BagBoy

...the context being bands that drive people nuts...Yes, those Starship bands are certainly not my cup of tea, but Jefferson Airplane was the real deal.

We've all been missing sports lately, so here is Viagra Boys doing their song Sports:

In my younger days I was definitely doing the mutual fund thing. But I just had a problem with the huge percentage the mutual fund companies were taking. I would very much prefer ETF's to mutual funds today.

When I was younger, I was convinced there was "a path" to consistently making money in the market, and then I found William J O'Neil's "How to Make Money in Stocks", which proved my assumption correct. I can't recommend it highly enough. Like anything else good in life, the knowledge you gain from reading it will only be a small part of the equation. There will be a lot of work involved, namely constant research and vigilance. In a nutshell, here is the gist of it. There are 2 main components. Find sound, viable companies. Then figure out the optimal time to invest in and sell them. For finding sound, viable companies, think CANSLIM. You will need to find companies that best fit the CANSLIM profile. C - Current quarterly earnings (QE). Look for companies with not only exceptional current QE, but rising QE. A - Annual Earnings. Same as C. You want both A and C to eliminate flash in the pan companies and anomalies. N - New. New product, new industry, new demand, new CEO, new marketing strategy, etc. If you want a company's stock to really make some noise, don't expect them to do it by doing nothing innovative or avoiding change. S - Supply and Demand - This relates mostly to the number of shares available in the market of a given stock. Big companies generally have too many shares in the market to allow for big moves. Companies with tiny market shares can be too vulnerable to any negativity. Companies buying back their own stock is a very positive indicator here. L - Leader or Laggard. This not only refers to the industry involved, but how well the company in question is doing against its peers within that industry. I - Institutional Sponsorship - Institutions like mutual funds, pension funds, etc. are the biggest consumers of stocks. We're talking like 80% of sales here. It doesn't matter how "right" you are about how good a stock is. If the institutions are selling, you will likely lose money. You must understand what institutional money is doing in relation to a prospective stock. M - Market direction. This one is very self evident today. It is very difficult for even good stocks to make money in bad markets. Making money in the market very often means knowing when to preserve your capital by getting/staying out of the market and getting into cash/bonds/fixed interest, etc. That's CANSLIM. The other part is learning the timing of buying and selling (Technical Analysis) and it's even more challenging, but just as (if not more so) vital to the big picture. It involves reading stock charts. The most important part is understanding the relation of how stocks move up or down, and the volume of shares traded associated with that given time period. A big daily gain in a stock is fine, but if it comes with minimal volume, beware. If you read (and study) William J O'Neil's "How to Make Money in Stocks" you will also learn to identify chart patterns in individual stocks that will present you with wonderful opportunities to make money (and avoid losing money). These are patterns that have been consistently re-occurring for well over 100 years with the same results. None of this ***** is easy, but if it were it wouldn't be any fun. If you are game, start by reading the book obviously. The next step is to subscribe to Investor's Business Daily which was founded by William J O'Neil, and devour it daily. I love the guy, but he's a right wing extremist, so avoid the editorial page like the plague if you're a Dem like me. Thanks to what I learned from Mr. O'Neil, I could smell the stench rising in this market months ago and have been unaffected by recent results, because I got out of the market almost completely. I liquidated in October, because there were so many days the market gained on low volume, while losing ground on high volume. Granted I missed out on 20-25% gains from October to the recent high, but I have no regrets about that.

The Blue Stones are a band from Windsor that are starting to get noticed. They will be at Mohawk Place in Buffalo on Feb. 20.

The Lighthouse looks good. Any Peaky Blinders fans here? It's a Netflix show about an Irish/Gypsy organized crime family in 1920's Birmingham, England. Good stuff.

Mississippi / Mississippi State game today... State winning 21-14 in last 10 seconds. Ole Miss receiver catches TD to make it 21-20, then celebrates with dog urinating on the goal post routine. 15 yard penalty. Kicker then misses extended extra point attempt. I'm going to call this a character building experience for the WR (among other things). https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/28189413/ole-miss-wr-elijah-moore-apologize-urinating-dog-celebration

LOL. The problem here is that this team's opponents registered 114 points against them. I would certainly consider that a losing season.

Outstanding! That's a perfect grand slam for me!

The ACC has gone from a 16-game conference schedule to an 18-game conference schedule this year. You gotta put those extra 2 games somewhere and there's basically no room for them after New Years. Might as well do it sooner than later. Probably not a coincidence, but the ACC Network just launched a few weeks ago.

Edwards is beyond a shadow of a doubt my #1 dumb announcer. Everyone else is a distant second.

I like it. Arrived in Detroit at 2am after that bad Rangers game, survived the 1st period, and took care of business. Well done!

nice dive! terrible call.

How smart is #23? putting the net back in place on the PP.

Yes, I am. They are funny. Talking about liquid lunches that last til the next morning and other crazy stuff. But honestly, their take on what is actually happening in this game has seemed a little off on multiple occasions.

In terms of games I attended... 1972 - Islanders first game ever against the Sabres. Rick Martin scored 4 goals and Buffalo won 9-2. I screamed so much and so hard that I was hoarse well into the following day. I was 8 years old. That may have been the last game I saw as a resident of Erie County. We moved south just a month or so later. 1999 - I went to games 3 and 4 of the finals. Game 3 was Red Sea of Sabres Fans t-shirts for everyone (Goat's Head jerseys back then). I still have mine. We managed only 12 shots on goal for the entire game; amazing we only lost 2-1 (Dom). Game 4 I sat in the 200's and Buffalo won 2-1 to even the series. Pretty sure Geoff Sanderson had the game winner in that one. 2006 - Game 2 of the Carolina series in Raleigh. The game after the alleged multiple baby eating incidents. I mentioned here before that I had never seen such collective insanity in person. We lost that game. I have never gone back to a Hurricanes game since. Losing that series to this day bothers me more than anything else Sabres related. The tank doesn't even come close.

I always liked Turgeon, too. Maybe the biggest strike against him in assessing his value was that the Sabres failed to win a playoff series in his 5 years.

Jay Gruden got canned today as the Redskins head coach, and as a Washington fan, I must say I am truly happy for the guy. He will look back at this day as one of the best days of his life, if he isn't already doing so. The current state of affairs in Redskins land is not his fault. That blame lies 100% on the shoulders of the owner Daniel Snyder. Complete megalomaniac, incompetent jerk to the extreme. If PA, with all his ownership issues, was a Redskins fan he would have spontaneously combusted long ago. Two weeks ago the Redskins were on Monday Night Football, but I watched Ken Burns' Country Music documentary instead, and that was the right choice. I know all the Bills fans here have suffered over the years, but you all have something that no sane Redskins fan has, and that's hope. The Redskins will never do anything until Daniel Snyder is dead or in jail. Personally, I'm kind of on the fence as to which I'd prefer.

^^ I was just looking at that SH list. Man, I would go to war with that list all day long and twice on Sundays.

They mentioned in the Blues game that Ovechkin is tied for 4th all time in PP goals. I guessed Gretzky, Kurri, Brett Hull and Gordie Howe as the others (with very limited success). #1 really tripped me out! https://www.quanthockey.com/nhl/records/nhl-players-all-time-power-play-goals-leaders.html

Funny - I just heard of these guys a few days ago. You might like Mark E. Smith and the Fall. English, but otherwise they fit the Loud, jangly, smart, lyrical part. They didn't actually write this song (cover of a 60's garage tune), but it is so them...

Thanks for this! I was not aware of this show. I've been checking it out and it is good stuff. For Fargo fans, I found this description of season 4 (airs sometime in 2020) on IMDb.com: The head of an African American crime syndicate goes to war with the Italian mafia in Kansas City, Missouri during the 1950s

Lots of outstanding shows referenced here recently. The Wire – anyone who says that’s maybe the best show ever won’t get an argument from me. Band of Brothers – if you like WWII stuff and haven’t seen it, get on it immediately. Breaking Bad – I never got around to watching/finishing it until recently (commitment issues). Outstanding. As a bonus you can then comfortably segue into the Better Call Saul spinoff which I’m on now and is wonderful. Mad Men – (commitment issues again) the second I heard it was over I watched them all and loved it. Fargo – No commitment issues here whatsoever. I loved every episode and probably watched them all 3 or 4 times before the following episodes arrived. Kind of ironic for a show named after the movie I described as the best movie I never wanted to see twice. Can’t wait for season 4. The Black Mirror – creepy but brilliant glimpse into the possible (probable?) unforeseen paths into the future of technology and humanity. Old school shoutouts to Barney Miller and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. These are still incredible shows 40-60 years afterwards. EDIT: let's add Monty Python's Flying Circus and Twin Peaks to the old school shoutouts.

I have always loathed Kessel for being such a lazy ass waste of talent. If he actually applied himself, who knows what he could have been? Dropping 25 pounds of hot dog fat, consistently training like he actually gave a *****, and figuring out how to actually be some modicum of a leader, who knows, he could have been approaching Crosby territory. But this incident with him hacking at Scott's ankles is the lowest of the low. and so indicative of his complete lack of character.

Thanks Punch for bringing back this memory. Henri Richard was arguably best remembered as Maurice Richard's little brother. For the younger posters out there, Maurice Richard was truly the Gretzky of his era - no exaggeration, and was nicknamed Rocket Richard. His brother, Henri (5' 7"), was nicknamed the Pocket Rocket, and while nowhere near as flashy as his brother, was a truly great player for a long time on a great team. I was fortunate enough to see him play at the Aud late in his career. Henri (born in 1936) celebrated his 20th birthday back in 2016. He is one of those rare people to be born on February 29, Leap Year Day. Unfortunately I have read that he is suffering from Alzheimer's which is a horrible ***** disease. Bringing it back around to our new Henri, I don't care if Alex Nylander ends up on a line with Patrick Kane and registers 80 points next year, or any year (which I seriously doubt). As stated by many smarter people than me, he was never going to do ***** in the Sabres organization and we got a very nice prospect for him. Way to go JBot!