The Grilled Cheese

There are a few things to say about this incredible video:

1. Why do Japanese TV shows have to add sound effects* every 3 seconds?
2. What a fantastic example of our unique intellectual abilities. Also, what a great reminder that animals really do understand how the world is supposed to work.
3. I think I want a pet chimp.

Thanks to Marginal Revolution for the video link.

*Bonus: Check out this (hopefully) spoof of Foley artists:

Thanks to everybody I filmed.

Special thanks to my brother Jordan for the editing help and Jay for the input and feedback.

As of now there are only 8 video applications, and they are accepting 8 interns. Pretty good odds, unless I'm missing something...

Buy low, sell high.

That's the investment mantra. But as we all know, it's hard to do that. Emotionally, we are primed to want to stick with winners and shy away from losers. Good investing is a statistical proposition, and we humans just aren't very good at acting based on what raw statistics tell us. Obviously some people do have a natural talent for this kind of thing (Warren Buffet, that blackjack guy from MIT), and many others have managed to force themselves to do it well by way of rules they have set for themselves (these are successful investors).

But still others, probably the vast majority of us, are still terrible at it despite how much we repeat the mantra. It's not that we're dumb, it's just that its goes against our "instinct" to have the confidence to buy when times are bad. It also goes against our "instinct" to sell a winner. Other than setting up semi-automatic rules for ourselves to sell a stock when it reaches a predetermined value, I don't see too many workarounds for the latter

For the former, however, there might be something we can do. We might be able to embrace our desire to sell a stock when its down and still keep to good investment strategies. The idea is simple, so I'll give it its own paragraph:

Whenever we have a stock that's doing so poorly that we are tempted to sell, we should sell it. But we can only sell it once we have committed to buying it right back. Basically, there's no net monetary change. All we are doing is satisfying our urge to SELL SELL SELL when a stock bottoms out.

Of course, brokerage and transaction fees currently make this strategy implausible. But imagine if brokers incorporated this idea into their packages. What if you could make this dual transaction with no fees? By allowing ourselves the satisfaction of SELLing a loser, perhaps we could lead ourselves to a better overall investment strategy.

In practical terms, the implementation depends on broker's priorities. If they believe that their users will appreciate the service, brokers might provide the service. But if they love that people trade way too much, then they may not. Here's to hoping they have investors' best interests at heart.