TRADE BULLETIN: BMY Rollout and the Virtues of Boredom

We’ve got one trade to tend to before we explode with a rant.

It was opened in a letter called Emoluments and Stimulants – Two for Profit, One Narcotic back on November 4^th.

There, you’ll recall we urged you to sell the BMY January 17th 57.50 CALL for $2.28 and buy the BMY January 17th 62.50 CALL for $0.67, for a $1.61 credit.  We then recommended you buy the BMY January 17th 55 PUT for $1.56.  Total credit on the affair was $0.05.

We’re just a day away from expiry and stand to lose $5.00 on the CALL spread, leaving us with a net loss on the trade of $4.95.

And we don’t like that.

So we’re acting thus –

We’re buying back the short 57.50 CALL for $9.15 and selling the long 62.50 for $4.05.  That gives us a debit of $5.10.  We’re then selling the January 31^st 60/66 CALL spread for a net credit of $5.11 ($6.55/$1.44).

That gives us an additional two weeks for a turnaround and another buck on our original credit.

WOT’SAT SMELL?

Today, Junior is so overly programmed and stimulated and monitored and plugged in that he hasn’t a clue how to let his mind wander, how to take in the clouds and sun, how to listen to the crickets and the wind blowing through the trees – he’s completely disconnected from the real world.

Not only that, but along the way he’s become so complexed and conflicted and obese that he’s unable to absorb these things at all.  Things that were meant to open his life to free, unhindered thought and his imagination to the contemplation of the Holy One’s creation are completely off his radar.

Today, nobody goes to the loo without his smartphone.   Everyone seeks a buzz, some device or other, some battery powered source of stimulation to keep his mind lubricated and his drool flowing.

There’s no down time anymore.  There’s no staring out at the corn field blowing in the wind.  No watching the clouds change from elephants to airplanes to waterfalls – we’ve robbed our lives and the lives of our children of an opportunity for growth, sanity, richness – even redemption!

‘Boredom’ as Necessity

‘Boredom’ – if such a thing actually exists – is a precondition for creativity and growth.  It’s what spurs the mind to move outside its comfort zone and seek new realms.  To imagine.  To play – in the truest sense of the word.  To act.  And sometimes act out.  To grow comfortable with one’s self.  To know who one truly is.

Unfortunately, that’s not the way these days.

Kids get programmed from birth.  Day care, pre-nursery, pre-kindergarten, soccer, junior pilates, harp lessons, beginner coding classes.  It never ends.  And G-d forbid you don’t get accepted into the RIGHT Montessori mime group.

Insane.

Adults, too.

Today, meditation, sensory deprivation tanks and ‘rage yoga’, along with the theory (and practice) of ‘mindfulness’ are in vogue.  Indeed, there are countless ways to waste your time and money these days in the name of achieving ‘inner peace’.

But no one anywhere is just counseling their kids – or themselves – to go out and stare at the horizon.  Or into space.  Or to go look at the ants in the grass.  Or listen to the birds.  Or scribble on a piece of paper.  Or look at the butterflies.  G-d forbid one should pick up a book.

It’s time to leave the phone aside, brother – you and your kids – and acquire the quiet and the pause you need to refresh yourself.

Sensory deprivation tanks are not what G-d intended.  They don’t lead to peace.  Indeed, they may in the end lead to madness.

The cure for that programmed, high sensory stimulant called modern western life is very simply to go sit under a tree and take in the sunset.  To be ‘bored’.

That’s right.

Bored.

You can’t even begin to imagine where it leads.

Eschatologically yours,

Alan B. Harvard

Follow @HughLOHaynew