The Real Charlie

Thanks

Thanks for a great season and a sweep, guys. Sorry I couldn't have stayed up later to cheer with you, but those girls get up at 6:30 come what may, and they do sometimes call for daddy (or "big daddy," as Stella has taken to calling me). Now for the off season. I'd love to see:

1) Lowell re-signed, at almost any price.
2) Schilling back, but not at any price.
3) An end to the idiotic "Yankees Suck" narrative of baseball life in Boston. In 2004 we got to the Championship through them, in most dramatic fashion. This year, they were a sideshow and a non-issue in the post-season. Let's give the vitriol and the hype a rest and play the game.

I find the winter without baseball long and dull. I may need to start reading, or catching up on my filing, or keeping up my frenetic blogging of the past week.

Biting of the Bullet, Running of the Tots and Winning of the Game

1) Remember this post, where I bemoaned the poor performance of my unnamed CTA account? I bit the bullet and began the process of selling it. The process, I say, because it takes three months. In October I filed to sell my LP stake. In November, my stake is liquidated and I am no longer a holder. In December, I get my net proceeds. I expect to almost exactly  break even on a net basis, before taxes. I'm still researching alternatives, and won't be reinvesting the proceeds until January or February of next year. My guess is that it will be a mix of a 1X0/X0 mutual fund (Diamond Hill Long/Short, or something like it), long commodity exposure through an ETF or the like, and maybe some foreign exchange exposure, probably in the context of a fund that tries to do that and some other useful things. Stay tuned, if you care.

2) So now we know that Roxanne does not need to run the bases at the playground for the Sox to win a World Series game. Just to be safe, I took both girls to the park today for some playtime, some fresh air and some base running drills. The real field was in use (by a real youth team, in October no less!) so we made our own mini-field, Daddy served as roving base and everyone got to tag him. It was fun and good exercise, but substantiated in my mind my nagging suspicion that I am going deaf in one ear, because between the kids at the park, the wind and the leaf blowers down the block I could hear about half of what Roxanne and Stella were saying to me. I need to see the ear doctor.

3) I'll have my Dice K shirt on tonight, and I'll be hoping for the best. The Sox have looked so strong thus far, but Lester is a distinctly weaker and younger pitcher than the other starters, and the bullpen worked pretty hard last night. I wouldn't be shocked to see us playing again tomorrow night. But I'd love a sweep, and to see Papelbon dancing again.

Game 2

Tonight is about validating a superstition. Roxanne says that the Red Sox won last night because she ran the bases at the playground yesterday. I say it because I wore my Matsuzaka jersey to work. I wore my jersey again today, but Roxanne had contractual obligations this afternoon and didn't get to the playground. Tomorrow, we'll see whose juju is stronger - me or the tot. Go Sox!

Tessie Always Carried Them Away

Roxanne took a nap yesterday, which means that her bedtime gets pushed back from 6:30 to 9:00. I got her out of Abby's hair by taking her out shopping for some Red Sox garb for me to wear to work -  we are encouraged to wear Sox stuff on game days, last time I did not turn up in something I got grief from the office mates, and I don't like to wear a hat at work. We went to four stores looking for a Youkilis jersey -  he is a landsman, after all - but they were all sold out. "No Youkilis, no Papelbon, no Ellsbury," I was told. Gagne was available in abundance, though. I settled on Matsuzaka, #18, white home jersey. Roxanne was patient, and enjoyed watching daddy try on different shirts and being asked her opinion ("White, daddy, not red! That's mommy's color!"). I wore my Matsuzaka shirt today - with a button down, necktie and dress slacks, of course!

I actually went to game 1 of the 2004 World Series, and it was awesome. Fenway was literally shaking, and I have never seen so many happy people (or so many armed police) in my life. We had great seats, thanks to my friend Chad's father and the inability of Chad's wife and my friend Lia to attend. Her pediatrician suggested that bringing a ten day old baby to Fenway Park in October was not such a hot idea, but failed in his bid to snag her ticket.

So yeah, World Series fever is in full effect here in Boston and at The Real Charlie. As if I needed to tell you that. Go Sox.

Thanks oh thanks

I went to bed in the fifth inning and woke up to good news. My office was like a zombie convention today, but without the brain eating, and giddier. Except for the boss, who got picked for a jury. He was not giddy, but neither was he eating brains.

Anyway, nice job guys, and keep it up.

Please oh please

...win this game tonight. Come on, Daisuke, you can do it. Don't make me yell at the TV and wake up my sleeping children.

Special message to the college kids in the city: don't be stupid after the game, win or lose. It makes us all look bad.

GO SOX!

Correlated To Suck

So this is a funny sort of post tonight, in which I slam an investment that I won't fully identify. Almost exactly a year ago I posted about a Commodity Trading Advisor Fund of Funds that I own. I won't tell you the name of it because I signed a confidentiality agreement when I bought into it, and because being all secretive makes me feel special. I commented last year that my total return was 0.5% at the time, but that the fund was highly correlated to volatility, did well in turbulent markets, and that I needed such a market to judge the usefulness of this investment.

So a year has passed, and the VIX index of volatility is way up, and the market is churning everyone's stomach (or so they say). My total net return on the CTA FoF is a whopping... 0.99%. That is a three year total net return. I have tacked on 0.49% in one year. So now I am sort of ticked off, as this uncorrelated asset seems to be correlated to suck, and to expensive (I knew that last part, though). So I am considering alternative alternative assets thusly:

1. Replacing the CTA FoF with a long-short mutual, probably Diamond Hill Long-Short. This would give me the alternative assets on the cheap(er), and the cocktail party cache of "I own a long-short fund."
2. Replacing the CTA FoF with a natural resources fund (mutual or closed end) to get that commodity diversification. The problem: these funds are super popular and full of hot money, commodities can get hammered when really big countries have recessions that slow demand for things like cars, houses and the like, and anytime I look at long-only commodities I feel the ghost of my (still living) old friend and high school advisor, Mr. M., who was an honest to god Gold Bug who horded gold and silver coins in preparation for global economic collapse. I am many things, but I am not a Gold Bug.
3. Replacing the CTA FoF with a new allocation to Blackrock Global Allocation Fund, which is one of these global go anywhere funds that dabbles in currencies, futures, bonds, equities, shorts, longs, etc. I hold it as the sole position in an IRA rollover account and it has performed very well, steadily growing with few down months and quick recoveries. I am trying to get a sense of its beta and Sharpe Ratio compared to the broader equity markets, but it is not too expensive and it is a devil that I know.
4. I keep my CTA FoF for another year and kvetch about it next October. I often wuss out on these things.

So stay tuned, if you even faintly care. And check out While She Naps for a picture of our sukkah and of Roxanne cuddling our etrog. As Abby says, if you buy a piece of fruit for forty bucks, show it the love!