Hypostomus' proposterous surreal-time journal

Quote from hypostomus:

We frequently encounter patients here who have delusions that they can "beat the market." The staff opinion is that this is ordinarily a harmless fantasy, if one does not indulge it excessively.

Arthur (Art) Deco, M.D.
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Our exchange has studied your letter about the patients that caused an unprecedented fluctuation in the market yesterday.

As you can see on today's financial news, this event was truly an unpleasant one to all traders and our exchange.

Therefore you are requested to provide an early warning report on monthly basis to let us know the potential schedule of what similar events would be happened in the upcoming month.

Your co-operation would be highly appreciated.

Elit Trade
CEO


 
The director of this institution has instructed me to have no further comment on the matter. Should you have any additional questions, please feel free to contact our legal counsel, the firm of Boner Stickham and Schrunck. As they also represent the Specialist industry, they are well qualified to reply to any concerns you may have. Good day. Arthur (Art) Deco, M.D.
 
Quote from hypostomus:

We regret to inform you that yesterday's series of posts under the pseudonym "Hypostomus" were the ravings of one of our more unstable and erratic patients here. Somehow over the past few weeks he had managed to pirate the password of a staff member who had not used his ET account for many months, and to log on as that staff member. Up until yesterday afternoon that patient had internet access in our day room on account of prior good behavior, which was suspiciously good in hindsight.

As best we can surmise, he was "tongueing" his meds, desperate to reachieve the fast-paced satisfactions of a manic high. He will trouble you no more, as we have placed him under the strictist supervision. The ET member whose identity he highjacked looked at the market, and observed that no possible harm could have come to anyone who unwisely followed the posted advice, as no trade was triggered by the alleged "rules." Therefore this institution bears no liability for that patient's acts. Frankly, we think it should have been perfectly obvious to anyone with good sense that the poster was a madman, and that no person of good judgment could have been deceived.

As an aside, we frequently encounter patients here who have delusions that they can "beat the market." The staff opinion is that this is ordinarily a harmless fantasy, if one does not indulge it excessively.

Good day to you. Arthur (Art) Deco, M.D.
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This letter was indeed written by Art Deco. This is readily discerned by his generous use of bold and clean outlines. If I am not mistaken, he is French in origin. Perhaps he already uses the previously mentioned herbal supplement?
 
Quote from hypostomus:

The director of this institution has instructed me to have no further comment on the matter. Should you have any additional questions, please feel free to contact our legal counsel, the firm of Boner Stickham and Schrunck. As they also represent the Specialist industry, they are well qualified to reply to any concerns you may have. Good day. Arthur (Art) Deco, M.D.
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Must be nice to have a mechanical trading system and not have to watch the markets minute to minute like some of us.

I don't recall this bizarre sense of humor over on SI (Daytrading Fundamentals).

PS Do you only get drunk at night or are the patients allowed to abuse the stuff during the day?

PPS Is there a correlation between amount consumed and the profitability (loss) for a given trading day? What was your sample size of patients/traders? What's the mean number of drinks per day? Standard deviation?

Dave
 
Thank you for the complement on my writing style, of which I think I am fully justified in being proud. Indeed , my maternal great-grandmother was French, of the family name Orme. As you know, we physicians are schooled to write and to communicate quite clearly. But I am not responding because of your kind comment, but because of an extraordinary development which has only immediately transpired.

The orderly responsible for the delusional patient in question observed that he had ripped a hangnail, and had written in his own blood on the sheet the following cryptic (or perhaps meaningless) combination of characters:

NQ 10/21 L/1421/1413/1434 S/1407/1414.5/1394

He asked the patient what the inscription meant, but as he is experiencing our strictest allowed regime of restraint, he was unable to respond save with a roll of the eyes and a long drawn out moan. (I assure you, our methods may seem extreme to a non-professional, but this IS a public institution).

In any event, said orderly copied the characters and brought them to my attention. Wishing nothing more to do with this affair, I took it to my supervisor, the Director of the Institution. As it happened, the Director Emeritus (long since retired) was in the current Director's office on a consultation today. I was about to be dismissed, when Dr. Emeritus (as I shall call him) asked to see the inscription. He immediately leapt to his feet, whirled the Director's monitor around, much to the Director's astonishment, logged on to the internet, and consulted today's prices on "NQ", which I take to be some kind of ultra-risky vehicle for fiscally irresponsible speculation.

Dr. Emeritus turned ashen. "Do you realize", he said, "that those numbers scrawled out in that poor man's own blood represent a system for trading the morning action in the NASDAQ 100 future? Anyone using those numbers this morning in his trading would have avoided the whipsaws which are typical of a newsless day such as today!"

What that means, translated into words which a non-trading layman can understand, Dr. Emeritus patiently informed us, is as follows: "Take a long position in the current contract of NQ if the price exceeds 1421, set a stop loss at 1413.5, and take profits at 1434." A similar interpretation applies to the remainder of the message as to what he referred to as "shorts", a most peculiar word in this context, if you ask me.

I assume that Dr. Emeritus knows whereof he speaks, as he is reputed to have become quite wealthy in his retirement years, and he certainly didn't achieve that on a retired civil servant's salary. I would not know myself, as I am very suspect of futures trading, because of the shady informercials promoting it which on occasion I am given to see on the television.

In any event, this institution is much embarrased, that, in spite of following our standard procedures, a potentially dangerous patient could achieve contact with the outside world undiscovered for so long. Therefore I have been asked to pass this information on to you for whatever it may mean to you.

As ever, I am yr. obdt. svt, Arthur (Art) Deco, M.D.
 
My you people do have such unusual and colorful names. Is yours by any chance Viet-Namese? That is the only inference I can draw in attempting to pronounce it. I posed your question to our Dr. Emeritus (currently in retirement), as he has some knowledge of the peculiarly aberrant psychology of non-professional traders.

He laughed and said, in his typically colloquial and idiomatic manner, "I should know, I are one." He said to inform you, with all the courtesy due you as an uninformed layman, that it is not required to suffer from mild alcohol poisoning in order to trade effectively. There is a condition quaintly referred to in the literature on the subject as a "dry drunk" which is equally efficatious, if I may use that word in this disturbing context. I hope this helps.

In answer to your other question, and after having our rather imposing IT lady (who also doubles as our resident evening disciplinarian for particularly intransigeant patients) check our communications logs, we are quite confident that this person cannot have posted elsewhere.

A bientot, Arthur (Art) Deco, M.D.
 
Dr. Deco,

Please be advised that you patient's cryptic scrawl was indeed quite useful. Some of our brethren regularly use hieroglyphic-quality pronouncements written by gurus who are of reptilian origin. The only curiosity here is the utter lack of prevarication. This is completely foreign in our environment, and I would ask that you kindly instruct your patient (for whom you are responsible, might I add) to refrain from dangerously deviating in this direction. Otherwise, eyebrows will be raised and, in due course, asses will be kicked. It is a dangerous precedent and not one upon which we look too kindly. Dr. Deco, consider yourself advised. Therefore, please govern yourself, and those in your care, accordingly.

P.S. As a physician, you are no doubt familiar with Latin. Is not the word "guru" derived from the term "snake with two heads?"
 
Quote from hypostomus:

My you people do have such unusual and colorful names. Is yours by any chance Viet-Namese? That is the only inference I can draw in attempting to pronounce it. I posed your question to our Dr. Emeritus (currently in retirement), as he has some knowledge of the peculiarly aberrant psychology of non-professional traders.

He laughed and said, in his typically colloquial and idiomatic manner, "I should know, I are one." He said to inform you, with all the courtesy due you as an uninformed layman, that it is not required to suffer from mild alcohol poisoning in order to trade effectively. There is a condition quaintly referred to in the literature on the subject as a "dry drunk" which is equally efficatious, if I may use that word in this disturbing context. I hope this helps.

In answer to your other question, and after having our rather imposing IT lady (who also doubles as our resident evening disciplinarian for particularly intransigeant patients) check our communications logs, we are quite confident that this person cannot have posted elsewhere.

A bientot, Arthur (Art) Deco, M.D.
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How on earth can you trade wearing a straight jacket? The keyboard has to be unreachable ...

Tell Dr. Emeritus to come out of retirement and have a few drinks .... while we wait for earnings to continue to pour out.
 
Please excuse my outburst of unseemly emotion, but curse you for a precognitor! No sooner had I read your presumably well-intentioned message, that I was informed by my Director that I am to devote my full professional attention to this unfortunately deluded patient until the mystery of his behavior is fully unearthed.

I had not wished to disconcert you, so I was not completely candid with you about his activities in our last correspondence. Upon querrying all of the staff with whom he was in routine contact, we discovered a most unseemly conspiracy (even for a state institution). A naive young lady who volunteers her services here (I believe they call them "candy stripers"?, how odd) blurted out in tears that the patient in question had developed an inappropriate and perhaps even physical intimacy with the third shift charge nurse, whom I shall refer to discretely as Nurse "Dominica" (she is the elder sister of our IT lady).

Apparently, in exchange for using his internet skills to help Nurse Dominica set up an illicit, if obscenely profitable, internet activity, she in turn had helped him to obtain a subscription to an unscrupulous so-called "real-time charting" service (how can that be?), and even more insidiously, to open a "trading" account with a thoroughly dispreputable internet securities broker.

I am given to understand that thereby one can speculate irresponsibly and at great financial risk (even trading multiple times each day, and even at night) in what are designated by our Government to be "unregulated financial instruments". Inexplicably (and presumably totally randomly), this patient made money! In my experience he is truly a six-sigma-plus specimen of psychotic disturbance. Needless to say we are putting an end to this whole sordid episode. He is scheduled for Electro-Convulsive Therapy at 9:30 AM Eastern time tomorrow. The apparatus has been out of commision since the power went out to the entire East coast when last we used it, an unfortunate coincidence which caused the superstitious among the janitorial staff to cross themseves.

Ever at your service, Arthur (Art) Deco, M.D.
 
Unfortunately, Dr. Emeritus has gone corpus dilecti, as they say. He hurriedly left the premises, reportedly after practically ripping the day room computer out of the wall. He was last seen hurling it into the trunk of his car, muttering something that sounded to the gardener like "Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant! Go ahead and fry the little c**k s****r!" (good breeding does not allow me to render the full expression). If I see Dr. Emeritus again I surely will extend to him your gracious invitation.

As ever, I am Arthur (Art) Deco, M.D.
 
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