The Rambling Runners Forum

At age 101, Harry Callahan probably never thought he would be called out of retirement by a bunch of people doing something like online stock trading. When Callahan began his career at the Chicago Board of Trade in 1927, there were only stock tickers.
He visited our online stock trading group again this morning. He is getting to be a regular. He is usually late, as he has an early morning workout that he does at Cardinal Fitness.
Though he was born way before the first PC, Callahan has his own laptop, and he brought it with this morning. He has several online accounts, and has an active portfolio.
When he first started visiting he was more confident that there might be a short-lived panic and a recovery, but as the weeks have gone on, he has become less optimistic.
“The mistakes of seventy years ago are being repeated — some of them– and it can’t be good for the markets,” Cal-lahan said today.
He watched the debates, too.
“I’m not believing any one of the presidential candidates have a clue about money and economics,” Callahan said. “This does not bode well for the markets going forward.  Remember, after one of them is elected, their is a long lag time before they actually take office.  Then, there is the time to get things up and running.”
His advice was to keep very few things long,and if you do, make sure you hedge, because in his experience the mar-ket will fall farther.
“Don’t worry about finding the bottom,” he said. “If a strong stock — and IBM or Apple or another market share leader with a good balance sheet– looks cheap enough, buy it.”
Further, Callahan reminded us that nobody ever went broke taking profits. If any of us were holding stock that was ages old we might want to sell a portion and take some of the remaining profits.
“Remember,” said Callahan, “it was not the stock market dive on Black Tuesday, 1929, that caused the Great De-pression.  It was the tariffs that were put in place, the increase in taxes, and, eventually, the drain on the economy that FDR’s alphabet soup of government programs that took a panic and made it a depression.”
Callahan had met Franklin Roosevelt.
“He was a good man,” said Callahan, “I met Roosevelt several times.  But I would not call him an economically educated man. Neither is John McCain or Barrack Obama.  Joe the Plumber — now there is a man who knows eco-nomics.”
Callahan then left.  He was flying to New York with his girlfriend later in the evening, and he had to get packed.

Every so often, I buy a few workout sessions from a trainer at my gym just to change up my exercise routine. I never go with the perfect-looking trainers, the ones who look like they kill themselves working out every day and still get plastic surgery, Chicago laser hair removal in all the right places, tanning, and everything else to make them look like a statue of a Greek god or goddess instead of a human being. No, they look too much like they overdo it and when that’s not enough they pay for everything. I want a trainer who knows what they’re doing, but they’re comfortable enough to know they don’t need to look like they’re twenty-one years old when they’re pushing forty-five. Having a six pack would be nice, but having a washboard stomach is fine too. In fact, from what I’ve read, six-packs take too much maintenance anyway. Why would anyone want to give up all the sugar they eat and all the fast food? You still need some things in life to enjoy. Or else what’s the point? Why look like a god if you never have any free time to spend with your friends or be seen by anyone else?

I can’t believe I almost didn’t get the Notre Dame Fighting Irish tickets! If my friend didn’t call to remind me about it I would’ve completely blown it. She really wants to go to this game, so I probably wouldn’t have heard the end of it! I guess I’ve just been so distracted lately. Everything has been such a blur. There’s a lot going on ever since I started my night classes. I don’t even know where to start! Basically, things are tense with my boyfriend ever since I started them. Because of my studies, we’ve been spending less time together. On top of that, there’s a guy in my class who is making his interest in me known. I exchanged phone numbers with him when I was sick that one time and now I’m worried that my boyfriend has the wrong idea. This will all blow over, though. We’ve had some difficulties but, overall, he’s been very supportive. We just haven’t had a chance to sit down and have one of our really long discussions. Also, I made sure to get extra Notre Dame Fighting Irish tickets so he could come along! My friend said she doesn’t mind. I know he will be really happy about this!