My Asphalt

A while back I noticed there are quite a few road paving construction projects going on everywhere I go and not just in Austin but in various cities I visited outside of Texas as well.  Some of the highways were perfectly fine before but they were still repaving it for some reason.

I did a little research for asphalt companies and found TransMontaigne Partners (TLP), Holly Corp (HOC), Valero (VLO), and NuStar Energy (NS).  If I did my job right I would’ve followed the news closer regarding the stimulus bill and gone into the 10-K’s and found exactly what portion of the company’s business is in asphalt b/c these guys are mostly refiners and asphalt is just a part of the product matrix.  By the time I caught on I had missed a lot of the move so I can’t exactly say this was a spectacular find.  TLP and HOC did do pretty well though.

Now that a lot of these companies, along w/ construction companies like FLR, ACM, URS and GVA have tanked quite a bit in response to bleak prospect of more stimulus money and projects maybe they’ll be back in favor if we hear more gov’t money going into public construction?  At this moment, I’m a little late again to take a short position.  The upside doesn’t quite justify the risk in my opinion.

My Turning the Table

Continuing from yesterday’s post about advices admissions have for people applying, I’d like to turn the table around and ask: are you following your advices?  Through all my visits and research, I’m starting to feel that’s not always the case.  I doubt any admissions officers reads this blog (maybe they do… I wouldn’t be surprised if it did come across their monitors some how, some time).

Take for example the advice about actually demonstrating your qualities through what you’ve done… well, USC Marshall, are you following your own advice?  Almost every school boasts about its collaborative environment, but Marshall’s build is so small and break out or meeting spaces are not just limited, they’re almost non-existent.  Am I likely to believe what you say when you don’t provide the facilities to well, facilitate that environment?  If you go to Marshall and you experience otherwise, go ahead, feel free to blast me in the comment section.

Another big thing is not say/write what you think admissions want to hear, but truly show your personality.  Well, then why does all the recruiting brochures look/sound alike?  Just count how many times you saw a guy in a blue button down shirt w/ chinos.  It’s always diversity this and international that.  Is it possible you put that in there b/c that what we, the applicants, want to hear?

Finally, you hear a lot of admissions say they want to see demonstrated leadership and progression in a person’s career through the application.  Many schools I feel hasn’t demonstrated their leadership in the MBA or higher education realm and they’re not really making any progress.  They’re not keeping up w/ what’s important to students and employers

So yeah, I’d like to turn the table around and call BS on that.

My MBA Advices

One activity that’s quickly becoming one of my favorites is listening to my podcasts while on the stationary bike.  I subscribe to a lot of podcasts, the same w/ feeds in my Google Reader.  There’s just too much info and I can’t keep up but it also allows my favorites to shine through.  Most of the podcasts and feeds are about music, travel, photography and the market.

While the title says “MY”,I should cite that they’re actually from MBA Podcaster, more specifically they’re from a few episodes in late September to October, 2009.  There are some really good advices, especially from the episode regarding what not to do on your application.  Although, they’re not particularly new or mind blowing to me, but I thought I’d share a few

• Your essays should complement the transcript and resume, not just duplicate it
• Don’t guess and write what admissions wants to hear, write what you wan them to know
• Find-and-replace mistakes: referring to a school or city that you’re not actually applying to (I assume the person is talking about the function in Microsoft Word to find the name of the school in the draft and replace all of them b4 sending it in to the 2nd school)
• Allow yourself enough time to write, edit, rewrite the essays, as well as the rest of the application as well
• Do a thorough self-assessment.  Know what you want to do, what you are passionate about, what drives you, and link where you have been to where you are going.
• Don’t use bullet pts in the essays – ok, this one did grab my attention.  Apparently too many people are used to PowerPoint and forget to write in prose.
• Write in your own voice and let your personality shine through
• Show it, not just say it, and you’ll get it -  don’t just say you have so and so qualities, but have actual examples or stories to back it up

My Movie

I’m watching Angels and Demons with my parents over the break.  Watching movies w/ my mom is quite funny, but mostly annoying b/c she talk and ask questions constantly through out the movie.  She gets quite into the movie almost every time and react as if people in the movie can hear her.  I got my laptop w/ me and I started jotting down the stuff she said.  This is just a taste of what I got to deal w/.  I got tired at of this so I didn’t write down everything she said… that would easily make this post 3 or 5 times as long.  Plus I removed material that could possibly spoil the movie for you if you haven’t seen it.

• Is that blood?
• Who’s the dead guy?
• So the bad guy already got inside?
• How did the bad guy get in?
• What are they trying to find?
• What’s that symbol?
• What’s it for?
• Where did they go? Why didn’t they follow him?
• They’re remodeling the church? That’s how you remodel?
• You can take guns inside (a church)?
• A rat!
• Ah, right there!
• He’s dead already right? Yuck, he’s dead.  Why did they do that? It looks like he’s been dead for a long time.
• It’s a mess out there.  It’s dangerous for that little girl to be out there
• mm… all that blood.
• This is a church but it’s so graphic
• What’s he trying to find this time?
• Did they know he stole something last time?
• How did this happen?  How is this possible?
• Does he have the strength to do that?  Oh no, that didn’t work…  he’s about to faint.  they’re all gonna die.  oh yeah, he’s dead.  He’s dead.
• Why can’t they do an autopsy?  You should at least check right?  Oh, it’s all black!

My Coffee Trade

Chalk this up to another Seattle inspired post I suppose.  Seattle has tons of coffee places, including of course Starbucks.  During my visit in May I stopped by this coffee stand everybody was raving about on Yelp call Monorail Espresso.  I hung out for a while to chat w/ the barista, who is just a nice old man (not like the spiked-up hair eyebrow ring hipster punks in Austin).  I asked him what is the deal w/ the coffee culture in Seattle, and he told me that it has to do w/ the water having a certain quality that’s just really nice for brewing coffee.  Another reason is the Scandinavian heritage of the city and that culture’s affinity for tea and coffee.  I believe the 2nd part more, b/c it’s damn cold and Seattle also has this troll sculpture/statue under a bridge, which has to do w/ Norweigian? Swedish? folklore.

Anyway, DDRX, GMCR, and PEET has been my play and a little bit of CBOU.  I lost a lot of money shorting some of these stocks at first… it was so frustrating.  I thought they were total crap but I was fighting the trend.  Since them I’ve traded them on both sides.  I covered my PEET short not too long after the break out seems to fading but covered it after it broke $40 and I covered my DDRX long as well then switch into a very small GMCR short position.  I don’t have a good read on the stock, at least intraday it moves weird.  Of course now there are TWO offers on the table for DDRX, no more long positions, from GMCR and PEET, again, no short… Yeah, I made some on the GMCR but the other is making me look like a fool.

I believe DDRX gave PEET an extension to match GMCR’s offer by Monday.  Personally, I don’t think PEET should do it and instead focus on growing organically.  They’re doing quite well and my friends that are real java snobs all seem to prefer Peet’s over, achem, Starbucks.  Starbucks is really just too sweet.  Especially their holiday drinks.  Men’s Health put like at least 3 of them on their worst drinks list (health and calories wise).  I’ve grown a real distaste for their chai latte ever since I visited The Crumpet Shop, again, in Seattle.  In all seriousness, they have this awesome goosenberry crumpet and the chai tea is just spot on.  Look at me, getting off track again.  The play here: look for DDRX to reject one of the company’s bid and buy that one.  Not touching DDRX and SBUX, which has rebounded nicely after answering competition fro MCD.

Oh, and the nice old man (I think his name was Kosta), he has B.S. 1980 or something on his menu board.  He told me the BS stands for before Starbucks, as in he opened before SBUX… I went home and looked it up, heh, SBUX was founded way before that.  The date he was referring to I think when Howard Schultz joined the company and it really took off.

My Black Friday

First of all, I started wondering today why do they call Friday after Thanksgiving Black Friday.  My parents joked around that it could be b/c it’s pitch black outside while you’re waiting in line at 3 a.m. or the sticker price falls off the cliff like stock prices during a crash like Black Tuesday or Black Friday.  After doing a little search online, it seems like there are two prevailing answers.  First answer is that this Friday kicks off the shopping season and b/c of this many stores turn profitable, or in a different expression, in the black (as opposed to red, losing money).  The second answer is this kind of expression is used by the police department or bus/cab drivers to refer to heavy traffic.

Personally… the first explanation makes sense, but to think a retailer is losing money 10 out of 12 months or just this one day is ludicrous.  I mean, it’s gotta be some shitty ass store.  How many Montgomery Wards and Circuit City’s are out there?  Let me know and I’ll short the hell out of it.

Anyway, something more interesting than bargains and steals is the market today.  We got half of a day to catch up to events outside the US.  Man, if there are more days like this, I might have to consider spend more time trading.  The US Dollar strengthened quite a bit on Wednesday I believe; I think I saw it @ > 1.51 vs the Euro sometime during the day but over the course of Thursday it weakened significantly.  Most traders I believe are aware of this inverse relationship btwn the Dollar and the stock market, I won’t go into the different reasoning and theories.  Huge gap down, market trying to rebound and then fizzle out at the end and close below intraday low.  I personally was thinking the support would come in close to the 10,000 on the Dow but maybe 10,300.  We’ll have to see how the market reacts on Monday.

Side note: I got some Euros @ a Barclays in Spain last November @ almost exactly 1.25 rate.  Since currencies often trade around nice whole even numbers, I was pretty convinced this was the low and I’ve been holding on to them ever since.  I’ll admit, part of it is so I have a story to tell when I’m out at bars

I’m currently long some Chinese stocks, BIDU, CTRP, HMIN, entry price $353.05, $54.82, and $28.20.  I started getting in some shares of PWRD around $43.50 but it doesn’t look like it’s going to work very well.  I’m also short oil and refiners, but VERY cautiously since the Dollar is weak and weak Dollar boosts commodity prices.  I’m watching oil closely @ the $80 mark and my basis for shorting the refiners are that their crack spread is under attack.  Avg long price for DTO is just under $63 and my limit cover orders @ $70 got hit so I exited out part of my position already.  Wish I had set some higher than $70 this morning.  This is an ultra inverse so I’m watching this position very carefully.  All my refiners trades are mostly flat except for VLO, which has been working well.  CVX and XOM is not working.  I might close out these two positions.

That’s it for now.  Until next time!  I know I need to write about the rest of my B-school visits and continue the Kershner-Assent posts.  It seems like somebody, either prospective or current traders, caught wind of that comparison post I wrote and caused a spike in my readers.  They’re coming, I promise.

My Foster

Of the five schools I visited on the west coast I would rank them in the following order:

1. Stanford GSB
2. Anderson
3. Haas
4. Foster
5. Marshall

This has nothing to do w/ other publication’s rankings like Financial, Business Week or U.S. News.  It’s strictly based on my impression and experience while I was on campus, sitting in on a class, and interaction with students and admissions.  It’s my take on the schools.  If all you really care about is the rankings, well, you know where to find them.

I find it a little hard to differentiate MBA programs sometimes. Even if you spend a significant amount of time reading through the syllabi, I think that still doesn’t give you an exact picture what the curriculum is like. A lot of the first year courses are similar and material I had already learned in undergrad.  B/c of that I’m looking for curriculum that I can customize more and allows me to take more electives.  I’m going to comment on the stuff that’s important to me w/ each school and try to keep all the comments positive.

Since I like Seattle so much, I’m going to start w/ Foster School of Business first.  Just strictly looking at the numbers first, all the stats are a little lower than other top tier b-schools.  Each entering class is smaller, the GMAT, GPA, and avg salary are all a little lower as well.  I know schools like Stanford and Haas both intentionally keep their class size small at about 350 and 250, respectively and Foster only has a little over 100.  You can find the detailed break down here.

From the info session, the Assistant Dean was saying that only about 1/3 of the students actually end up working for major corporations.  In my experience, Seattle is a little bit different and that was my general impression of the school as well.  Not everybody is there so they can go into consulting or investment banking to make the big bucks.  And if I understand the typical ranking methodologies correctly, a lot is weighted on recruiter survey, job placement, and starting salary.  However, if the most of the students’ top priority isn’t to get the top dollar jobs, maybe that’s why Foster isn’t ranked as high as other schools.

The Preview Weekend was cool.  The official agenda was a presentation/info session by the Assistant Dean, followed by an application workshop for the first day.  The second day was presentations, student and alumni panels, and some opportunities to mingle with current 1st years.  I only end up going to the first info session and went sit in a class, which wasn’t part of the official agenda and as far as I know I was the only one that went to sit in a class while someone from Admissions talk about the different certification program Foster has.  I think I made a good decision on that.

Environment: A
Love, and I mean absolutely loooooove Seattle.  It’s so green and outdoorsy.  The air just smells different up here.  People say that Seattle rains all the time, well, it’s not rain as you traditionally would think.  In Texas when it rains, it’s pouring and visibility declines dramatically.  If you go outside you’re just gonna be drenched.  The rain in Seattle is really more like a mist, almost insignificant.  The precipitation is like when they turn on the sprinklers in the produce section at the grocery stores. Tons of live music in Seattle as well.

Job prospect: A
Seattle has quite a few companies that I would be interested in working for like Microsoft, Amazon.com, Costco, Boeing and Starbucks. That said, you don’t HAVE to go to Foster to get a job placement with these companies.

School: B
UW’s campus is really pretty. Parts of it, like the football stadium, is right on the water. Foster, the b-school by itself though, is more on the old side.  You also share it w/ the undergrads so it’s a little cramped, at least that’s how I felt. They do make it up for it slightly by having a lounge specifically for the MBA students.  Plus they’re building a new building named after PACCAR that will be ready in 2010.

Curriculum: B
First year required courses… yeah, blah.  They look the same almost everywhere. As far as electives go, there are quite a bit of management, finance, and entrepreneurship. I personally would like to see a little more in operations, but I imagine supply chain isn’t that exciting of a topic.

I sat in a Strategic Management class while I visited Foster. From what my student host told me, the professor, Charles Hill, used to (or maybe still do) serve as consultant to companies like Boeing and what made the class interesting to me was his input from all kinds of industries which made the lectures really engaging, instead of just bunch of models or graphs on PowerPoint.

Students: B
MBA admissions look for diverse student body partially b/c they believe part of what you learn in the classroom is from your classmates and I agree w/ that.  I can’t say I was super impressed by the students I’ve met there, but they were extremely willing to go out of their way to help me w/ my objective, which is to gain a better understanding of the school.  Teamwork is another thing like diversity a lot of schools use or preach.  While I didn’t necessarily felt that at some schools, *cough* Marshall, this behavior surprised me.

I mentioned to my student host that a lot of the classes I’ve visited is 1st yr classes and they’re pretty much all alike and it’s hard to see what’s “special” about the school.  The student host and his roommate immediately jumped in and asked me what would help, to which I responded that I would like to sit in on a 2nd yr class if I could.  Unfortunately I was there on a Friday so there wasn’t any classes available, but they introduced me to some actual 2nd yr students and tried to see if they could get me to go on this field trip to Nucor that was happening the day I was there.  They extended invitation as well to an happy hour event and their tailgate at the UW football the next day.

My Flu

Finally getting back into swing of things again.  I got sick on the 2nd to last day of my trip and again when I got back into Austin.  Funny enough, I actually end up 10 lbs lighter than the beginning of my trip.  With all the stuff I ate I thought for sure I’d gain at least a few lbs.

I believe it was something I ate while I was in San Francisco that gave me a stomach flu.  It was either the day-old sandwich I got from Ike’s Place a la Man v. Food, some tamales I got at the farmer’s market at the Ferry Building Marketplace, or a hot dog inside the Ferry Building as well.  Without going into great detail, let’s just say I hardly got any sleep that night, running to the bathroom constantly.  I was so sick I almost decided to not go to my class visit at Berkeley-Haas the next day.  I had no energy, super dehydrated I’m sure, and somehow I inched up the hill of Berkeley’s campus to the business school.

I spent the next couple of days after I got back recovering and I guess my system was pretty weak and I caught a severe case of the flu.  Seriously, I don’t think I’ve been this sick for quite some time.  For couple of days I was just in bed, completely disoriented from the medicine and my headache.  At one point I had the chills while it was in the low 70’s in my house.  I was just shivering for no reason.  I looked up my symptoms on WebMD and one of them said West Nile… and I did get bit by a mosquito playing sand volleyball at Zilker Park a couple of days before.  Who knows… at least I’m all better now, that’s what’s important.

The west coast trip was productive I’d say.  I think before the trip I was desperately looking for answers to questions I don’t even know.  Now I can at least verbalize what the questions I have in mind.  There’s a lot to think about… I’ll be posting some of my reflections and my impressions on the schools I visited.

My Dark & Twisty

I’m in Seattle right now. While I was driving back to my buddy’s place from UW I saw one of the stores had a sign outside that said: “Don’t worry about what other people think; they don’t do it very often.” I liked it so much I decided to post it here.

Seattle is beautiful.  I visited during Memorial Day and it was in the mid-70’s temperature wise and not one single drop of rain.  I knew that if I wanted to move here I need to see if I can deal w/ a more typical weather.  It has a lot in common w/ Austin such as the liberal, free-spirit, counter-culture attitude.  It is also very outdoorsy.  You’re surrounded by trees and water.  I can’t decide if Seattle is a city that just so happens to be right there w/ all these trees or all these trees happens to be right in the city.

Since I don’t have an iPhone yet, I can’t really keep up w/ all the news and the market.  I would catch a glimpse of data here and there but it’s like seeing a few pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, you can’t really tell what the big picture is like.  Seems like it’s still the same story, going up but w/ low volume.  This 10,000 level w/ the Dow is interesting.  Unless we find support and consolidate here I wouldn’t buy right now as a breakout trade.  There’s a higher chance that you buy now you’ll get punked on a sell off.

It’s been a good trip so far and I’ve done my job of planning everything out in advance very well w/ my flights, appointments, rental cars, etc.  Good job me!  My buddy is in the physical therapy program here @ UW and he’s almost constantly studying.  I know I’ll have more down time to get on the computer when he’s busy and I’ve already been here before.  I’ll try to make a few posts about some of the schools I’ve already visited.

The whole dark & twisty thing?  It’s a reference to Grey’s Anatomy.  I don’t watch it often but all my female friends do and I picked that up from them.

My West Coast Tour

I’m in the Bay area right now visiting schools and maybe see my aunt after my cousin’s wedding.  I didn’t plan everything out that well but just kept rolling w/ the punches and everything worked out pretty good so far.

At first I was gonna book a separate trip up to UW-Foster in early November go to my cousin’s wedding in late October and visit Berkeley-Haas and Stanford while I was in the area but b/c of Stanford’s midterm schedule they won’t be having class visit.  I thought I could just move my trip up but then b/c of a staff meeting Stanford won’t hold info sessions.  The final trip I have booked, I fly into Oakland, hang out w/ my buddy and his fiance while they house sit in Walnut Creek before they head out to Hawaii for vacation.  Do class visit w/ Stanford on the 19th.  I then drive down to Los Angeles since my friend won’t be able to pick me up at LAX.  Visit USC-Marhsall on the 20th, UCLA-Anderson on the 21st, fly out morning of the 22nd to SEA and attend UW-Foster’s Preview Weekend.  Fly out on the 26th to SJC and drive back to Stanford for their info session.  Visit Berkeley-Hass on the 28th

So far everything’s been going really well.  The UT volleyball team was flying to Lubbock one gate over from me at the airport and I’m a big fan but I only discretely snapped a picture of them.  I got my In-N-Out burger the first night in.  Went to a Texas Exes watch party @ Blue Light for the Texas-Oklahoma game where we won.  I made sure to pack my lucky shirt where we have not lost in any sport for almost the past five years every time I wear the shirt.  Got some more yummy food @ La Boulange and made a pit stop in Oakland at the taco truck Anthony Bourdain went to called Tamale Mi Lupita, and we’re going to Olde San Francisco Creamery in Walnut Creek to check out the kitchen sink ice cream challenge.  I’m effing full… there’s no way I’d attempt the challenge.  And it’s $40.  I don’t want to spend that kind of money on ice cream.