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Progressive Bok
Aug. 4th, 2009 02:14 pmWell, the throughpout for the first three days of the month has been satisfactory -- more than 4,500 hands. Income has been okay too, helped by positive variance. One example was last night when I ran AK into AA and then AA into AK. The AA guy in hand one had $70, while the AK guy in hand two had $406. Both hands held up for the favourite, leaving me a net $336 up on the two hands.
The previous day I survived a horrible 90 minutes where I hit some ghastly situations. Weirdly, I hit AA v KK on two different tables within an hour against the same player. The first one lost and the second one won. Then I hit AA v 88 and got stacked off with a flop of 882 (he was OOP and called my CB on the flop, check-raising the brick turn. Spot on play from him there, but I was still on the edge of folding, even though a bit more than half my stack was now in the middle. Cunningly he didn't CR all-in either, leaving that extra bit of hope that he might have KK or QQ. But the guy wasn't that kind of player.)
This was followed with AA v TT (this time I am OOP) on a board of JT8 double-suited. There was already $34 in the pot pre-flop (another player was also in from UTG), with me having only $80 behind. He had about $70 behind. So I bet the flop and he flat-called. Turn brought me an Ace, which ended that argument very nicely.
Curious thing about that hand was that he made his mistake pre-flop, followed by me making my mistake on the flop, followed by him making his mistake on the turn. But I think that a cold call of a reraise for 12% of your stack with TT, without even closing the action (original raiser was still to call my reraise) is foolish in the extreme. The other "mistakes" are only there if you are duioble-dummy
+++++++++
I was thinking about inflation this morning, just wishing that the time would come again when my various monies on deposit would start earning more than 60p a month or whatever, when it struck me that Quantitative Easing, that very mechanism that I am praising for fuelling the future inflationary fires, is also the very factor that is keeping the returns on my deposits so shitty. When the Co-op, the building societies, and so on, were desperate for money early on in the credit crisis, interest rates for fixed-term deposits were superb. Then the government starts pouring money into the gilts market and, of course, the good rates disappear. Why should financial institutions pay me a decent interest rate when they can get all that they want from the government printing presses?
So, if QE continues, I keep getting a lousy interest rate, but the later zooming in inflation will be all the greater. If QE gets turned off, the inflationary pressure will be slower (although the idea is, of course, that it will ultimately feed on itself) but interest rates will start rising again because investors' money will be in demand again. A corollary of this will be a downside pressure on the stockmarket.
The buoyancy of the equity markets at the moment was puzzling me, but I have concluded that not a little part of it is the Mrs Watanabe effect. Sure, dividends will be cut, but there's no decent return anywhere else, so for the income fanatic, it's equities (or corporate bonds, also v buoyant this past year) or nothing. When QE stops and the good fixed terms reappear, I suspect a lot of retail money will leave the equity markets, particularly if we have a stream of dividend cuts.
I went long on wheat last week (I might have mentioned this) and am still out of the money. I'm kind of enthusiastic about all of the softs, although my arguments might be called old and hackneyed. My response would be, well, that's as may be, but that doesn't make them any less true. Buying wheat, corn, coffee, etc, is mainly based on the world population's predilection for eating more meat once they get wealthier. Meat is a very inefficient food source, which means that the demand for wheat and corn becomes greater. Other factors also lead to my belief that land will become scarcer (for wheat and corn) and demand will become higher. And softs are also a standard inflation hedge.
____________________
The previous day I survived a horrible 90 minutes where I hit some ghastly situations. Weirdly, I hit AA v KK on two different tables within an hour against the same player. The first one lost and the second one won. Then I hit AA v 88 and got stacked off with a flop of 882 (he was OOP and called my CB on the flop, check-raising the brick turn. Spot on play from him there, but I was still on the edge of folding, even though a bit more than half my stack was now in the middle. Cunningly he didn't CR all-in either, leaving that extra bit of hope that he might have KK or QQ. But the guy wasn't that kind of player.)
This was followed with AA v TT (this time I am OOP) on a board of JT8 double-suited. There was already $34 in the pot pre-flop (another player was also in from UTG), with me having only $80 behind. He had about $70 behind. So I bet the flop and he flat-called. Turn brought me an Ace, which ended that argument very nicely.
Curious thing about that hand was that he made his mistake pre-flop, followed by me making my mistake on the flop, followed by him making his mistake on the turn. But I think that a cold call of a reraise for 12% of your stack with TT, without even closing the action (original raiser was still to call my reraise) is foolish in the extreme. The other "mistakes" are only there if you are duioble-dummy
+++++++++
I was thinking about inflation this morning, just wishing that the time would come again when my various monies on deposit would start earning more than 60p a month or whatever, when it struck me that Quantitative Easing, that very mechanism that I am praising for fuelling the future inflationary fires, is also the very factor that is keeping the returns on my deposits so shitty. When the Co-op, the building societies, and so on, were desperate for money early on in the credit crisis, interest rates for fixed-term deposits were superb. Then the government starts pouring money into the gilts market and, of course, the good rates disappear. Why should financial institutions pay me a decent interest rate when they can get all that they want from the government printing presses?
So, if QE continues, I keep getting a lousy interest rate, but the later zooming in inflation will be all the greater. If QE gets turned off, the inflationary pressure will be slower (although the idea is, of course, that it will ultimately feed on itself) but interest rates will start rising again because investors' money will be in demand again. A corollary of this will be a downside pressure on the stockmarket.
The buoyancy of the equity markets at the moment was puzzling me, but I have concluded that not a little part of it is the Mrs Watanabe effect. Sure, dividends will be cut, but there's no decent return anywhere else, so for the income fanatic, it's equities (or corporate bonds, also v buoyant this past year) or nothing. When QE stops and the good fixed terms reappear, I suspect a lot of retail money will leave the equity markets, particularly if we have a stream of dividend cuts.
I went long on wheat last week (I might have mentioned this) and am still out of the money. I'm kind of enthusiastic about all of the softs, although my arguments might be called old and hackneyed. My response would be, well, that's as may be, but that doesn't make them any less true. Buying wheat, corn, coffee, etc, is mainly based on the world population's predilection for eating more meat once they get wealthier. Meat is a very inefficient food source, which means that the demand for wheat and corn becomes greater. Other factors also lead to my belief that land will become scarcer (for wheat and corn) and demand will become higher. And softs are also a standard inflation hedge.
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