Voulez-vous ideas? Follow these bullets . . .

Good afternoon, Voldy morts!

You want ideas? Follow these bullets:

• I just watched "Colma: The Musical" on DVD. The small-budget film is big on heart, and set in San Francisco. It's worth a ping on Netflix, especially if you are burning out on the big-dollar flicks financed by private equity and Westchester bankers with money to spurn.
  
• Just finished "The Black Swan" and liked it a lot. It's all about information theory and how we all need to allow some space in our lives for a Black Swan event: something entirely random, rare and UNanticipated. (With apologies to author N.N. Taleb for attempting a definition!) One example: George W. Bush serving a third term. Another: Gold hitting $2,000 an ounce within the next three weeks. Or Michael Bloomberg teaming with John Edwards on the independent ticket. (Although that last one is not really a Black Swan.)
• I have a friend here in Tiburon who is a smart trader. He figured I needed some downside portfolio protection -- kind of like a fiscal net -- and suggested I look at RWM, the electronic equity that represents a massive shortside bet against the Russell 2000 Index. I could have gotten it Friday (today) at $69 or so a share. It closed at $79 when stocks went south. I never got it. But then, I find it somewhat difficult to get into the shortside frame of mind. I imagine most people, being bright and freshly scrubbed, also find legalized pessimism somewhat jarring. This is why I will never be a good trader.
• I do, however, pride myself on being a decent investor, after having made every boner a person can make in 25 years of throwing money at companies and securities and commodities. My nonfiction book, "Actionable & LARGE," will take a look at the scandalous world of conniving merchants and how I have learned to crack the buyside code ... in a LARGE way. More info is at ThomCalandra.com, the mother ship, so to speak.
• Final idea: Today I added to a long-losing stake in a very small company working on neurobiological compounds. Brain drugs, such as those for stroke and other diseases and ailments, have lost more wealth for more people than perhaps any single class of investment on the planet. Yet I continue to buy, along with my family, shares of this company, which is working on a stroke drug that extends the treatment window. My thinking is that the clinical Phase III trials will show potent efficacy and much improved safety over the currently available stroke drug (from Genentech). We'll see.

That's all for now VMs. See you in Phoenix in a few weeks!

-- Your friendly Thom Calandra in Tiburon (ThomCalandra.com for more)