Saturday, July 09, 2005

I'm the Daddy of the MACDaddy

Before anyone overreacts... it's a lyric. Stop it.

We did the unthinkable today. The other night we saw one of them there late night infomercials about making money. (Yeah, I know. Bear with me.) This one dealt with making money in the stock market. It was free, it was close, and it killed a couple hours in the afternoon, so why not? So, today we went to the lovely Westin La Paloma Resort & Spa, and saw the STAR trader spiel. It was actually quite well done. I expected the sales pitch, and we got it right off the bat. But not in a sneaky way. He was very up-front about it all, and I give him a lot of credit for that. One thing I didn't expect, though, was to actually learn something. I fully expected them to do everything to entice us to pay for the seminar, but never actually provide us with any useful information. I was wrong. The guy was roughly my age, and he showed a room that was jam-packed with less than two dozen people what to look for, and stressed that you could find it all online.

Now... a moment of digression. The room this thing was in was large. Large. It had two chandeliers, roughly the dimensions of your average sofa. This was a training room that we would've killed for. They had 30 chairs set up in there, and the room could have easily fit 250 more. (I'm being conservative.) Deb and I were laughing, because it was such a huge room, and here's this tiny pocket of people who are either insomniacs or know people who are and they all had three hours to kill.

It made sense, though, which kinda scares me. I've never given a hoot about the stock market before, but this was different. Show me computers, show me charts, and tell me I can figure it out by looking at it this way... and damn if it didn't make sense. So he was either a hypnotist, or correct. (Or I'm just an idiot.) (But Deb figured it out too, so there.)

We got home, and it took some digging but I actually found a free program that makes the charts and stuff. It's fascinating. So now, 10 years after the fact, I understand Ray. (Two people will get that. Everyone else just keep on going.)

Oh yeah. MACD is one of the charts. Speaking of some of those letters, we had the unfortunate necessity to eat at McDonald's before this shindig. Ugh. Haven't eaten McDonald's food since... January? And no fast food since March. It's official. My stomach can't stand that crap. That doesn't make me sad, as I don't miss it. (Pizza, yes.)

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