HotShot Blog

Today was a good day for me. So good that I had to blog about it.

Nothing major happened, but a lot of little things went well today. I started off by having a good day in LORD. My character was able to defeat a player above me and pick up a huge chunk of experience points. In addition, I got a 24 gem castle event and increased my charm by 6 points. The only thing that could have made it better was a bank double, but my luck was good even without it.

Later, a group of third year Ph.D. students and I had lunch with our program director. He wanted feedback on how the first two years were structured. He also told us we need to propose our dissertations by January or February at the latest, which means I will have to nail down a topic very soon.

Lunch was excellent. I had my favorite, chicken parmesan. It was quite tasty and had a slight twist to it. The chicken was covered in a layer of eggplant on which the cheese rested. The eggplant gave it an added meaty flavor.

The best event of the day came in the afternoon. I finally finished coding up some empirical work and the preliminary results were great. My paper predicts that momentum traders earn better returns when volatility is low. Using portfolio holdings data from mutual funds, I found today that the average return on funds that use momentum strategies is strongly negatively correlated with market volatility. The result is exactly what I wanted, and helps out a lot with my paper.

To top it off, I found this pleasant news. An ABC News/WaPo poll found that a solid majority of Americans want Democrats to regain power next year. According to the poll, registered voters would vote 52% to 37% for a Democrat over a Republican for Congress. This is a big deal. These generic polls do actually predict votes close to the election. Of course a lot can happen between now and a year from now, but the fact is that Democrats now have majority support of the country. This is something that we have not seen since the Clinton era.