The Options & Spreads article
that follows has been written by an expert who trades successfully for a
living. He also offers a course on trading Options & Spreads. For more info
on the course click here. The following article is very educational,
informative and well-written. "When I found the skull in the woods," wrote Jack
Handey, "the first thing I did was call the police, but then I got curious
about it. I picked it up and started wondering who this person was and why he
had deer horns." So, he looked at the skull and insisted on seeing Homo
erectus instead of roebuck, despite the evidence of the antlers. Was he any
sillier than those who see hard-sell TV commercials for foreign currency
futures and envision fabulous profits? Who disregard the evidence of sharp
horns punching holes in one's bank account? Penny stocks and IPOs, dot com offerings and electronic chat
room recommendations, futures and options on items from rough rice to interest
rates, S & P "spiders" crawling all over the financial channel
commercial -- few hopefuls look at these skulls and visualize skeletons of
bankruptcy. Certainly, hope is essential for speculative traders but too
frequently, it camouflages bloody antlers. Those come-ons in your mail do not help any. You know, the
ones with buffalo-sized announcements of huge gains, the ones that make
speculation sound like an easy-pickings gold mine with nuggets as big as your
fist. The ones with the "warning of risk" that the law requires
squeezed into the tiny type above the printer's name, a hair's breadth from the
bottom of the page. Yet, hope can have a solid, business-wise foundation. Veins
of gold and silver are not imaginary and the individual sourdough can be the
smiler in the assayer's office. Inescapably, it requires knowledge of
topography and methodology, ways and means. Many venture forth with just hope
and hype, expecting all nuggets and no rattlesnake. Fledglings perish and
years-of experience veterans have little to show for it. A solid, business-wise foundation can underlie both the hope
and the "how to go about it." If everybody's "blueprint for
wealth" reached the brick & stone stage, the street outside your
window would be jammed with chauffeured Lincolns. Yet, some blueprints do work
at the concrete-pouring stage, including for the individual trader who is not
marshaling millions in a corporate treasury: Using stock options, my blueprint is the Horizontal Calendar
Spread. My "office" is my desk at home or my pockets; my
"business phone" is often the street corner touch-tone. The amount of
my own capital that I float is typically less than $1,500 per venture plus -- and
here is a crucial ingredient -- several thousands of dollars of other people's
money. I would stay the hell away from options but for that latter item. Why? Because my carved-in-stone One Commandment remains the
W. D. Gann Maxim: "Handle speculation as a business, not as a
gamble." Spread strategy uses substantial quantities of other people's
capital and therefore in my estimation stands as the most business-like form of
speculative trading. Like banking & bookmaking, it requires seed money or
an outlay but is mechanically geared to gather profitable spill-over from other
folk's bankrolls. Also, like banking and bookmaking, it often gains while
those who put up most of the cash lose. Spreading is not risk-free but can
powerfully reduce the risk in futures and options, two forms of trading
notorious for producing the results of a "one medal per 10 coffins"
type of battle. With spread strategy, usually the coffin train carries away
others' lost dollars. That is why I would not touch stock options unless that
strategy armed me. I received a thought-provoking letters from a gentleman, a
dentist in Illinois. He wrote that he would like to leave the dental profession
and become a successful full-time trader. My reply was, "I have good
vibrations about you. Yet, you and I may be working at cross-purposes. You want
to leave the dental profession and I want to make trading more like the dental
supplies business, i.e., more a business and less a crap-shoot." Alas, the Gann Maxim/One Commandment everywhere gets
mangled in actual practice. "Handle speculation like a business" is
like saying, "Drink only in moderation." Everybody claims to be doing
so but millions of people clearly are not. That dentist can probably handle
trades in a scientific, business-like manner, but so many others - you would
urge them to "handle it intelligently" but does any living being
claim not to? Recently I became involved in a brief debate-in-print,
which turned to the subject of investments when I did not expect it to. A piece
in the Wall Street Journal waxed eloquent over horse-gambling in a bygone era.
I wrote a response, which the Journal published 6-1-2000 Ray Kerrison (Tastes Page, Weekend Journal, 5/19)
sentimentalizes the old-time horse-players with the cigar in one hand, pencil
and Racing Form in the other. Straight from the pages of Damon Runyon and Ring
Lardner. Not everybody is so nostalgic. I am not completely
anti-gambling, since I had my first investment success with Atlantic City
casino stocks & parachuted out before they plummeted. Yet I stopped believing that "wisdom comes with
age" as an eight-year-old kid, the son of innkeepers in 1950s pre-casino
Atlantic City. I saw too many gray-haired racetrack suckers. Too many fellows
in sports shorts told my Old Italian grandmother, "Sorry, Katie. I got no
money for another night's rent. Lucky Penny ran too slow." In South Philadelphia's Little Italy they had a saying:
"The reason you never see any horse manure on the racetrack is that all
the horses' asses are at the betting windows." Greg Donio - New York. That
prompted a rebuttal from a West Coast man "eminent in the field." On
6-9-2000, the Wall Street Journal -- printed the following: In response to Greg Donio's June 1 piece about seeing
"too many gray-haired racetrack suckers," I invite Mr. Donio to a day
at the races in the year 2000. He would find that the horses asses are where
they belong, on the racetrack, and that the people at the betting windows are
in possession of a large amount of horse sense. Nowadays, the sports shirts and loss of rent money he
recalls from his youth are the stereotypical exception, and not the rule; 21st
century horseplayers today are not the hunch players of yesteryear, but rather
studious investors who apply high-tech concepts to gauge each horse's
capabilities. If that sounds similar to choosing a stock on the basis of
its fundamentals, that's because it is. The modern-day racetrack, racebook or
Internet wagering outlet has evolved into a fast-paced and exciting financial
market unto itself. I know. I have 25,000 nationwide subscribers who will
attest to it. -- TOM QUIGLEY - Publisher - The HorsePlayer Magazine- Beverly
Hills, Calif. Isn't it nice to know that horse-players are
"'studious' investors" and that betting the nags is like
"choosing a stock on the basis of its fundamentals?" Is the pad &
pencil roulette-player also applying "high-tech concepts to gauge"
patterns in the spin of the wheel? Like the racebook (horse parlor), is the
worn-out poker table and the back-alley crap game on concrete "a
fast-paced and exciting financial market unto itself?" So, you see the problem. Everybody but-everybody claims to
be the "studious investor" with the "scientific approach."
Every Internet gambler and card-playing patsy with a rabbit's foot thinks
himself "the mogul" who "handles it like a business." This
extends heavily to the fast-swing buyers and sellers of stocks, futures and
options. The fellow with the sure-thing horoscope guide, the trader
in the throes of speculation fever whose hunches keep missing, the dabbler who
expects to massacre the big boys and don't keep me waiting and don't expect me
to strain my brain, the thrower of good money after bad, etc, etc. Every one of
them a "brilliant tycoon" by his own estimation! To me, "handling it like a business" meant (1)
learning the details and (2) achieving realistic profits, not overnight wealth.
It is the "gambling degenerate" of the casino or the racetrack who
expects $500 to become $5,000 before the twilight beer flows. He is the last to
realize that if that big a gain were that easy, every desperate wagerer like
himself would enjoy valet service and maid service. As for learning the
details, few avid gamblers know anything worth knowing even about gambling.
So for futures, options and other speculations, too often
the years of experience have resulted in depleted checkbooks and no knowledge
worth following. Gee, he must have learned a lot from all that trading
activity. Yeh, follow his advice and you'll borrow money for groceries just as
tasty. He would not ask the restaurant supplies dealer or the barbering
supplies dealer for advice because their profits are not 1,000% in a day. Yet,
if he imitated them at least a bit his pockets would be less empty. Not all-bad trading advice comes from rag-pickers and
obscurities. Articles appearing in Futures Magazine caused me to send the
editors a critique, which they did not publish. Here are excerpts of what I
wrote: In your June, article "The Best Reads for
Traders," using the word "read" as a noun ("a good
read") smacks of saloon slang, which may be appropriate since much of the
advice is near the cuspidor level. Among the "best" according to your
article are a whopping four books by or about the "legendary" Jesse
Livermore. Jesse Livermore made and lost four speculative fortunes. In
1940, he wrote the book How to Trade in Stocks and in 1941, the wiped-out man
put a gun to his own head. Advice-wise, he stands as the classic example of a
baldy selling hair-grower. Yet, he keeps appearing on the very latest lists of
"best reads" and "top 20." In the same issue, "Ratio Retracements" by
Cornelius Luca drew heavily upon W. D. Gann and his calculations with Fibonacci
numbers. The great W. D. was "legended" to have made 50 million
dollars as a speculator but nobody can substantiate this with paper documents.
Still his lessons sell for hefty amounts. As mentioned, they did not publish it. So, what was
published in the issue most recent at the time of this writing? Page-35 in the
August 2000 edition of Futures Magazine, a full-page ad: "At Last You can
Discover - The Secret Trading Method That Made, W. D Gann Both Famous and
Rich." I found W. D. Gann worthwhile for his
"trend-following" writings regarding stock price movements, ideas
that he apparently borrowed from Charles Dow. Of course, his "Handle
speculation as a business
" axiom is my Gospel, Hindu mantra and
ethic wedding song. Yet, my skeptic's nerve was and is struck by the Gann
Square of Nine, his Square of 144, the Biblical numerology and his other
esoteric. It is unclear whether anybody has consistently made money trading
with his methodologies but more than a few people have made dollars upon
dollars selling them. When you hunt for gold in rattlesnake country, you need a
thorough knowledge of diamond-backs, sidewinders and two-legged snakes that
"salt" the mines or sell apocryphal maps. The business section of the
New York Post for August 10, 2000 contained the heading, "Report Shows the
Dot-Carnage Is Spreading." It began, "The Internet fire sale is
official. Forty-one Internet companies have gone belly-up this year -- and 83
others have withdrawn their initial public offerings, according to a report by
webmergers.com." The New York Post for July 17, 2000: "NASD Charges
All-Tech, Stock USA with Trade Violations." Dateline Washington -- Day-trading firms All Tech Direct.
Inc. and Stock USA Inc. were charged by regulators with supervisory failures,
including All-Tech's widespread use of allegedly misleading advertising. . . . statements cited were that "day trading gives
one unlimited earnings potential" and that "most of my customers have
enjoyed successes virtually unheard of in the trading community." . . . The NASD contended that All-Tech lacks supporting
data and customer records to back these claims, and does not have written
procedures for determining the accuracy of advertising statements. . . . All-Tech also was charged with failing to properly
supervise employees who arranged $131 million in loans between customers when
their account balances fell below minimum thresholds. Loans between customers circumvented the margin-loan
limits. Buying stocks on margin could double the gain but could also double the
loss if the share-price movement went the wrong way. Loans between customers in
addition to margin-buying amounted to "deeper in the hole" loans,
which often furthered the losses. This is a controversy atop the
already-existing "tomahawk takes your scalp" day-trading controversy.
Yet, if you believe the advertising, the employees were
remiss in their duty in not helping customers hire yacht crews with their
immense winnings. Salted gold mines yesterday, misleading ads today. Has much
really changed? Apart from the fact that the hunch-playing horse gamblers of
long ago have been replaced by "studious investors" at the betting
windows, has much changed? Now as in the past, even the grandmotherly side of
investing more than rarely gets hit with hailstones, some as big as baseballs.
New York Post, August 12, 2000: "Malone, Amos Lose Billions on
AT&T." The AT&T shares in the portfolio of entertainment mogul
John Malone were worth $2 billion this past Christmas but are now worth just $I
billion. The $26.3 million worth of the same stock held by former cable TV
bigwig Amos Hostetter has fallen to $13.3 million. Everybody knows that, now as
in olden times, you cannot lose with blue chips! Blue chips are as safe as a
picnic and yield abundance like brimming picnic baskets. Yeh, right. The Wall Street Journal for August 7, 2000: "SEC Acts
at Cyberspeed to Halt Suspect Trades." Paragraph One: "On March 9,
the Securities and Exchange Commission's Los Angeles office received a
telephone tip that the skyrocketing stock price of a little Internet company
called eConnect Inc. was being fueled by false press releases." Things have changed so much since rumors over ale tankards
affected the price of shares that were sold in taverns. So much is different
since false messages went by carrier pigeon to Lloyd's of London. The bell at
Lloyd's rang once for good news and twice for bad news. Some say all has
changed. Yeh, birds fly, not on the World Wide Web and not one brass
bell rang at the Los Angeles office of the SEC. Bookie joints are now
"fast-paced and exciting financial markets unto themselves." Yet, in
risk trading now as in past centuries, a helluva lotta people get sneaky and a
helluva lotta people get shafted. Fake telegrams criss-crossing the nation used to juggle
stock and commodity pries in 1900. Now Internet message boards and chat rooms
make similar use of electric current. As a speculative trader, you have an
obligation to know what schemers do and how, what strongbox can resist what
bandit, what hand physical or electronic may pick what pocket. Ponzi schemes and hard-sell schemes keep showing up in new
disguises, sometimes on a computer or TV or sometimes on old-fashioned paper,
ready to bankrupt more innocents. Can you pierce the disguise? A trader hunts
gold in a land of danger and, whether he rescues a grandmother or protects
himself, he must know all the hazards like he knows his own scrotum. He must be
a mental encyclopedia of what to avoid and what can go wrong. Now that you have looked at a few snakes not to be stepped
on, let us address the technique of gold mining and nugget-hunting. Handling it
like a business usually means having something to sell, whether ores and
diamonds, apples from a cart or an architectural design, services as a tree
surgeon or song-writer, or paper securities. Options are the focus of this
article because something is true of them that is not true of stocks, bonds or
CD's: With spreading, owning options permits you to create and sell more
options. Imagine if owning diamonds enabled you to create and sell
more of those gems. Imagine if owning paper money enabled you to print and
spend more dollars without going to prison. Imagine if owning common stock gave
you the power to issue and sell additional shares. In other words, suppose you
could have your cake and sell it too, then materialize and sell more a little
later, and sell more still later without touching the original, then finally
sell the original cake at your leisure. Would you call that a great business, a
great bakery to own? The business is not risk-free but a jewelry store or a food
store that could do that would have a wonderful advantage. It would also be a
fine risk-reducer in a high- hazard financial realm. A phrase heavily used
earlier in this piece was "other people's money." It is the selling
end of the enterprise that pulls that in. Shops do that, of course, but they
must pay wholesalers. Being able to materialize jewels, cakes or options out of
the mist would sure cut out most of the overhead, but it is only with the
latter item that this can be done. Let us look at the stock options page of the Wall Street
Journal for August 4, 2000. Verio stock shares trade at 52-3/8. (Nasdaq symbol
VRIO. This stock is mentioned here only as an example, not a recommendation.) A
Horizontal Calendar Spreader looks only at "out of the money"
options, which would include Verio call options with strike-prices above
52-3/8. Among calls with a strike-price of 55, those expiring in August (third
Friday of that month) traded at 2¼ on August 4, those expiring in
September traded at 3-5/8 on that same day, those in November at 4 and February
at 4¼. I routinely buy and sell options in groups of 10. Let us
say that you bought 10 call options with a strike-price of 55 and the February
expiration. Trading at 4¼ means one sells for $425 and 10 for $4,250.
Owning one such option means that if the price of Verio stock rises to, say, 60
or 70 or higher, you are entitled to buy 100 shares at the strike-price of 55
between now and the third Friday in February. In actual practice, however, you
would not need to buy the stock because, if the price of the underlying shares
were to rise markedly, the resale value of the call options would swell to much
more than $425 for one or $4,250 for 10. Most options are never exercised, i.e. their share-buying
call power never utilized or share-selling power never utilized if they are
puts instead of calls. Options that increase markedly in value are resold at a
profit without being exercised and, sadly, most puts and calls do not increase
in value and are a loss to their holders. Over 90 percent of all "out of the money" options
expire worthless. As with futures, most who trade in them do not intend to
exercise and, also as with futures, the scalped cavalry rate pushes 90 percent,
i.e., graves on boot hill. So how can options be termed a "business" with
smoke signals like that? Remembers those 10 Februarys you bought on August 4th?
They give you the right to create and sell 10 Augusts and, after they expire,
10 Septembers and, after they expire, 10 Octobers etc. Let us portray that in
dollars. Assume you paid $4,250 plus brokerage commissions to
purchase the 10 Februarys. Instantly this allows you to create and sell either
10 Augusts for $2,250 or 10 Septembers for $3,625. As mentioned, you can sell 10 Augusts and then sell 10
Septembers after the Augusts expire. Remember, however, that all options lose
value with the passing of time. By late August, "time decay" will
burn one amount or another off the Septembers' $3,625. A pronounced drop in the value of the underlying stock
could shrink part or most of the $4,250 off Februarys. Also, they will lose
value with the passing of time but, at this point in time, more slowly than the
Aug or Sept Options. The fact that spreading is in essence a risk-reducer means,
in this example, you should choose the Sept instead of the Aug for the first
sale. The larger the proportion of Other People's Money in the mixture, the
lower the risk. If you invest $4,250 in Februarys and sell Septembers for
$3,625, you are actually risking only the difference or the "spread"
between those two figures, plus brokerage commissions. At this time, October options in that particular stock do
not exist yet but will in the weeks ahead. The spread strategist holding the
Februarys may sell Octobers after the Septembers expire, then Novembers after
the Octobers expire. However, the "unknown factor" that must be
allowed for is the price fluctuation of the underlying shares. A declining
stock price could shrink every thing, which is why the trader should include as
much of other people's money in the mixture as possible. A rise in the shares
above the strike-price requires an early pull-out since a spreader is a seller
of "out of the money" options and should not stand pat with unexpired
"in the moneys." I tolerate "in the moneys" over night at
most and often for less than a full trading day. At the time of this writing, February is six months away
and the "sold" options in the example much nearer. In other instances
where the buy side and the sell side of the spread are just one month apart, my
formula stated in previous articles remains ironclad: A sell side of 3 points
or higher and a gap or spread between the buy and the sell of less than 1½
points. For example, selling out-of-the-money Octobers at 3¼ and buying
Novembers with the same underlying stock and the same strike-price for 4-5/8.
The 3¼ sell fits the "3 or more" criteria and the 1-3/8 spread
or difference is less than a point and a half. In spreads with which the buy end and the sell end are
several months apart, I am a little more flexible but still insist on mostly
other people's money entering the total via the sell end (mostly, that is,
compared to the price you pay on the buy end) and by "mostly" I do
not mean "only slightly more." In the Verios call option example just
given, the Augusts at 2¼ points barely qualify as mostly, a thin sliver
over half of the Februarys at 4¼. The Septembers at 3-5/8 constitute a far
better "mostly." I write as an active trader, not as a pure theoretician or
a swimming instructor who never gets wet or a huckster of alleged "winning
strategies" who keeps his own money off the speculative battlefield.
Always some readers are shocked when an active trader who writes admits to
having had a losing trade. Some think there exists an unwritten law that
writer/speculators tell of their gains but never their losses. Not so. My plunge struck dry rock recently instead of oil and the
disappointment, though small-scale, is instructive. When Legato Systems shares
were around the 20 mark this past April, I tried an experiment with fractional
options. The strike-price of 50 was far above the stock price. I bought 10
Legato call options with a strike-price of 50 and an expiration date of June
for half a point and sold 10 May 50s for a quarter of a point. The $250 from
the sale of the Mays paid for half of the $500 that buying the Junes cost me. I
paid the difference of $250 plus brokerage commissions. This Horizontal
Calendar Spread was Horizontal because both sets of options had the same
strike-price of 50 and Calendar because of the different months, May and June.
It was a total loss albeit a small total. The experiment
taught me to be sure the value of the options on the sell side was multiple
points, not a fraction of one point. It also taught me to keep my experiments
small. Multiple points on the sell end of the spread mean more of that crucial
ingredient -- other folks' cash. Make it a helluva lot more than a quarter of a
point. On August 4 Compaq Computer stock sold for 28?. Among its
out-of-the-money call options, Augusts with a strike-price of 30 traded at a
half of a point, Septembers 30s at 1-5/16, October 30s at 2-1/16 and January
30s at 3½. Januarys may make a good buy but for the sell end of a spread,
have an autumnal heart and do not look earlier than October. Harvest Sam's,
Bill's and Edna's cash. After the October expires, the trader owning the January
can sell November and then December. However, he need not wait until the third
Friday of October. The value of October will shrink substantially in late
September. At around that time the trader could buy back the Octobers at a
shriveled price and sell the meaty Novembers. If he waits longer than that, the
Novembers shrink. Compaq call options are mentioned here as an example rather
than put options because the underlying shares are gradual trending upward.
It is advisable that an option spreader also be a stock
trend-follower. A call option spread belongs above rising shares and a put
option spread below declining ones. The fact that a stock can turn around and
keep going is why spread strategies are not risk-free and why other people
should provide as large a portion of the capital as possible. Also, spreading
means selling puts or calls to hopeful people, about 90 percent of whom will
end up disappointed and with depleted checkbooks. Merriam-Webster defines "wildcatter" as 1: one
that drills wells in the hope of finding oil in territory not known to be an
oil field; 2: one that promotes unsafe and unreliable enterprises; especially
one that sells stocks in enterprises of this kind. In a sense, therefore an
option spreader sell shares in wildcat mines. He makes money off the
"studious investors at the betting windows," people who look at a
skull, and see a man with deer's horns. He profits from "get rich
quick" patsy's who turn to options instead of to phony Star of India gems
and perpetual motion machines and "valuable real estate" where
vultures roost undisturbed. He gains off of dabblers and triflers who expect to make
vast fortunes in less time and with less mental effort than they devote to
selecting a suit of clothes. A day-trader or a penny stock venture fails at
puts & calls before or after failing at something else. In the previous
issue of CTCN, C. J. Casebeer asked annoyedly "'How many traders are
spread traders?" My answer: There have always been more horse-players than
bookmakers but who consistently takes home the profits? Now for some diversion.
A woman CTCN subscriber wrote to me, "I enjoyed your
excerpts from Edith Wharton's novel The Age of Innocence in an issue last year,
the one where a turn in the stock market sweetened the atmosphere in the opera
boxes and the dress circle. Have you read John Galsworthy's books about
pre-atomic age English gentry?" I find Galsworthy's writing rather uneven and not much of
it elegantly quotable. Nevertheless, The Forsyte Saga contains the section
"Indian Summer of a Forsyte" with some fine crystal decanters of
prose. The elder aristocrat Jolyon invites a young woman music-lover to dine
with him in his mansion. The butler is in attendance in the dining room but no
other company and the fare includes hock, a type of Rhine wine. John Galsworthy
wrote (condensed): The light was just failing when they went back into the
music room. "Play me some Chopin," Jolyon asked. . . . Irene sat down at the piano under the electric lamp
festooned with pearl-grey, and old Jolyon, in an arm-chair whence he could see
her, crossed his legs and drew slowly at his cigar. Then she began . . . He
fell slowly into a trance. She was there, and the hock within him, and the
scent of tobacco; but there, too, was a world of sunshine lingering into
moonlight, and pools with storks upon them, and bluish trees above, glowing
with blurs of wine-red roses, and fields of lavender where milk-white cows were
grazing, and a woman all shadowy, with dark eyes and a white neck, smiled,
holding out her arms; and through air which was like music a star dropped, and
was caught on a cow's horn. He opened his eyes. He felt miraculously sad and happy, as one does, standing
under a lime tree in full honey flower. "Go on -- more Chopin!" She
began to play again. This time the resemblance between her and
"Chopin" struck him. The swaying he had noticed in her walk was in
her playing too, and the Nocturne she had chosen, and the soft darkness of her
eyes, the light on her hair, as of moonlight from a golden moon. Seductive,
yes; but nothing of Delilah in her or in that music. A long blue spiral from
his cigar ascended and dispersed. In his syndicated column of August 5, William F. Buckley,
Jr. complained and lamented that in the drives to uphold the various ethnic
heritages, the white English-speaking ethnic tradition was being shunted aside.
No doubt, the John Galsworthy novels give him comfort during a dark night of
the soul. Buckley wrote this after the wrap-up of the Republican National
Convention on TV and its "rainbow coalition" appearing on stage.
Blacks, Latinos, Asians and women came forth one after another in an effort to
portray the GOOP as "the party of inclusion" and "not just the
white man's party." Bill Buckley must have seen that convention on TV. Again
and again, the cameras panned to the delegates in the galleries and showed
acres upon acres of white male faces wearing 10-gallon-hats. Certainly there is
an Anglo-Saxon cultural heritage and a white Protestant English-speaking ethnic
tradition. But really, Mr. Buckley, how much could those Wasp delegates in
cowboy hats have told us about English Restoration drama or the music of
Benjamin Britten? A recent book receiving much attention is How I
Accidentally Joined the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy (and Found Inner Peace) by
Harry Stein. It purports to list several "tell-tale signs" for
determining if you are "turning to the Right." For example, you hear
someone talking about traditional morality but you do not assume he is a
religious fanatic. You are actually relieved that your daughter plays with
dolls and your son plays with guns. It annoys you that Black History Month
seems to run from February through July. I can think of "signs" he
fails to mention. Pardon me for being the proud paisan, but people with an
ultra low saturation point for Black History never seem to have a high one for
Italian music from the candlelight era or paintings from the Dutch &
Flemish Golden Age or classical Greek drama. So face it, it is a
"tell-tale sign" of Right-Wingedness if you call yourself a
"traditionalist" like God gave you the word but your "cherished
past" contains more singing cowboys than Florentine artists. It is another "tell-tale sign" of
Right-Wingedness if you yank the trigger on the censorial side of the
"Culture Wars," blaming movies and rock songs and video games for
anti-social behavior, youth crime and bad sex. Anybody who has been to the
grand opera knows that Puccini's Tosca did not provoke seduction and stabbing,
torture on a rack or high-leap suicide. Anybody who has been to the art museum
knows that nude Salome carrying the severed head of the Baptist on a silver
platter did not compel schoolgirls to strip naked and chop off heads. But this
means little to "good old days" conservatives who dread anything
stronger than Doris Day movies and Moonlight Bay songs. Harry Stein's book is only mildly negative toward ethnic
diversity but that is becoming a Cardinal Sin to the one-culture New Right. In
the conservative and Buckleyite flagship magazine, the National Review of April
3, 2000, John O'Sullivan's "Advice for George W. Bush" piece called
ethnic diversity "a bastard ideal" and Sullivan complained,
"Under diversity, different ethnic groups fail to melt into one another to
produce an American ethnicity. Each group retains its own culture." Bad,
says he. That is one gripe that George W. Bush will never quote while stumping
for the ethnic, immigrant, and minority "swing votes." If you take the notions of "tradition" and
"heritage" farther back in time than Shirley Temple and Tin Pan
Alley, you arrive at ethnic and cultural pluralism -- French salon paintings or
music by Massenet, Spanish architecture of the Alhambra, the Dresden art
treasures. In contrast, the one-culture Right hugs a "golden
yesteryear" that is pretty recent. Try finding a Venetian artwork or a
Rachmaninoff rhapsody in the Wall Street Journal writings of Judge Robert Bork
or critic/author Michael Medved when they cheerlead for return of 1930s movie
censorship, or other conservative writers when they crucify rock songs in favor
of "Pennies from Heaven." The Wall Street Journal carries brilliant articles on fine
art and classical music. However, all its "Culture Wars" pieces seem
to be written by people who avoid the art museum and the opera house like
hillbillies avoid a bathhouse. Surely, the diamond stickpin mogul of the
carriage-trade era who skimmed the cream of culture must have heirs of the
spirit. Today the Wall Street suits and the country club Republicans who know
some artistic heritage or should know it never seem to get a voice in the
Journal. Are they silent when they should not be? Are you, dear reader? Is ethnic diversity "a bastard ideal?" Better not
let anybody take a magnifying glass the pedigree papers of the one-culture
Right Wing. If their claim to "time-honored tradition" looks doubtful
on the page, it looks even worse in the opera house. The 1953 movie Roman Holiday won an Academy Award for
Audrey Hepburn and was shot on location. Inside Italian palaces and mansions,
however, elaborate camera angles were used to prevent nude statues and
paintings from appearing on screen. You should make it a point, dear reader, to
view some sensual artworks by Correggio and Boucher. Make sure they do not
cause art patrons to collapse into quivering blobs of lust. Then -- no joke --
please write a letter to the Wall Street Journal stating that there are two
sides to the "Culture Wars" and that not everybody thinks the Golden
Age of Film Censorship (Bork's phrase) was the zenith of civilization. Music by Debussy on your CD player can feel enriching when
you look over trading-related papers in the evening. See if it's effect on you
is anything like that of Chopin on Galsworthy's aristocrat at twilight. Do not
assume that somebody else is the tycoon who knows artistic heritage. An awful
lot of "somebody else's" are not. You be the one. Also, do not assume that somebody else is handling
speculative trading in a business-like manner. You be the one. Otherwise, the
short list of those who do gets shorter.
OPTIONS & SPREADS: Sonatas at Twilight & the
Horse Parlor Stock Exchange
At the Track, It Ain't All Guys and Dolls
No Hot Horse Harrys