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An autistic temperament
Aug. 6th, 2006 06:53 pmI know that I am mildly obsessive-compulsive. I kind of have it under control, but order and neatness when I am arranging things are important to me. Balance, some kind of right-angled feng shui, permeates my outlook.
I suspect that this might be one of my strengths and one of my weaknesses at poker. It's a strength because I think that it helps defend against tilt, although I am not sure why this sHould be the case. Routine is good. I can play threE tables of limit for a long time without varying my style. If I spot my style changing, I leave. I'm avoiding both winners' tilt and losers' tilt.
But there's a downside. If I look at my stats table for the month, why does that minus $1 in one box bother me? As Caro observes, it's an irrelevancy.
This also extends to multi-tabling. I can be $90 up on one table, and $50 up on another, but if I am $20 down on a table that I know is good, then that $20 bothers me. Offer me a swap of $20 of my profit at one of the other tables with the elimination of my $20 loss at my "losing" table", and I would jump at it. Why? It all goes into a single pot at the end of the session. Fucked if I know, but I think that it comes back to that "balance" thing. Well, know thyself. It's an attitude that I have, and it's better to recognize it and to try to cope with it, than not to know that it is there.
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What four countries in the world do you think have the largest foreign currency reserves?
One day, in the long and distant past before Ronald Reagan spent the USSR into oblivion, the USA would have been in that list. Now, unfortunately, it's at the other end, with a per capita debt of something like $25,000, if my memory serves me correctly (which it probably doesn't, but that number is in the right ballpark).
The countries with the largest levels of foreign reserves are:
China
Japan
Taiwan
Russia
They have $925bn, $840bn, $270bn and $270bn respectively. Some of this is held in gold, but a lot of it is held in US Treasury bills.
An increasing amount of it is going to be held in euros and in tangible investments -- i.e. equities and real estate rather than in government or corporate bonds. And the numbers are getting bigger.
You hear a lot of talk about the fact that the yuan is ridiculously undervalued (just as you hear talk of how the dollar is overvalued), but people are less voluble on the state of the rouble and the Yen (or of the overvaluation of sterling if you are taking trade deficits into account).
Looking at this, I like the rouble. Its lack of stonking strength is probably due to unfair risk perception, but as long as energy prices remain relatively high to their long-term trend (and as long as China and India continue to expand, energy prices will remain relatively high), you've got to like the Russian currency. Just look at Purchasing Power Parity when it comes to Moscow and St Petersburg property, and you can see that there's alot of money around.
+++++++++++
I suspect that this might be one of my strengths and one of my weaknesses at poker. It's a strength because I think that it helps defend against tilt, although I am not sure why this sHould be the case. Routine is good. I can play threE tables of limit for a long time without varying my style. If I spot my style changing, I leave. I'm avoiding both winners' tilt and losers' tilt.
But there's a downside. If I look at my stats table for the month, why does that minus $1 in one box bother me? As Caro observes, it's an irrelevancy.
This also extends to multi-tabling. I can be $90 up on one table, and $50 up on another, but if I am $20 down on a table that I know is good, then that $20 bothers me. Offer me a swap of $20 of my profit at one of the other tables with the elimination of my $20 loss at my "losing" table", and I would jump at it. Why? It all goes into a single pot at the end of the session. Fucked if I know, but I think that it comes back to that "balance" thing. Well, know thyself. It's an attitude that I have, and it's better to recognize it and to try to cope with it, than not to know that it is there.
+++++++++
What four countries in the world do you think have the largest foreign currency reserves?
One day, in the long and distant past before Ronald Reagan spent the USSR into oblivion, the USA would have been in that list. Now, unfortunately, it's at the other end, with a per capita debt of something like $25,000, if my memory serves me correctly (which it probably doesn't, but that number is in the right ballpark).
The countries with the largest levels of foreign reserves are:
China
Japan
Taiwan
Russia
They have $925bn, $840bn, $270bn and $270bn respectively. Some of this is held in gold, but a lot of it is held in US Treasury bills.
An increasing amount of it is going to be held in euros and in tangible investments -- i.e. equities and real estate rather than in government or corporate bonds. And the numbers are getting bigger.
You hear a lot of talk about the fact that the yuan is ridiculously undervalued (just as you hear talk of how the dollar is overvalued), but people are less voluble on the state of the rouble and the Yen (or of the overvaluation of sterling if you are taking trade deficits into account).
Looking at this, I like the rouble. Its lack of stonking strength is probably due to unfair risk perception, but as long as energy prices remain relatively high to their long-term trend (and as long as China and India continue to expand, energy prices will remain relatively high), you've got to like the Russian currency. Just look at Purchasing Power Parity when it comes to Moscow and St Petersburg property, and you can see that there's alot of money around.
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