People I Can Do Without: Winter '09

"People I can do without: a cross-eyed nun with a bullwhip and a bottle of gin"

The greatest stand-up comedian of all time*, George Carlin, had a bit in the late 80’s called “People I Can Do Without“.  While his version included people like “a dentist who has blood in his hair”, I will keep mine strictly investment-related.

The Reformed Broker’s “People I Can Do Without”

• Magazine editors and advertising executives who appear on financial news programs with strong opinions on anything other than being a magazine editor or an ad executive.

• People who are mad at James Cramer because one of the 1200 stocks he may have mentioned favorably at some point isn’t higher than where they purchased it.

• Institutional Wall Streeters who look down on retail Wall Streeters, although worse are retail guys who idolize institutional.

• Bankruptcy attorneys reveling in their new bull market, the only one extant, regardless of what their prosperity means for everyone else.

• Anyone hounding The Greatest CEO on the Planet, Steve Jobs, about his health (every single day that he is running the company is a gift to Apple shareholders).

• New Yorkers who have never set foot in Texas or Oklahoma making bold predictions about the price of natural gas.

• Commercial real estate professionals who insist that their real estate market will be immune to the deleveraging and bankruptcy cycle now upon us (buy a helmet).

• Neo-Goldbugs who read an article about inflation, or the “Amero” (yeah, right) or a Peter Schiff interview and become prophets of gold and doom overnight (if everyone loves gold, btw, why can’t the contract price lift?).

• Any broker who would take a client to eat at Ruth’s Chris in Manhattan when Del Frisco’s, BLT Steak, Bobby Van’s, Keane’s, and The Strip House are all within cabbing distance.

• People who enjoy watching the Detroit Auto CEOs squirm and grovel on Capitol Hill for $14 Billion, but have no problem with the fact that the New York banking elite were handed a few hundred billion in a closed door meeting with virtually zero strings attached or oversight.

* Please, no emails about Richard Pryor or Lenny Bruce or Carrot Top…Carlin was and is The King, end of story.

Full Disclosure: I am currently long Apple (APPL) and Gold (GLD) in client accounts.