Trading For All the Money in the World

Sunday, August 30 2009

It is 3am in the morning and I still can't sleep.  The frightening experience and every grim outcome that could have potentially taken place during that incident constantly replays itself over and over in my head and closing my eyes only makes the mental images that much clearer.  I am not quite sure how to absorb and reflect on the situation, but I know one thing is for certain, I'm truly happy that we are alive.

This past Saturday afternoon I rented a Harley for the day for my girlfriend and I to escape the scorching heat of the South Bay and head towards the cool breezes of the coastline in Half Moon Bay.  This was our second time renting a Harley from Mark's Cycle shop down the street from our home, so it was fairly easy to setup the reservation, pick up the bike, and be off on our way and that is exactly what we did.

We soon found ourselves on the freeway flying about 75mph north on the 280.  The sky couldn't be any more clear and blue.  Traffic conditions were moderately light and we were in such a lively mood to be riding for the first time in a great while, almost one year exactly based on our last rental log date.   Every so often we would see another cruiser fly by coming from the opposite direction and we would occasionally exchange our waves and nods.  The day started out perfect for a weekend ride.  This was all up until I the bike started acting acutely different.

Once we finally reached a good cruising speed on the freeway, something just didn't feel right.  It didn't feel like I was taking the bike for a ride, but in actuality, the total opposite; the bike was riding me.  Every so often, I would feel the bike wobble a bit or gradually pull me to the left and right.  I knew there was something wrong, but I figured it must be the wind or maybe just the characteristics of this Soft Tail Classic that I wasn't quite familiar with.  After all, this was the first time I ever rode this particular model Harley so I didn't take much caution to the signals the bike was giving to me.

As we continued to cruise down the freeway, the wobbling and pulling started to get progressively worse.  This time the bike started to fish tail ever so slightly.  At 75mph this strange movement started to scare the hell out of me so I immediately down shifted the bike a gear in hopes that the strange swinging motion would subside, but it only seemed to aggravate the movements even more; thus, suddenly the bike began fishtailing violently.  I locked my arms and griped the bars as tight as I could both in response to the alarming fright as well as trying to fight the bikes harrowing movements, but obviously the effort didn't prove much to help the situation of cars honking, swerving and veering off the lanes around us.  We soon found ourselves fishtailing and swerving uncontrollably in between lanes. Two things immediately came to my mind at that very moment.  One, head straight for the shoulder and two, pray to God that we were still on the bike when we finally got there.

Suffice to say, we both made it to the shoulder of the freeway in one piece despite plowing through some shrubs and getting some tiny nicks and scratches after dumping the bike into the dirt.  Not to mention that we walked away clean wearing nothing but jeans, white tees and our open faced Ed Hardy helmets.  Like all accidents, it happened so fast that all we remembered was getting up from the ground, brushing off the dirt from our clothes, and pinching each other to make sure we weren't just dreaming.  It seemed so surreal at the moment.

Now that I finally placed my thoughts to the pen, I feel it gave me a chance to truly breathe in and understand everything that had happened today.  I'm just grateful period.  Grateful that we are both alive and well.  Not to sound so cliche-ish, but life is such a wondrous mystery.  When all seemed helpless and hopeless, by whatever forces in this world a miraculous path to safety was presented to us.  Because of my deficiency in creative writing I can't explain the feelings and emotions that I felt and feel at this very moment.  Like I said, I'm just happy to be alive.   It is such a beautiful feeling to realize how so little we really need in this life to truly feel wonderfully happy.   That I wouldn't trade for all the money in the world...

What Platform Do You Use?

Time and time again I get the same question, "What is the best platform to use?" Personally, I use Etrade because I feel they do a great job in tying together all my financial assets, not to mention I can use any ATM in the world for free. However, the real answer is, "It depends." I came across a really good article from Barron's that had a good ranking chart depending on your style of trading.  Here you go!

Data courtesy of Barrons