was educated abroad (hence not a Berkeley or Stanford alum) so the 3-3 deadlock in our group will continue indefinitely. The Axe remains in limbo.

He Saved How Much?

Read an article in the Personal Journal section of today's Wall Street Journal profiling a man in his early thirties who managed to save $200,000 despite only having worked a little over five years at an annual salary of $55,000. And only a fraction of that amount was the result of investment appreciation. The article touts his frugality and financial discipline, and rightfully so. But what caught my eye was that he lives in Savannah, Georgia. Try doing the math in a high cost area like the San Francisco Bay Area. It's possible, but get used to plenty of roommates, public transportation, and peanut butter & jelly sandwiches (without the jelly).

The Amazing Race and The Amazing Race

Normally not one to watch television regularly, the past few days have been a notable exception. Daily coverage of the Tour de France on the Outdoor Life Network has been the drug of choice as of late. I am truly addicted. Last night's coverage of Stage Three had me on the edge of the couch. The latter half of the race involved cycling on a narrow strip of cobblestone road. Dangerous both because of the width of the path and because of the cobblestone surface. But the most dangerous (and dramatic) part of the race came in the first half when all of the riders went full force (and took enormous risks) to be the first to reach the mouth of the cobblestone path (and avoid the inevitable bottleneck). The mad dash accounted for a particularly nasty spill that occurred early in the stage to a group of riders, including Iban Mayo, one of the heavily favored GC contenders. Mayo may be out of contention completely. Thanks to Hincapie and other USPS teammates, Lance avoided all spills and remained within striking distance of the GC lead (and the yellow jersey), only sixteen seconds back. Today's team time trial stage should propel him into the overall lead. Cool seeing Frankie Andreu (see prior post, A Full Cycle) working as the sideline reporter for OLN during the Tour. From one amazing race to The Amazing Race, the only reality show I have made a point of watching. The season premiere aired last night and it did not disappoint. Eleven teams of two in a fierce dash around the globe going by train, plane, car, boat, bike, horse, camel, rickshaw, whatever, to get from one country checkpoint to another (to avoid being the last team at each checkpoint and thus eliminated from the race). This season began with a flight from Los Angeles to Uruguay in South America. In the very first sprint out of the starting gate at the Santa Monica pier, two of the participants fell hard on the wooden planks of the pier. One was tripped up by another player. The second, a retired Army officer, fell on an exposed nail and gashed his knee open. And the madness begins. As usual, there were certain tasks that were required along the way. The most entertaining one was requiring each team to carry a sixty pound beef carcass a quarter of a mile down a Uruguayan street. Last season's highlight was during the Korean leg of the race when the participants had to down a plate of live octopus and also dive into a frozen lake during a typically harsh Korean winter. What can I say, the show appeals to my wanderlust.

12,154

Apparently, according to a web application, that is how old I am in "number of days". Ouch. A life expectancy of eighty years translates to roughly 29,220 days, taking into account leap years. If I live to eighty (very likely given both sets of my grandparents are pushing past ninety), then that leaves roughly 17,000 more days to live, learn, thrive, and contribute. 17,000 seems like a large number, but then so does 12,154. Sobering thought. Ferris Bueller may have been onto something.

Cinema Paradiso

Been reading a weblog chronicling one couple's efforts to finance and startup a small "art house" movie theater (link here). Interesting tidbits, including a breakdown of a theater's finances. Some of their proposed ideas make a lot of sense, e.g., selling beer and wine at the concession, packaging tickets with pre-fixe dinners at neighboring restaurants, etc. To maintain anonymity, they have disguised their real names as well as the name of the town they are considering for the cinema. They refer to it simply as "Midwestburg". Clever. And a nod to The Simpsons in which the exact location of "Springfield" (nearly every state in the Union has a town named Springfield) is always kept a closely guarded secret and has been the longest-running joke in the series (link here). In an increasingly bland and standardized world of cookie-cutter multiplexes and retail chains, it's reassuring to see ventures like the two-screen cinema continuing to be developed and promoted. Kinda makes me nostalgic for the dollar movie house in Irving, Texas. Yes, the floors were sticky and the seats creaked, but unlike the cineplex at the mall, the place had a character that was distinctly fixed to its locale, truly an Irving institution. How can you forget a theater that employed its own organist and let you in for free on your birthday?

Saturday Morning at The Fillmore Street Jazz Festival

After a brief swing through Noe Valley on a very foggy Saturday morning where we met briefly with some of T's friends, we made our way to the Richmond District for dimsum at Ton Kiang with Wagamama Boy. We were so early in fact, they seated us immediately at the center table on the main floor. That never happens. As usual, the plates flew off the trays. Five types of steamed shrimp dumplings, fried crab dumplings, steamed greens, and flat rice noodles. I topped it off with a plate of small, extremely moist "Asian" donuts. After dimsum, we took our typical coffee stroll through the Marina and eventually made our way to upper Fillmore in Pacific Heights. Lucky for us, the annual Fillmore Street Jazz Festival, apparently the largest street fair in the City, was taking place on that very same day. Who knew? The entire mile stretch of Fillmore from the summit of Pacific Heights down to the bustle of Japantown had been closed off to traffic and was now clogged with thousands of pedestrians, musicians, artists, and food vendors. Countless sights, sounds, scents, and tastes. There were a dozen music stages, one at each intersection, where soloists would croon or ensembles would riff. Many of the food vendors were grilling their food in the open where the smell of Italian sausages and sweet onions wafted in the breeze, mixing with the aroma of garlic fries and padthai noodles. Definite sensory overload. We walked the entire length of the festival, stopping to view, listen, savor, and sample. It took us a solid two hours to make our way down to Japantown. Great morning all around, pleasantly mild summer weather, an entertaining street fair, and no wait at dimsum to boot.

The Freeze Frame Scene

Made our way to a matinee showing of Spiderman 2. I'm usually not a big fan of the comic-book-turned-Hollywood-blockbuster genre and have shunned previous hits like the Batman series, the X-Men series, the Hulk, etc. The computer-generated special effects ("CGI") so central to most of these types of films usually serve to mask a weak, recycled plot line and paper-thin character development. Eye candy but not much more. Worth nine dollars and two hours of my life? Usually not. What can I say? This time around my arm was twisted, literally. Under duress, I sat in the theater trying to summon an open mind. True to form and expectation, S2 was bathing in CGI, one-dimensional characters, hokey dialogue (including an absurd conversation between Peter Parker and his dead uncle in heaven), and the annoying comic-book view of the world (and its inhabitants) as either "good" or "evil". But to its credit (and to my surprise), S2 anchored the plot squarely around the moral dilemmas confronted by Peter Parker. Dilemmas rooted in reality and amidst daily situations that ring true. This superhero is often late to work, lives in a dingy apartment, struggles to pay the rent on time, is awkward around others, suffers at the sight of his widowed aunt who pushes a $20 bill on him even as a house foreclosure notice sits on the nearby table. The character is not just "more human", but his encounters (and daily travails) are as well. Toby Maguire and his wide-eyed, stolid demeanor were very well suited to this role. And I have to note, the film had one of the funniest freeze frame moments in recent memory. I would see the movie again just for that scene alone. Classic.

The Psychology of Time (Mis)Management

Read an entertaining article in the Harvard Business Review exploring the underlying psychological factors motivating those who chronically mismanage and abuse time. The author, a clinical psychologist and researcher at the Anderson School of Management at UCLA, breaks down four categories of time abusers including "the perfectionist", "the preemptive", "the people pleaser", and "the procrastinator". Each involves a common pathology rooted typically in adolescence. Fascinating material. Wish I had read this in college, in particular, the section on "the procrastinator". Oye.