Maria Bartiromo’s voice mail is in my film and it paints one picture. Now? The following CNBC promotional email was just forwarded to me from a fund manager friend and it paints another picture of Bartiromo:

“A tireless crusader for transparency on Wall Street and a firm believer in the rights of individual investors like you, Maria Bartiromo was a pioneer in opening up the “secret” Wall Street club. Now she’s launching Investor Brief, a free weekly e-letter designed to give you a front-row seat to the most important goings-on on Wall Street. Your detailed invitation follows below. Fellow Investor, The New York Times describes Maria Bartiromo as “An insider” who does “more than her share.” I describe Maria as one of the hardest working people on Wall Street. From top business leaders to powerful politicians to top-tier investors, her Rolodex is stuffed with the names of men and women you should listen to. In recent issues of Investor Brief, Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit discussed the future of Citigroup and the top issues facing the financial sector; NYU economist Nouriel Roubini talked about the possibility of a deeper recession and further stock market declines; and former President Clinton spoke with Maria about financial reform, Goldman Sachs and the Federal deficit. On-air, Maria has gone one-on-one with Hank Greenberg, Carl Ichan, Steve Forbes, Larry Summers, Charles Schwab, George Soros, Boone Pickens and Bill Gates — among dozens of mover-and-shakers. Who else might pop up in your weekly Investor Brief? Hot-shot CEOs of the top global brands and seldom-interviewed, but top-ranked money managers — the world’s best investors, sharing their thoughts with you. After all, good investing is more than just “buying stocks.” You need to understand what’s happening in the world — the news and the back-story. When someone like Russia’s President Medvedev shares his views on oil prices or the U.S. dollar, you can bet Maria pays attention. Investor Brief is your ticket to a world that most investors never get a glimpse of. Maria will share her experiences. You’ll get her analysis, opinions and knowledge from the real experts in the economic, investing and political worlds. Plus she’ll share fun tidbits she hears behind-the-scenes. I guarantee you’ll be both educated and entertained. And you’ll come away each week with a better understanding of how this crazy world of investing really runs. She’ll tell you which economic reports will move the market that week and why. She’ll outline the week’s key events — from testimony in Congress to Federal Reserve meetings and beyond. And she’ll alert you to earnings reports that could boost, or drop, the stocks you own. One of the rewards of Maria’s job is being able to pick the brains of today’s most renowned “investing masters.” When you get to hang around with legends like Larry Summers, Bill Gates and Martin Feldstein, you can’t help but gain unprecedented insight into the inner workings of today’s market. So in each issue of Investor Brief, Maria will share the lessons she’s learned from the very best minds in the investment business. For example, everybody knows the Federal Reserve sets interest rates, but few people ever give it more than a passing thought. Savvy investors don’t take the Fed’s statements at face value. They ferret out valuable intelligence — and make smarter investments — by watching a few key steps in the process the Fed uses to reach their decision…Having watched Maria preparing for her first issue of Investor Brief, I can tell you that it’s her passion to take what Wall Street’s top professionals teach her every day and pass it on to you in clear, jargon-free English that will make this e-letter a “must-read.” This special invitation is 100% free…You’ll enjoy exclusive features, not available anywhere else. Investor Brief is Maria talking with you, one-on-one, about the off-air side of her work life — sharing photos and casual conversations she has with the people who make today’s news. Through Investor Brief, Maria will introduce you to the most-respected men and women in the business and investing communities. Her hard-hitting interviews will give you access to the best current thinking on what is happening on Wall Street and Main Street today. Send Maria questions, she’ll get you answers; learn valuable information Maria gets from CNBC guests off-camera; and much more…P.P.S. If you have friends or loved ones who might benefit from Investor Brief, feel free to forward this invitation. They are welcome to join free, as well.”

What can I say. Bullshit is bullshit.

I have seen many proponents of fundamental trading recently. Here is a passage from my book The Complete TurtleTrader that puts it all in perspective:

Richard Dennis’s protege Tom Willis had learned long ago from Dennis why price, the philosophical underpinning of Donchian’s rule, was the only true metric to trust. He said, “Everything known is reflected in the price. I could never hope to compete with Cargill [today the world's second-largest private corporation, with $70 billion in revenues for 2005], who has soybean agents scouring the globe knowing everything there is to know about soybeans and funneling the information up to their trading headquarters.” Willis has had friends who made millions trading fundamentally, but they could never know as much as the big corporations with thousands of employees. And they always limited themselves to trading only one market. Willis added, “They don’t know anything about bonds. They don’t know anything about the currencies. I don’t either, but I’ve made a lot of money trading them. They’re just numbers. Corn is a little different than bonds, but not different enough that I’d have to trade them differently. Some of these guys I read about have a different system for each [market]. That’s absurd. We’re trading mob psychology. We’re not trading corn, soybeans, or S&P’s. We’re trading numbers.” ‘Trading numbers’ was just another Dennis convention to reinforce abstracting the world in order not to get emotionally distracted. Dennis made the Turtles understand price analysis. He did this because at first he “thought that intelligence was reality and price the appearance, but after a while I saw that price is the reality and intelligence is the appearance.” He was not being purposefully oblique. Dennis’s working assumption was that soybean prices reflected soybean news faster than people could get and digest the news. Since his early twenties, he had known that looking at the news for decision-making cues was the wrong thing to do. If acting on news, stock tips, and economic reports were the real key to trading success, then everyone would be rich. Dennis was blunt: “Abstractions like crop size, unemployment, and inflation are mere metaphysics to the trader. They don’t help you predict prices, and they may not even explain past market action.” The greatest trader in Chicago had been trading five years before he ever saw a soybean. He poked fun at the notion that if “something” was happening in the weather, his trading would somehow change: “If it’s raining on those soybeans, all that means to me is I should bring an umbrella.”

See? Easyyyy…

Note: Posted a shorter version of this same excerpt a while back, but it never gets old!

Feedback in:

“Mike, Thanks so much for the [DVD] copies of Broke. Jon and I watched this weekend and really enjoyed it. Great job of staying objective, it really builds credibility of the message. Fact is anyone who puts their faith in politicians is in trouble from the outset of things, the lottery versus games of skill like poker really illustrate that well. I also appreciated the consistency of the message. You nail the idea of how to avoid being a sheep and how it’s ultimately about personal responsibility. You also show normal people like Salem and others as an example. And by normal, I mean these are not people born with a silver spoon. Oh, and credits were great. Got a nice boost to my athletic confidence watching you try to hit that pitcher…kidding, I would have looked much worse.
Brandon [his firm: RL Capital Management]“

Thanks!

For those familiar with my book The Complete TurtleTrader you know that chapter 13 is about trader Salem Abraham. Abraham is what I call a second generation Turtle — as he was heavily influenced by Turtle Jerry Parker. Another second generation Turtle? Francisco Vaca. Vaca (who I met a few years back in Florida) has been also influenced by Richard Dennis and Paul Rabar. He reached out to me last night:

“Hi Michael, I hope this e-mail finds you well. Since you like to follow those of us that came out of C & D Commodities [Richard Dennis' original firm]. I hope you will find interesting the interview I had with Managed Account Research, Inc…released two weeks ago.”

Thanks. Here you go (PDF).

From Barrons today:

In a world weighed down by debt and low nominal GDP growth, with deflationary pressures mounting, it’s a no-brainer that risk assets aren’t likely to fare well. Dee points out that “we are sailing into these choppy waters without a life preserver; fiscal and monetary levers have already been pulled.” That means that come another financial crisis, “the only policy response left will be to print money.” Which, of course, is what the gold bugs are counting on and why bullion has glistened so brightly. He sums it all up this way: What we’ve had since May is a nice bounce by an oversold market. “The rally, however,” he cautions, “has been ragged. I think it’s very timely to sell those tired longs and short anything in the way of the coming storm.”

I happen to share those beliefs, but my current bets are not fundamentally driven. Who knows when markets will trend (and in what direction exactly). We can just be ready.

Mark Hulbert pens some of the best mindless drivel seen in a while:

“Fortunately, a disappointing first half does not automatically doom the second half of the year. A clue to this comes from just anecdotal evidence. Take 2009, for example, when the market lost ground for the first six months. Yet the second half of the year witnessed one of the strongest rallies in recent memory. To be sure, poor first halves have not always been followed by such pleasing reversals. There have been plenty of other years in which poor first halves were followed by poor second halves as well. But the historical record shows there is a largely random relationship between the market’s performance in the first and second halves of each year.”

Got those marching orders? Now move out men and women…there is money to lose!

Note: context.

Ken at Top Breakout Stocks recently made a comment here about this WSJ article. What did he say?

“Replace the word ‘strikeout’ with ‘taking a loss’ and ‘runs’ with ‘profits’ and it’s a perfect analogy for trading.”

So I decided to try it. Here is the article:

There is no easier way to get booed in baseball than to end an inning with a swing and a miss taking a loss. For as long as the game has been played, hitters have been taught to make contact and put the ball in play, but a new generation of sluggers is finding success swinging from its heels on every pitch. The negative stigma surrounding the strikeout taking a loss has been destroyed. No player exemplifies this change more than Arizona’s Mark Reynolds. Last season, he became the first player in baseball history to whiff take a loss 200 times in a single season, and now he’s on pace to do it again. Arizona has been willing to live with long walks to the dugout because of what he is able to do when he does make contact—he’s hitting .440 with 40 home runs profits when the bat meets the ball. Other notable players with this all-or-nothing approach include Philadelphia’s Ryan Howard, the Nationals’ Adam Dunn, the Rays’ Carlos Pena, Oakland’s Jack Cust and Seattle’s Russell Branyan. Each of these five has racked up 140 strikeouts losses or more this season, a feat nearly unheard of 30 years ago. Bobby Bonds’s record of 189 strikeouts losses in a season held up from 1970 to 2004, but since then, it has been passed six times, and Mr. Reynolds is just about to do it again. Run scoring Profits have also increased as the strikeout taking a loss has become more acceptable. Statistical analysis has shown the strikeout taking a loss is no worse than any other kind of out, and the trade-off for extra home runs profits is more than worth it. Dan Plesac, a two-time All Star and current MLB Network analyst, says today’s players are “more rewarded if you hit .270 and get 30 home runs profits than if you hit .310 but hit 20.”

Works!

Read and watch.

“Defining the Link Between Risk and Leverage” (PDF).

“Performance, Risk, and Correlation Characteristics” (PDF).

“Top 100 Hedge Funds” (PDF).