Slipkid Style 2013 - Syracuse Lacrosse

We're big on awarding LAX style points at Slipkid Screams.  After inspiring this column in 2011 (with yellow neon cleats and socks), seeing Garden City High School win the award in 2012 (with camouflage detail), the Syracuse Orangemen Lacrosse team are an early season favorite for 2013.  Checkout the Cascade Matte Grey CPX-R/Grey Nike Vapor Jersey combo.  

Maybe that's how you beat the Tigers 13-12 in a Princeton Stadium nail biter?

A Dedication to Paul Schimoler

Four time NCAA All American goalie, Class of '89 Cornell University, Ivy League Rookie of the Year, Ivy Player of the Year, gold medal winner (1990, 1994), record holder for most saves in NCAA playoffs with 85.  A world class husband, father, competitor, team mate and friend.

Long live Schimoles.

Phish New Year's Eve 2012 Madison Square Garden

PHISH 2012 MSG Holiday Run Poster

I've said it before and I will say it again.  The best iteration of PHISH is the most recent version of PHISH.  This years Holiday Run in New York City celbrated 30 years of the band, provided all of the breakaway moments I expected and ended in an explosive grand finale third set on New Year's Eve 2012.

I'll just sit on the edge of my seat until they come around next year.

Derek Trucks at the Beacon Theater 2011

photo by TG

A Moment of Clarity

Tomorrow will present an opportunity to give thanks that I won’t soon forget.  I know you’ve heard all about it on a topical level, but I’m here to provide some inside color.  The lessons to be learned from a Category 1 hurricane temporarily inundating your hometown with the Atlantic Ocean are monumental. 

The first hurricane head fake came when meteorologists started hyping the storm.  For a change, they nailed this one.  I had advance warning from a heroic power trader in Baltimore who was in front of it by 10 days.  I knew my town was in trouble because last year Hurricane Irene came and went with 75% of our locals sticking around to laugh at Al Roker.  One week after that hurricane Long Beach, New York, of all places, was treated to its finest hour when 100 year surf conditions provided a playing field for the best surfers in the world to compete for the NYQuiksilver Pro Championship.  This time, we wouldn’t be so incredibly lucky, but we’d learn something.

The stress level created by the storm, the unbelievable surge, and then the aftermath is a lot to bear for a blue-collar beach community.  The City of Long Beach had just elected new leadership, for better or for worse, and cut spending and raised taxes to cover its $25M budget deficit.  Then Sandy hit causing billions of dollars in damage.  Neither the savings accounts, nor the tax receipts of a town with a median income of $76,000, were going to pay for those billions.  Consider for a moment that I had no idea what condition the town was in during the wee hours of October 30th.  I was left to reading the “market” signals.

I firmly believe that having a background in trading is useful in any time of crisis.  During a low-grade natural disaster, daily staples like power, gasoline, cash, and south shore pizza become a luxury.  Fending for them brings out the extremes in human nature; and you can read the sentiment signs through catastrophe like you can read the warning signs through a trade. 

  

At around 11pm weather channel predictions came to fruition and the Frankenstorm surge reached its peak of 10’ feet above sea level.  A few of those locals were watching their cars get entirely submerged from the 2^nd floor of their two-story home as the ocean poured into their living room right up to their flat screen.  Down the block from them in the “canals” area of town - 6 homes were in the process of burning down to the water line in a matter of 2 hours.  We were indeed on the lows in the middle of the night and I was praying for a bottom.  Text messages of desperation now read “Dude make it stop!!!”

On my first return trip to Long Beach on the morning of Tuesday, October 30^th – I admit – I couldn’t believe my eyes and was highly skeptical we would see any modicum of normalcy for months to come.  The town was a warzone, covered in debris and burned-out zombie vehicles.  There were parts of our boardwalk on front lawns five blocks away, vehicles were smashed through parking garage walls like Matchbox cars, and four feet of sand covered the roads along the beach.  The water decontamination plant had been knocked totally offline and we were at square one in determining when, if ever, we would have power again.  We’d just been taken down several notches of living standard and gone straight to primitive. 

Locals immediately began the arduous task of pumping several feet of water out of their basement with gas powered generators and carrying the waterlogged contents of their life out to the curb.  I will never forget the looks on the faces of my friends, family and neighbors facing the seemingly insurmountable task of first cleaning up after one phase of their lives, then rebuilding the next one.  Put yourself in their boots for a moment.  All at once, that is a consideration your brain cannot handle.

House after house, block after block - waterlogged furniture, wallboard, carpets, mounds of insulation piled twenty feet high.  Beautiful God fearing people reduced to zombies in filthy wet work clothes. It was time to queue up my crisis salvation song by Derek & the Dominoes.  “It’s Got to Get Better in a Little While.”  Repeat.

I knew while watching my 6-year-old niece crying out loud at the sight of her playroom being deposited on the curb, dripping with black-water from a freshly gutted first floor, that the situation had reached a dark sentimental bottom.  Despite the mess, the loss, and all of her tears - the sun rose again.  The next time I saw my niece laugh hysterically – I got the chills.

In the days that shortly followed, the National Guard set up throughout town and the industrial clean up revved into full gear.  Having the support of your iphone, text message system, email box, and twitter feed fill up with calls of concern provided the first chance to get your spirit off the mat.  In short order a friend from Connecticut offered to make a midnight run to deliver 20 gallons of gasoline, desk mates and market buddies offered to come down and pitch in with the clean up, professional saxophone players were available in tool belts for the rebuilding process, the ice arena where my children skate was converted into a massive supply station as donations arrived from every corner of the country.  Help was pouring in from neighboring towns in the form of man power on school buses.  People were so eager to help us that my faith in human nature spiked to the top of my screen and I have all of that to be thankful for this year.

On the first Saturday after the storm I was proudly part of a 50 man team that gutted 8 homes in 12 hours.  That’s a lot of tonnage moved for charity and something we’ll always be proud of.  Some day in the future – the clean up and the rebuild will define this episode, not the destruction or the despair.

After that herculean effort, to borrow a phrase from Jules Winnfield “I was sitting here, eating my muffin and drinking my coffee and replaying the incident in my head, when I had what alcoholics refer to as a moment of clarity.”  Ok I was drinking a cold Bud can outside and eating a hot dog, but I’m the farthest thing from an alcoholic.  In partially soaked and entirely filthy work clothes, I realized how damn lucky I am.

The most important stat was that there was no loss of life in my town.  Everything that everyone was forced to part with on short notice was either of material or sentimental value.  The truth is – in short order the material loss will mean nothing.  Aside from Rockaway Flu, we have our health and a big job to do, but we can look each other in the eye knowing we have the will to get it done.  It didn’t seem possible 2 weeks ago but we are going to have a 1^st Grade Turkey Bowl and monstrous Thanksgiving this year after all.

If there is a town on Long Island with a Kevlar backbone, it is the town of Long Beach and that is a testament to the people.  “Beach Creatures”, as I refer to my local brethren, want for very little.  How much can you actually want for with a median income of $76k? 

I realized in my moment of clarity that it is not money or the possessions we’re after.  It is to be able to call our beautiful beach town home and have that cohesive bond motivate us to full recovery.  We are all longing for a run on the boardwalk, to watch our kids play sports on local fields and for 12 hour days on the beach that end riding waves with the family until the sun goes down.  A few thousand more man hours, donations, FEMA checks, automobiles, generators, renovations, prayers of love & care and we will be sitting on the beach enjoying that sunset in no time.

Still one thing that you can do;
Fall down on your knees and pray.
I know the Lord's gonna answer you.
Don't do it tomorrow, do it today.
- Clapton

Roots in the '87 Crash

During the actual crash of 1987 I was a sophomore at Cornell so I was playing billiards at Noyes Center, playing fall ball on North Campus, or playing hoops at Barton Hall while the market was unraveling.  My Dad was in his foxhole – the Over the Counter trading desk at Dean Witter where he spent all 30 years of his trading career.  Having started at Dean Witter in 1969 he was a veteran by 1987.  He ran with some big dogs back then.  His boss Jerry Mullins, his friends Buzzy Geduld, Ronny Weiss, Jack Genovese, “Gus from Troster” were names I heard at my dinner table, names a lot of old timers in this market would recognize as titans of the trading industry.

I didn’t catch up with my Dad about the market until later that week but I remember learning a few great lessons when I did.  The news flow was all about blood in the streets and suicidal traders but I remember my father talking about it like just another crazy trading day at the office.  And maybe because finding a career rooted in “craziness” was right up his alley.  I don’t have a picture of him from 1987 but everyone used to say he was a dead ringer for Jack Nicholson in the Shining.  He’s the kindest man on earth but he’s got the devil in his eyes and I think that’s what made him a Wall Street survivor and humble success for three decades.

I asked him if we lost a lot of money as a family and he said “a little.”  I asked him if he lost a lot of money at work and he said “yeah a lot at first, but then once I figured out what was going on I made it all back by the end of the day.”  I had just learned there was opportunity for a 'come from behind victory' – at work!  I was highly intrigued by my first connection that there was some sort of dealer in the middle of this mess that could buy and sell, get long or short and navigate markets by instinct.  I can promise you my Dad wasn’t studying fundamentals when he got home from work at night.  He was and avid runner and reader of Popular Science listening to Earth Wind and Fire on a Technics turntable.

The other thing I learned was that my Dad didn’t put too many of his hard earned eggs in one basket.  I asked for an explanation why most people sounded so fatal about what happened but we only lost “a little” money and he just answered something along the lines of “that’s why I don’t invest in the stock market.”  He was quite aware that the career he built for himself, a gift from God to support our family, was directly tied to the health of the stock market.  Back then there was always a running joke in our large Italian Family about where everyone’s life savings was kept.  Hint, it wasn't all in the bank.  We still do the same kind of thing; we just graduated from a mattress to a safe.

“In 1987 everybody tried to go to the exit at the same time, but the exit door wasn’t big enough.  You had literally a panic. Fast forward to 2012. The volumes we can handle are gigantic, but the exit door hasn’t changed in size.”
E.E. “Buzzy” Geduld, Founder of Herzog Heine & Geduld and Cougar Trading, LLC