Hello Baby Girl!

8:31am Tuesday, June 2nd Trinity Nichole Tario entered the world and graced us with her beautiful smile and full head of brown curly hair! Her brother Tyler is STOKED and Laura is recovering and doing well. “Daddy’s Daddy” Mike and Grandma Teresa are here along with Laura’s mom “Nonny”.

Thank you all for your well wishes and support!

TNT in the light on 12seconds.tv

Baby and Mama on 12seconds.tv

Brother and Sister on 12seconds.tv

Happy Belated Holidays and Happy New Year!

MY ANNUAL LETTER ON WHAT WENT DOWN IN 2008

Most of all, I’m just happy that so many of the people I love and care about were directly a part of our lives this year. In all honesty, though the world is changing drastically day by day around us, I simply can’t wait for what 2009 has in store and look forward to sharing another great year!

Blessings and Bliss,

Sean

Quotes from 2008

My dad’s a banker and sends me financial data, analysis and forecasts daily as he reads through mountains of this information and picks out the relevant/interesting stuff. Below is from an email he sent me today revealing just how ridiculous and off base some of the seemingly educated and informed talking heads are in the financial sector. Though this isn’t new news to most of us, it is entertaining. Enjoy.

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BusinessWeek published some good (I mean terrible) quotes from 2008. Here they are: (the comments are theirs, not mine).
1. “A very powerful and durable rally is in the works. But it may need another couple of days to lift off. Hold the fort and keep the faith!” —Richard Band, editor, Profitable Investing Letter, Mar. 27, 2008
At the time of the prediction, the Dow Jones industrial average was at 12,300. By late Dece mber it was at 8,500.

2. AIG (AIG) “could have huge gains in the second quarter.” —Bijan Moazami, analyst, Friedman, Billings, Ramsey, May 9, 2008
AIG wound up losing $5 billion in that quarter and $25 billion in the next. It was taken over in September by the U.S. government, which will spend or lend $150 billion to keep it afloat.

3. “I think this is a case where Freddie Mac (FRE) and Fannie Mae (FNM) are fundamentally sound. They’re not in danger of going under…I think they are in good shape going forward.” —Barney Frank (D-Mass.), House Financial Services Committee chairman, July 14, 2008
Two months later, the government forced the mortgage giants into conservatorships and pledged to invest up to $100 billion in each.

4. “The market is in the process of correcting itself.” —President George W. Bush, in a Mar. 14, 2008 speech
For the rest of the year, the market kept correcting…and correcting…and correcting.

5. “No! No! No! Bear Stearns is not in trouble.” —Jim Cramer, CNBC commentator, Mar. 11, 2008
Five days later, JPMorgan Chase (JPM) took over Bear Stearns with government help, nearly wiping out shareholders.

6. “Existing-Home Sales to Trend Up in 2008″ —Headline of a National Association of Realtors press release, Dec. 9, 2007
On Dec. 23, 2008, the group said November sales were running at an annual rate of 4.5 million—down 11% from a year earlier—in the worst housing slump since the Depression.

7. “I think you’ll see [oil prices at] $150 a barrel by the end of the year” —T. Boone Pickens, June 20, 2008
Oil was then around $135 a barrel. By late December it was below $40.

8. “I expect there will be some failures. … I don’t anticipate any serious problems of that sort among the large internationally active banks that make up a very substantial part of our banking system.” —Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve chairman, Feb. 28, 2008
In September, Washington Mutual became the largest financial institu tion in U.S. history to fail. Citigroup (C) needed an even bigger rescue in November.

9. “In today’s regulatory environment, it’s virtually impossible to violate rules.” —Bernard Madoff, money manager, Oct. 20, 2007
About a year later, Madoff—who once headed the Nasdaq Stock Market—told investigators he had cost his investors $50 billion in an alleged Ponzi scheme.

10. A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can’t Win, the title of a book by conservative commentator Shelby Steele, published on Dec. 4, 2007.
Mr. Steele, meet President-elect Barack Obama.

With all the talking heads out there, it probably wouldn’t be hard to find some silly comments, but these aren’t talking heads. These are Ph.Ds (they’re supposed to know what they’re talking about), politicians (they have huge staffs that can do massive research for them), journalists (they’re supposed to be experts in their field) and T. Boone Pickens (who should know better).

These quotes are the #1 reason I’m a technical analyst who doesn’t pay attention to the fundamentals or the story. The best and the brightest are often wrong. A chart will tell me very quickly if I’m wrong, but the fundamentals or story will lag so small losses turn into big losses. It’s much more reliable to study the price action – because you’re trading the price action – and leave the other stuff alone.

Those Crazy Cubs

So, my buddies are all a buzz about baseball spring training coming up, and as I consider heading down to Arizona with them for the first time ever to check it out (an experience I think worth having at least once) I gotta get something off my chest…

The CUBS are the only sports team with the power to make me cry.  I’m not proud of this fact, and have tried to just stop caring on a number of occasions, but every season, I get sucked back in.  They’re like a child who is a continual disappointment in school, but every year you have hope that they’ll change, because they say they’ll change and they sound sincere, and so they start out doing really well, and you get all hopeful after bringing home a few good grades, so you start believing that they’ve finally turned over a new leaf and that this year will be different, but then a month before graduation, your kid goes and hits the Principle in the head with a baseball bat, lights the school on fire and gets himself expelled and your back at square one with a 15 year old that’s still trying to pass 3rd grade.

I cried in 1989 when they BLEW a phenominal season to the SF Giants in the playoffs right before the big earthquake. Clearly remember being 8 years old and running out of my friends house and running home as the 4th game ended so that he wouldn’t see my tears. Cried in 1998 when they BLEW another phenomenal season by being swept by the Braves in the playoffs. Wept in 2003 when they CHOKED on their best chance yet, losing to the Marlins in the NLCS. Cried in 2007 and 2008 when they got SWEPT in the NLDS… especially in 2008, after having the best record in the MLB and losing to the team with the worst record going into the playoffs.*

Unfortunately, I expect this pathetic and insane tradition will continue for decades to come… but maybe next year, just maybe.

*Screw the Red Socks by the way for making all us Cubs fans think, “heck, if they could do it after all these years, so can our Cubbies!!!” We were better off having major doubts throughout the process.

Lesser of 2 Evils - The Pro Life Ploy

So, as I’ve already posted a few times, I am most definitely not someone who believes in a lesser of 2 evils when it comes to voting. I take this stance because of a variety of reasons that have to do with my understanding of history, politics, economics, media, framing, and the systems that work to make up the reality we exist within here in America and on this planet.

Clearly this is yet another opinion I hold however that is counter cultural, especially as someone who proclaims to be a Christian, and a Catholic even, as nearly every 4 years I am fed a massive dose from pastors and priests alike the same mantra about the sanctity of family and the sanctity of life and that anyone who stands opposed to either of these “Holy Traditions” stands anathema to the “Christian way of life” and “the Judeo/Christian foundation our nation’s forefathers constructed.”

My father however, who I love dearly and have been having this on going debate with about the faulty logic of a Lesser of 2 Evils, shocked me a few weeks back when he sent me one of the most powerful and persuasive essays I’ve ever come across explaining, from a Christian perspective, why our Two Party System is a complete sham.

CHRISTIANS AND THE PRO LIFE PLOY - by G.C. Dilsaver

Whether you are Christian or not, “pro-life” or “pro-choice,” I HIGHLY recommend you give this a read through, as it will explain a simple logic that transcends religion and denominations and speak to the root of why a vote for a candidate who simply claims to be Pro-Life is not always the solution that will bring us any closer to achieving a more Just and Compassionate Nation or World. If however you are Pro-Life and Christian, you MUST read this essay.

Little Baby Tario #2

It’s official, our little Tyler is going to be a BIG BROTHER!!  We have baby #2 on the way and due to arrive at the end of May.  On the left of the dotted line is his/her bottom and on the right of the dotted line is to top of his/her head.  Today Baby Tario is 9 weeks and 4 days old, has a beating heart (which we saw) and little itty bitty arms and legs (which we also saw squirming around).