Author: Jay

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Anti-gnostic Thanksgiving

I recently had some prayers answered quite wonderfully. And when I had prayed, I had ended with something along the lines of “… and if you will do these things, then I will give you thanks and praise.” But when God actually did those things, it felt a little abstract, even gnostic, to simply say (in the quietness of my head), “Thanks.”

Leviticus 7:11-15 (also see Leviticus 3)
And this is the law of the sacrifice of peace offerings that one may offer to the Lord. If he offers it for a thanksgiving, then he shall offer with the thanksgiving sacrifice unleavened loaves mixed with oil, unleavened wafers smeared with oil, and loaves of fine flour well mixed with oil. With the sacrifice of his peace offerings for thanksgiving he shall bring his offering with loaves of leavened bread. 4 And from it he shall offer one loaf from each offering, as a gift to the Lord. It shall belong to the priest who throws the blood of the peace offerings. And the flesh of the sacrifice of his peace offerings for thanksgiving shall be eaten on the day of his offering. He shall not leave any of it until the morning.

The peace offering (used specifically for thanksgiving) did not establish peace, it celebrated it. The other sacrifices found in the early chapters of Leviticus were enjoyed by God and usually the priests, but the peace offering was shared with the worshiper as well.

Additionally, even our spoken thanks have a public context in the Bible. For instance, Psalm 107 introduces four stories that result in thanksgiving and says:

Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
for his wondrous works to the children of man!
And let them offer sacrifices of thanksgiving,
and tell of his deeds in songs of joy!
…
Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
for his wondrous works to the children of man!
Let them extol him in the congregation of the people,
and praise him in the assembly of the elders.

In and among these (and many other) passages on thanksgiving, are the countless stories of feasts and parties in the Bible. As one example, the reason the older brother stands out so harshly in the story of the prodigal son is that if you’ve been reading your Bible carefully, once the father accepts the son back into the house, you pretty much knew there was going to be a party. The father was thankful, therefore a party. Par for the course in the Bible.

The aptly named American holiday Thanksgiving, then, seems exactly right, at least in its inception… but perhaps should be typical, not unique. It actually reminds me of the feast established in Esther (see Esther 9:22). And that’s where my thinking finally landed on my own particular thanksgiving. As a rough sketch, it seems appropriate to:

1) Set aside some resources for an offering of thanks
2) give a larger portion as an alms to our church or some other meaningful offering
3) use the rest to have a celebration with others.

Here’s a couple follow up thoughts that have come up as Tricia and I have discussed all of this.

First, it may feel awkward, very nonspiritual, to use part of an offering to celebrate. However, this is exactly how God wanted it done in the past. The peace offering gives us an example of this, and so does the tithe.

Deuteronomy 14:22-27
You shall tithe all the yield of your seed that comes from the field year by year. And before the Lord your God, in the place that he will choose, to make his name dwell there, you shall eat the tithe of your grain, of your wine, and of your oil, and the firstborn of your herd and flock, that you may learn to fear the Lord your God always. And if the way is too long for you, so that you are not able to carry the tithe, when the Lord your God blesses you, because the place is too far from you, which the Lord your God chooses, to set his name there, then you shall turn it into money and bind up the money in your hand and go to the place that the Lord your God chooses and spend the money for whatever you desire—oxen or sheep or wine or strong drink, whatever your appetite craves. And you shall eat there before the Lord your God and rejoice, you and your household.

No wonder Israelites didn’t struggle with gnosticism. God sanctioned them to use a portion of their tithe to party! He wanted them to enjoy themselves and rejoice in his presence.

Also, flaunting wealth is bad, yet the Bible emphasizes including the poor in your fellowship. Wealth is a relative thing, and I don’t believe our culture gives us much help at this point. It sure seems like if you use resources well beyond what you normally use to have a feast for thanksgiving to God (think of the scope of many of our Thanksgiving holiday celebrations), it could give the impression of a wealth that isn’t even necessarily there. Yet a party to rejoice in the Lord should be inclusive of those with less. Jesus doesn’t leave any wiggle room on this point (Luke 14:13). So we in the church will just have to figure out how to do all this appropriately, whatever the resources with which we have been blessed.

Lastly, I think our thanksgiving is primarily about the past and should not be used to make a claim or boast about the future. Likewise, we should not withhold our thanks based on fears for the future. When the crops came in for the Pilgrims, they had a feast in celebration. I rather doubt any of them presumed there would be no future hardships. But we can’t be stingy with our thanks and praise for the Lord has already done just because his providence may take a different turn in the future. So our thanksgiving should be by faith, that is, without concern for the future, trusting that the Lord will provide. It should be an Ebenezer (1 Samuel 7:12), for the Lord has brought us this far.

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Q&A on trading

Rusty, a good friend from my college days (and a bit beyond), has been asking some interesting questions in one of my posts below on trading. Here’s his latest comment:

Hi Jay –
The Vanguard funds have worked out well for me. Besides capturing the market return, they’ve had the other benefits of requiring absolutely none of my time, and I sleep a little better at night.
Regarding efficient markets, I think it depends on what you’re investing in. Are you looking at very small companies with a relatively small number of transactions? I might be convinced. If you’re trading GE and Microsoft, or more generally stocks in the S&P 500, I’m less inclined to agree. With millions of shares traded per day, that’s an efficient market. The people trading GE (as a whole) know a lot more about GE than I do.
If you actually generate the returns you’re expecting trading stocks in the S&P 500, that is an amazing feat.
Two other comments, if you will. I think it’s one thing to be able to say, “We’re in a tech bubble” or “These tulips cost way too much.” But it’s really hard to invest against a bubble. Greenspan was warning of irrational exuberance a couple of years before the bubble popped. Shorting too early would have cost quite a lot, not to mention passing up the rest of the ride up.
Besides that, I can’t think of how you’d try to exploit popularity in the 1-5 day time frame. That’s mindblowing to me, and I’d love to hear more about that. Are you researching these companies, or is your selection based on some kind of technical analysis or trend detection? I’m intensely curious.
Finally, the big question for me. Why aren’t others discovering this, and competing away the returns? Why isn’t some mutual fund company advertising a fund that returned 70% on average over the past 6 years?
Greatly enjoying this,
Rusty

I started writing a response in the comments, but thought I’d put in a post so others can join in if so inclined.

Okay, one point of clarification. When I discuss my system, I am not referring to Tarzan. Tarzan was/is an experiment, but I do not trade it currently, though there are a couple very good ideas cooked into it (I think). If you read the original post on Tarzan, you will see a reference to my early attempts at Collective2 which performed great but were ill received. That system was the alpha of my current trading system, the one I talk about when referring to my own trading.

A point of agreement. I think it is of the utmost importance to sleep well at night and have that as one of the bedrock requirements of my system design. For me, that entails being fully in cash every night, even though that tends to degrade the performance a bit in the long run. I’m just very prone to frustration at being burned by the overnight news cycle, even though it helps overall. So I simply don’t mess with it, and have actually tried to make it an advantage.

Another clarification. It seems that some of my comments are being taken to refer to macroeconomic conditions. Another of my goals, however, is to build a system that is as uncorrelated to the broader market as possible. So, for instance, in the past few days, when the market was moving up, I was almost entirely short, and did okay… which is not to say that happens every time.

Which brings me back to that post I need to write on my basic approach. Suffice to say I find it MUCH easier to gain an exploitable edge in the 1 day time frame than any other time frame I’ve evaluated. And no, I don’t actually know the names of the companies I’m buying or shorting day by day.

The last question is pertinent (though once again, those results are against a system I don’t actually trade)… I’ll probably need to address it at some point as well. But I think the answer is roughly this: 1) fast-trading systems degrade with the amount of capital invested, so my technique would probably be terrible for a mutual fund; and 2) it took me a couple thousand hours to get here, so though others may be able to get there much more quickly, it is probably a reasonable barrier to entry for the average personal investor/trader.

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Tarzan update 1

This is fun. My new system on Collective2 is off to a fast start.

As I said before, swing trade systems don’t come naturally to me, so this was very challenging. The system holds 7 positions at a time with an average hold time in the neighborhood of 7 trading days, so it roughly turns over one position a day… which, in my opinion, qualifies as a modestly paced swing trade pattern.

However, the current return rate will not be sustained. In fact, I am confident that it is way out in front of its sustainable return rate, so much so that I felt compelled to add a warning at the front of the system overview. Here’s how the description currently reads. Continue reading “Tarzan update 1”

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Burdens

How many of you have been admonished at the beginning of a worship service to set aside your worldly concerns and focus on the worship of God (or some close variant)? I’d like to propose that although there may be some truth to such an admonition, there is also a very real danger that may cause us to turn our hearts from God.

Yesterday, right before worship, I got a bit of bad news and felt like I wanted to vomit as we were driving to church. And it made me realize that to set aside such a concern (or, more realistically, to pretend to set it aside) as I entered worship would actually be contrary to faith. There is no godliness in refusing to rely on God, and it is not faith to hide the concerns of your heart from God.  Randomly open your Bible somewhere within the book of Psalms, close your eyes, and point, and you’ll have a proof-text for what I’m claiming.

Instead of setting aside our “worldly concerns”, I would suggest what matters is what we do with them. Do we continue to think we can solve our problems on our own, focusing on lifting ourselves up out of our problems while in the worship of God? Or do we come to worship offering God not only our songs, our tithes, but also our problems, our fears, our vanities? Faith gives God everything, not just the stuff we think we’ve prettied up.

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Iron Maiden

Last night we had some friends over for dinner and at some point the conversation managed to wind its way around such that my reference to the Battle of Passchendaele made sense. And the question came up as to how I knew about this grim killing field from World War I, and of course the answer was Iron Maiden…

At which point I found myself explaining something that is probably utterly mystifying to anyone who did not grow up listening to heavy metal but is enjoyed greatly by those of us who did: much of Iron Maiden’s repertoire is based on references to literature, history, film, television, and mythology. And it is often done quite respectfully. Even, one might say, tastefully.

To make the point here, I’ll highlight a few of the songs that I’ve enjoyed and then ask my faithful readers who might have listened to a little Maiden growing up to chime in with further references. Of course, that assumes I have any faithful readers left. So here goes.

The Trooper – Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade” and the Battle of Balaclava (part of the Crimean War)

Where Eagles Dare – book and movie of the same name

Flight of Icarus – Greek myth

To Tame a Land – “Dune” by Frank Herbert. Here’s a great detail from Wikipedia.

However, when Steve Harris requested permission from the author to name the song “Dune” and to use a spoken quotation as the track’s intro, his request was met with a stern reply from Frank Herbert’s agent: “No. Because Frank Herbert doesn’t like rock bands, particularly heavy rock bands, and especially rock bands like Iron Maiden”. This statement was backed up with a legal threat, and eventually the song was renamed “To Tame a Land” and released in 1983.

Children of the Damned – film of the same name

The Prisoner & Back in the Village (2 songs, 1 topic) – British television show “The Prisoner”

Run to the Hills – Europeans coming to the Americas

Aces High – British RAF versus the German Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain

Rime of the Ancient Mariner – though 13 minutes in length, it is still an abridged version of the poem