It struck me, though, that I had no idea what kind of track record the fellow had.  I mean if I’m watching the Nationals play, I know a fellow’s batting average as soon as he steps to the plate.  And if I’m really hard core, I can find out how he hits against right-handers, left-handers, and even that specific pitcher.

And with sports commentators, we normally get well-established, track record kind of guys.  I know a Digger Phelps or Jon Gruden has some merit because they have a solid resume.

But, with financial guys?  Well, we never really know unless he manages a mutual fund and we can look up the fund’s performance.

Seems to me, every time a market guru gives his opinion, there should be a subtitle below his name giving at least his year-to-date performance.  Even better, I guess, would be his lifetime performance.  That would allow me to put his prediction in some kind of context.

That’s not to say gurus bring nothing to the table even if they had a terrible track record.  Most political commentators bat less than .500 when predicting election results, but I listen to what they say because they help sort out things I may not be able to grasp.

That’s the same kind of thing we try to do on Bulls & Bears, for example, even if our personal batting average may not be too spiffy.

Still, it’d be interesting to see some kind of performance stat.  Just not sure I’d like to see mine.

Okay, good, because I want to discuss what has become my main focus since I turned 50.  In fact, for most people my age, it’s their main focus too.  They’re just too shy to admit it.

However, I am here to break the silence and let you know one of my top concerns each day — if not THE top concern — is the health, functioning, and overall satisfaction of…my GI system

Now, I could be even less discreet, but I think you get my gist.  Yes, I am at the point most “old farts” reach and that’s where a good day begins (hopefully!) with a nice trip to the “library.”

And don’t think I take anything for granted.  No, I am Mr. Probiotic.  I have a Ph.D in the area of FIBER.  I do all that mumbo-jumbo like take plenty of water, exercise, and “listen” to my body.

Yet for all my planning and diligence, G*D forbid I am even slightly off my schedule!  My body shuts down, and puts me squarely in the penalty box.  And if there’s too many trips to the penalty box, I am then forced to take drastic measures.  (Talk of drastic measures, though, are best left to another column.)

Let’s say, though, that I never thought it would come to this.  Never thought I’d spend so much time and energy on something so simple.  But that’s life, I suppose, for the AARP set and I am here to embrace it.

Now excuse me while I see a man about a horse.  (sorry, you’ll have to look it up.)

Instead, the kind of lunatic who mixes kale, beets, celery, and apples together to make a pretty good-tasting drink.  Seriously.  I am not making that up.  Yes, it sounds disgusting.  And I think it would be disgusting if you made it in a blender.  But, with a juicer, it actually tastes pretty good.  And a LOT better than it sounds.

But, forget the taste.  How did a guy raised on Budweiser, perogies, and pizza get to this point?  Evolution, I guess, and it all started with the darn bike.

And there the story gets easy to understand:

1.  Guy starts riding a bike.

2.  Guy gets upset when others pass him.  Easily pass him.

3.  Guy upgrades to “road” bike so he can go faster.

4.  Starts “training” so he can go really fast.

5.  Enters races and discovers he’s really not all that fast.

6.  Upgrades bike and training to maximize his sad potential.

7.  Reaches “competitive” stage of athleticism (which, charitably, is just below “good,”) and starts grasping at straws to get even 1% better.

8.  Realizes nutrition is only area untouched.

9. Ditches cookies, cakes, sweets, and much to his chagrin, adds in vegetables, and other formerly-abhorred foods.

10.  Starts searching the internet for ANY food that will make him faster or stronger.

11.  Discovers beets, tart-cherrys, kale, flax seeds, etc.

12.  Also discovers “juicing” which is right next to EST, Lilith Fair concerts, and Earth Day in the west coast, all-natural, “crunchie” pantheon.

13.  Buys insanely expensive juicer, which does something like “masticate” and realizes juice produced is actually….pretty tasty.

14. Vows not to proselytize about his new found religion.

15.  Can’t help himself.  Instead has the occasional burger and fries to get back to his roots.

Surprisingly, these events are well-attended.

Now my job is nothing more than to “cox” which is a glorified way of saying “be supportive.”

The hard part, of course, is the actual erging and it’s the kind of slow torture I have studiously avoided each and every year.

That said, I’m always willing to help out as long as it doesn’t involve any heavy lifting.   In fact, all I had to do was ensure Nancy had a plan and stuck to it.

Of course, that’s the important part and where most people fail.  It’s not the actual erging that dooms them, but rather pulling willy-nilly with no concept of either an end goal or how best to get there.  (As a sidenote, this is also what dooms 99% of traders…)

Anyway, Nancy DID have a plan and was nice enough to write it down for me so I wouldn’t mess up my one and only job.

(Yes, that’s the actual hand-written note soon to be displayed in the Rowing Hall of Fame….)

And that job was to simply ensure she hit those numbers: neither too high, nor too low.   A 2:11.6 average was either going to win the event or someone in better shape was going to beat her.  But, 2:11.6 was right around the best she could expect.

Sure enough, she held close to every time check and even kicked a little at the end to come in 11 meters ahead of plan at 6845.  Hard, of course, but fairly routine.  No wasted effort, no panicking when other rowers lurched ahead at the start, and no desperate attempts in the waning minutes to make up lost ground.

She did gather up the blue ribbon, and it was a pretty sweet ending.

Of course, she gets full credit for a fairly exhausting 30 minutes of activity.  Still, I can’t help thinking it was that rigorous attention to a well thought out plan that really won the day.

So, my topic headings are stuff like  ”exercise, “bicyling, and “Redskins.”

Ironically, I don’t have anything about the market or trading.  In fact, I don’t even have anything on business at all.

Now the reason isn’t that I think I know everything about trading.  Far from it.  But, I do have — hopefully — a few reasonable methods to make money in most types of markets.  And after doing this for 25+ years, what I realize is that it’s probably better to stick with what I know, rather than continuing to muck things up with new-fangled ideas.

In short, I think one gets to the point that less input is a good thing as it allows you to concentrate on what you do best.  I hope that’s where I’m at right now.

What caught my ear, though, was that one competitor — Louie Vito — had decided to really REALLY focus on his training, foregoing alcohol, working on his fitness, etc. etc.

When I heard that, I knew he was doomed.  You see, Louie Vito was already a top contender, and it’s been my experience that when top contenders try to get to the next level by “outworking” the competition, something usually breaks.  And normally it’s their own success.

I saw the same thing with the Olympic Marathon trials (trust me, I’m a connoisseur of esoteric athletic events on TV): a bunch of top runners who decided that in order to move from say 10th, to the podium, were simply going to train more.  Inevitably, they did worse.

In fact, I noticed almost all the athletes who trained less, whether by design or something like injury, did outstanding.

What’s this all have to do with anything?  I think when you’re in the formative stages of development, throwing more and more effort at something is a good thing.

But…once you reach a stage of solid competence, less is usually more.  This is particularly true of trading.  You work, study and experiment until you come up with a satisfactory way to make consistent money. And then, in some vain attempt to be “the best trader ever” you decide to do MORE: more analysis, more trades, more complexity, until finally you succeed…in losing money.

So, I guess my point is this: it’s fine, of course, to try to be at the top of the heap.  But, once you get pretty good, it’s usually not MORE that will get you there.  Instead, it’s either “different” or even “less” that’s the key.

http://www.hebrew-home.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ring_homepage

Personally, I want something a bit nicer when I get to that age , but Nancy says I won’t know any better, so she’s putting me there.

This got me thinking about life in my 80s, and the way it’s always portrayed in the media is pretty sad.  Elderly people are always shown doing arts & crafts, or sitting around playing something like the recorder, or maybe — if they’re adventurous — doing some square dancing.

And the clothes they show people in?  Did someone mandate every old person has to wear a track suit — always in some awful pastel — throughout the day?

Seriously, every 80+ person is shown as some poor kid in kindergarten, where going to the bathroom alone is cause for celebration.

I don’t know what life will hold for me 30 years from now, but if I reach my mid-80s and a big day for me is making a wood box, I’d just prefer to Nancy put a pillow over my head and let me go in peace.

On the flip side, I’ve had the opportunity to attend probably 30 college reunions, a handful of graduate school reunions, and maybe 7 high school reunions.  My attendance remains at zero.

It’s not like I had a horrible time at my various education stops.  To the contrary, I fit into a variety of high school cliques (nerd, athlete, thespian), so I had a fair amount of friends.  In college, I was in a fraternity with a good group of guys, and enjoyed my four years.

Still, I never found the need to keep in touch with anyone or re-live the “glory years.”  I did have lunch with my old college roommate a few months ago — ironically he lives no more than 20 minutes from me — but it was a one-off thing and I didn’t find any pressing need to do it again.

Reunions, I think, would be even worse than a lunch.  There’s all that talk of things you did when you didn’t know any better, and then tedious discussion about what everyone is doing now.  Well, at least it’d be tedious to me.   Finally, having to explain to your spouse that yes, you were a complete goober way back then, would just drive me crazy.

Anyway, I’m happy for my Father-in-law.  He really seems to enjoy these get togethers.  Me?  I’m fine where I am for at least another 20 years or so.

And boy, I have been fussy in spades lately.  As usual, the reasons are trivial, but I suppose they add up.  Here are just some of the things bothering me.

– The traffic around DC.  I pretty much only drive into the city to do TV, and that’s 3 times a week.  Going in is never a problem.  But, returning home?  For a lousy 10 miles, I can sometimes spend over an hour in the car.  Ridiculous.

– My kids.  Yeah, I love my kids.  Really do.  But, sometimes some of the boneheaded things they do drives me insane.  And my kids are old enough — in their 20s — to know better.  You have kids?  Enough said!

– Twitter.  Lately, I’m becoming sick of it.  Same lame-brained comments posted over and over.  I’m thinking of going on Twitter-strike, just like I did Facebook.  I probably won’t though, because I’m addicted.  (and that makes me fussy, too!)

– Sound-editing on TV.  Am I getting old, or do most TV shows have muffled sound?  Or maybe they have so much background music, the dialogue gets drowned out.  Whatever it is, I CAN’T HEAR A DAMN THING!

– The weather.  This has been the mildest winter since 2006.  Terrific really if you ride a bike.  But, it’s still gets cold and it still gets windy.  And I still loathe it next to the Spring and Summer.  (and I’m not even that wild about the Summer.)

–  The Presidential race.  Do I need say more?  My G*D, 10 more months of this??  Can we just vote and get it over with?

– Every DC sports team.  They all stink.  And yet, a mere 40 minutes away the Baltimore Ravens are playing great.  Typical.  Seriously, just once I’d love to live in city with some kind of contender.

– My own fussiness.  I think part of my total funk is that I’m getting old.  Or at least older.  And I find that annoying.  Can’t wait to see what I’m like in my 80s, should I get that far.  Probably a barrel of laughs….

Early in my life, I used to relish an extra day off.  Now I find it takes me completely out of my rhythm.  It’s not that I spend so much time trading or even looking at the market, but I do spend enough time here and there throughout the day where a void makes a noticeable difference.

In any event, I’m always happier when the market opens up Tuesday morning.  Gives me something to do post-breakfast / pre-workout.

As for the market and my trading, my rear end is catching a lot of splinters.  I did finally do one purchase on Friday (KO), but that’s about it.  And while I’m certain we’ll get a selloff at some point (let me guess: European crisis of some sort…), I really have to wait until things fall into my buy zone.

Right now I’m looking at MA, VZ, GOOG, and PEP, but all those need to drop a bit further.

Until then all I can do is sit and watch.   I see the next 3-day weekend is Presidents Day, and that’s only a month away.  Ugh.