Keeping it graphic...

Eye flares were pushed a lot when I was at Blue Sky. Open them wide and scale them up to accentuate moments of intensity. Perhaps they should sometimes be pushed even further with eye direction. This frame from Sex and the City shows Charlotte's eyes being pretty wall-eyed right at the extreme of her "NO" moment. Fascinating!

Change indeed

I cannot help but feel that my current profession as a trader has changed me quite a bit, and I am struggling with coming to grips with that. Trusting what others say has become more difficult, and my constant internal questioning has most likely hindered my abilities as an "artist" if I can even call myself that. One thing is for sure: creating things makes me happy, and I will never stop doing that in life.

SYTYCD

So You Think You Can Dance is by far my favorite TV show, and the season finale is coming up next Wednesday.  Who will win?  If a brilliant audition is any indication, it should be Ricky out of the guys.  Last year's male winner was Fik Shun, and I thought it was pretty obvious from this solo he did last year.

Dynamic Trading

Of all books on technical analysis, I have found Robert Miner's Dynamic Trading to be an invaluable resource to at least understand the thinking behind chart trading. It's really interesting to see how algorithms have been designed to attempt to capture the 3rd and 5th waves of Elliot Wave Theory. If the stock market is mostly run by computers that have been developed by humans, it makes sense that fibonacci numbers and the golden ratio serve as a road map for price.

Duet

This gets me every time I watch it. And I cannot stop watching it. Glen Keane is the guy who brought characters like Aladdin, Ariel, Beast, and Tarzan to life, and I know I am being so original in saying this, but he is my hero.

My animation demo reel

Compilation of animations I created while working as an animator at Blizzard, ILM, Weta, and Blue Sky.

Click here to see a demo reel breakdown.

Chanos wins while losing

Interesting rumor (fact?) I heard the other day... With the stock market up some 200% since the 2009 lows, how the hell does famed short seller Jim Chanos make money? Well, he DOESN'T according to people familiar with the matter. His fund is down every year, but money managers invested with him don't care because he is their hedge and they're happy to keep paying him! Brilliant self-promotion and marketing have established him as THE guy you want just in case $h!t hits the fan. As long as the market keeps going up everyone is happy I guess... even Chanos.

HFT :(

IMC's purchase of Goldman's NYSE unit does not bode well for day traders. High frequency trading has been a frequent topic of discussion since Michael Lewis' book Flash Boys came out. Basically high frequency traders rule -- they have all the money now, the rich get richer, and it is only going to be harder for the little guy to make it. With so much money and power, HFT will never go away. Anyone that trades professionally as a human will tell you that HFT is infuriating. It is pretty much impossible to get stock you want to own and get out of stock you want to sell at the prices you want at the time you want. The bids and offers you see are never real. That is why if you are a human without access to fast, expensive wall street research or a bloomberg terminal or some super awesome news aggregator (even then, it's really hard), using Jim Cramer's slow, methodical approach to investing is probably your best chance at success...

Amazing demo reel

Super inspiring!

Mark Donald Animation Reel 2014 from Mark Donald on Vimeo.

Stock Picks

I figure I will post occasional stock ideas when I feel it may be worth mentioning. My longer term ideas tend to work out not only better, but more often than my shorter term ideas. About 4 years ago WYNN was trading in the 70s and I remember reading that they were beginning to expand in Macau, China. I was reading a lot of poker blogs at the time, and everyone was talking about how it was going to boom. On top of that, I was playing pretty regularly in various casinos in the LA area, and you could not help but notice how the majority of gamblers were Chinese. Seemed pretty obvious to me that with China's incredibly high population of mostly single men that WYNN stock would at least double within a few years and it did. Obviously hindsight is 20/20, but it's probably healthy to look back and realize missed opportunities in order to notice when the next one is looking you right in the face. In April, 2012, I wrote my mom an email and here is a direct excerpt:

<< LNG - Cheniere energy. they are the only company so far that has a permit (granted recently) to convert natural gas into Liquified natural gas in Louisiana which is crucial to the future use of natural gas. In my opinion they will be the ultimate middleman between companies and consumers once the country begins to shift towards the use of liquified natural gas to power homes and vehicles. About a month ago Blackstone reported a giant stake in this company. I think this will be the next big growth stock over the next couple years. maybe look for a pullback to around 16.50 or you can scale into it from here. >>

LNG is now in the high 70s. So now what? Where are we going from here? To me it seems obvious with Amazon talking about possibly using drones, the use of robotics in the military, and the use of robotics in manufacturing across the world that iRobot (IRBT) is going to be huge in a few years. Why not take a shot at owning a well established business that makes robots for the home, businesses, and military with incredible AI? I'm not sure I understand the supposedly high short interest, but maybe that's a good thing... If anyone can present a long term bear case for this stock I am all ears. Note: At the time of this post IRBT was trading 34.10. I would recommend scaling into a position from here down to 32. Use a stop below 30. Looking for upside to 40+. I think it could trade in the 60s by the end of 2015.

Baby Benson

On a related note to my previous post, watch my son dancing at 9 weeks!

Best Dance

A little late on sharing this at it aired earlier in the summer, but this is possibly the best dance routine I have ever seen. There is so much texture and creativity in the choreography and of course the technique is flawless. Absolutely mind blowing.

Honey

I feel the need to write this down before it evaporates from my memory. If you haven't watched the movie "Honey" starring Jessica Alba lately, I highly recommend it because the lingo is hilarious. She says things like, "Yo, check it," "Hey, you dropped your paper," (referring to money lying on the ground), and "We're just peoples." (referring to the kid with her in the barber shop). Outdated lines like that in older movies make me smile.

Starting... Again!

Wow about 5 years since my last post. Unbelievable! The most recent change in my life: my new baby boy Benson! (4.5 months old now) Adding a picture of our pug, Pablo, too just to show him sitting -- and that some things never change... well maybe his legs are a little closer together...