All That Glitters

File this under OOPS!. A trader who'd intended to sell 1 share of recruitment firm J-Com for 610,000 yen placed an order to sell 610,000 J-Com shares at 1 yen each instead..

==> This reminds me of a former coworker who was trying to squeeze in daytrading between programming. He meant to buy SIMG, but transposed a few letters and entered a market order for SIGM. He didn't realized what he did for a few days. He hadn't researched or studied the latter stock, and only bought the former on a IM-tip from a buddy. But he decided to keep SIGM just to see how it played out. Shall we just say that "God works in mysterious ways?"

Supreme Court to review Texas political map. The Supreme Court said Monday it would consider the constitutionality of a Texas congressional map engineered by Rep. Tom DeLay that helped Republicans gain seats in Congress.

==> I'm not a member of a political party, because the generally just piss me off. Endless flyers in the mailbox, marketing calls, and then there are the shenanigans. File this under the latter. I believe that people should have a choice in elections, and that every election district must be competitive. I was disappointed when election redistricting reform failed in California. And what DeLay did in Texas was just WRONG! Rigging the system so that districts are uncompetitive should be declared illegal.

The Bull Trader notes gold is trading at a two-decade high. Spot gold is trading at levels not seen since 1981.

==> You heard of the Nasdaq bubble. You're reading daily about the real estate bubble. May I introduce you to the gold bubble? Do you see lots of inflation out there? If you're spending more on energy (sending dollars to OPEC), you're spending less here. Notice the discounting by retailers this holiday season, trying to move inventory. I think the only thing going up dramatically the next few years will be taxes, as the Bush tax cuts expire. And that won't be inflationary, either.