Zeev's Turnips Patch-No Politics (ZEEV)

[Train Guy]

Shish, my internet connection got flaky on me yesterday. Wouldn't stay connected for more than about 20 secs before the modem lost it and would try and reconnect from scratch. After 45 minutes of that, I gave up. At least it waited until just before the market closed and I was flat. I could have switched over and tried dial up if need be. I checked and the phone was fine, unlike the day before when it stopped working. Appears to be working fine today.

Go ahead, tell some stories. My post got a couple of amazings and all I did was cut and paste. We could put you in charge of assigning people colored jackets. And you could give lessons in hand signals. Now if somebody shows up wearing a ball cap, tugging his ear, touching his elbow, pulling his shirt and rubbing his leg, tell him the ball park is that a way. <vbg> I don't see anything about jargon on the CME's site. That's even more secret than the hand signals. <g>

-- one of the floor runners from the firm I cleared my trades through forced me --

Forced you?? I think for 18K I could have sworn off something for good. And stayed away from the guys in the gold jackets. Actually you were set up. They said, let's get him stoned and take his money. <g> And that was back when 18K was actually worth something.

I'm strictly the index futures, but I've been a bit looking into the fascinating world of futures and derivatives. Been reading the John Lothian Newsletter, http://www.johnlothiannewsletter.com/. It deals mostly with the business end and the players involved, but gives a bit of the flavour of the CME/CBOT. Unfortunately just reading the more interesting articles from it is taking over an hour a day, and I'm getting behind.

There are a few on the board that have traded commodities. ZZtops confessed. And TOL who is around now and then use to. A few times for fun he even took delivery.

-- On a very few occasions
I took delivery on Feb. pork bellies and paid cold storage
in order to deliver them against a short contracts in the
Mar. bellies. Thought I was positioned pricewise to profit
plus I just wanted to actually go through the experience.
It worked out to be a wash, but I got a kick out of doing it.
One does not often own that much bacon. In the grains, one
contract is 5,000 bushels! However, no truck pulls up in
front of house to dump soybeans in your front yard. The
commodity is stored in a bonded warehouse specified as
regular for delivery by the exchange. And it has been
inspected to ensure that it meets contract specifications.

Now confess, as a former pig trader, the closest you've ever gotten to a pig is at the grocery store. <g> You could do a story a week. Instead of a whooper of a fish tale, it could be Dan's Pig Tail of the Week. <g> You know, Lothian has an Other Voices section in his newsletter. I wonder if he would be interested in a funny/interesting comment/story he could put in the Friday newsletter to sort of end the week.