A crack in the rally

Not as in a plumber’s crack, but a crack none-the-less.   What was surprising about Thursday night/Friday morning’s break in the European and Asian markets was not so much that it happened, but rather than it happened over something as inconsequencial (globally speaking) as Dubai.  Banks have much bigger problems than just one client, and this too would get bailed out if it started to head in an ugly direction.  More interesting is the market’s vulnerability to negative news in general.  This was not the case in the last few months, though did start to appear in the middle of the recent quarterly earnings reporting period.

Unless there’s a follow-through punch from some other bit of unpleasantness, I don’t think Dubai’s problems are going to have much lasting effect.  The market will probably continue to top or consolidate sideways for a while for another up-leg.  If there are blow-out retail numbers from Black Friday, the post-Thanksgiving shopping extravaganza held every year in the U.S., then the shorts will have to soldier on and lick their wounds a while longer.

I made some more money on Friday to add to the bit made Thursday when U.S. markets were closed, but it was nothing to write home (or a blog post) about.  Most markets recovered more than half of their overnight and opening losses.  I’m not going to make much money either way at the moment, since my long positions and short positions are about equally weighted.  But some downside action does give me an opportunity to gracefully exit some of the short equity ETF positions that are under water.  My guess is that Asian markets will bounce back on Monday morning after the relative resilience of the U.S. markets on Friday.

I think commodities look particularly vulnerable here.  The weak U.S. dollar trade is really one-sided – you get a bounce in the dollar (likely with any kind of equity down-tick) and commodities are going to sell off hard.  Gold and silver gapped down significantly on Friday before rallying back part way.  I think that’s symptomatic of the skittishness in this trade.  China’s recent trade behaviour is worth taking note of.   They’ve turned inward and have focused their crop-buying on the domestic market, for example in soybeans but particularly in canola.  This suggests some domestic issues that need to be addressed, and may be a warning shot across the bow that their commodity buying spree is going to slow down for a while.  This would be another negative for these markets.

But as I said, it effect my equity too much in the short run.  Higher volatility will be positive, because my systems key on it.

Have a nice weekend and an interesting Monday.

Cheers,
Allocator
a.k.a. George Parkanyi

TU#234 – something to be thankful for (except in Dubai)

Today is US Thanksgiving.  Happy Thanksgiving to all my US friends! 

And a nod to the markets (that were open) as well.  With much of North America closed for the holiday, I still managed a decent gain today as the Canadian dollar was trading somewhere, and it took a beating.  On the news that Dubai might blow up.  Not as in terrorist blow up;  but as in I-can’t-meet-my-payments blow up.  Who would have thought?  A year or two ago Dubai was the great new happening place – the new jewel of the Middle East, and now its the new Argentina of a decade ago.  That spooked the Asian markets overnight, but really spooked the European markets later on in the day.  The big ones all closed down over 3%.   This sent commodities down, (except for natural gas, go figure), currencies down (against the dollar), and appears to have set up a potentially nasty morning for U.S. Thanksgiving revellers – especially with potentially thin (probably thicker now) trading tomorrow.  It will be worth watching Asia tonight.

I’m covered; still have lots of short ETFs.  To me, equities and oil have have had a decidly soggy tone over the past couple of weeks despite trading near the rally high, and I’ve had the sense that any bad news out of left field could pop this balloon.  This Dubai thing might be it.  Real-estate and unemployment are still major boat anchors, and I don’t think it will take too much more weight (a feather perhaps?) to push this market down again.  This rally has felt surreal all along.  It’s been long, powerful, and persistent, but against a backdrop of such bizarre economic dysfunction.

But, whatever.  We’ll trade what comes.  And speaking of trading …

C-ETF TRADES			Trading Update # 234
#	Trade	Qty	Stock	Symbol		Price		Grp
	Sold	11%	HBP NGas Bull+ ETF	HNU	@	$10.52		ET
Qty % are amount by which shares counts are decreased/increased

I sold the HNU because I missed a signal early last week, and this kind of evens everything out.  A bit more cash in the kitty if we go down, but lots of shares left to get profitable fast if we go up.

It’s interesting that my co-Scouter Steve’s best friend Brian, who flew 777’s for Emirates Airlines and was based in Dubai, left and came back to Canada a couple of weeks ago.  His decision may have been fortuitous in retrospect.  (I’m now trying to recruit him into Scouts; from the cockpit to the fire pit, as it were.)

Again, Happy Thanksgiving and a hearty Du-bye bye …

Cheers,
Allocator
a.k.a. George Parkanyi

TU#233 – a high energy day

On two counts – oil and gas moved my way, and I had 13 Scouts jammed into my living room for “German Night”.

Natural gas had a big day, moving up 40 cents.  The double-long ETF HNU was up 14.5% just todayand I sold a small amount – I have lots left if this is the start of another rally.  I held my nose and went more long crude oil by covering some of the double-long short ETF HOD and buying more of the long ETF HOU.  That worked out as well today, but I’ve got to tell you, I’m really bearish on oil (although that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m right).  I’ll be happier if we can get another profit or two out of the long side and then get more short.

I took a signal to buy DAG, the double-long agricultural commodities ETF, bulking up that position a little as well.

REAP TRADES			Trading Update # 233
#	Trade	Qty	Stock	Symbol		Price		Grp
	Sold	21%	Garmin	GRMN	@	$31.63		1
ETF	Bought	51%	PwrSh DB Ag 2X ETF	DAG	@	$10.31		3
REAP methodology detailed in the blogroll under “My Portfolio”
Qty % are amount by which shares counts are decreased/increased
C-ETF TRADES			Trading Update # 231
#	Trade	Qty	Stock	Symbol		Price		Grp
	Sold	9%	HBP NGas Bull+ ETF	HNU	@	$9.91		ET
	Sold	25%	HBP CrOil Bear+ ETF	HOD	@	$9.55		ET
	Bought	42%	HBP CrOil Bull+ ETF	HOU	@	$9.16		ET

A couple of days ago my natural gas position was down 28%, today it’s down only 6.9%.  And I nicked my last and largest buy a dime off the bottom at $8.60.  I fortuitously piled in right at the bottom the last time around as well in September, and that had a lot to do with the robust recovery of the account.  Another rally like the September one and this gas trade, and the portfolio, will quickly become very profitable.   Now if I could only nick the tops.

As it stands the commodity ETF portfolio has held up very well through NG’s decline from $17 to $8.50.  I am extremely pleased with the adjustments I made to the program a while back, as it’s defensiveness has improved significantly.  If not for the algorithm mistake in the first month (started back in late June), that built up early losses, I’d be ahead by now.  I’ve been doing a lot of testing in the past couple of weeks, and my goal of successfully emulating a market-maker operation is within sight.  I have two main approaches, and variations of each are all very profitable in testing.  However one is a little less profitable but plays much better defence, and is therefore safer.  This is the current C-ETF program with a modified trade-sizing algorithm.  It can survive most of the huge declines like we saw in 2008 and early 2009, but not quite total implosions like the oil collapse of 2008 or the catastrophic losses on the more aggressive leveraged short ETFs.  Therefore diversification (and not starting the long side when oil is at $150 or gold at $1200) is still important.

The new system I’m just simply going to call PRES – Progressive REversal Scaling.  It systematically provides entry and exit set-ups and signals, and trade sizing.  It works best with more volatile stocks and ETFs, and the more sideways/range-bound the action the better.    But it still works with trending markets as long as there is some jiggle to them along the way.

“German Night” was fun.  It was at my house but hosted by Scout Alexander C, who lived in Berlin for a year before his family returned to Canada and he re-joined our troop again last year.  I cooked up some bratwursts on the barbecue that we then planted in mini-buns, to do it the German way, and Alexander’s mother Mary brought absolutely delicious home-made pretzels and potato salad.  Scouter Steve brought root beer (we can’t do the real thing with 11-13 year-olds) and collectively we scrounged enough beer steins to at least make it all look Bavarian.  I also put on some alpine/polka music for a while, and then a travel video on the region where the Mosul and Rhine rivers meet.  Alexander did a very concise and interesting presentation on the history of Germany, and brought all sorts of interesting artifacts and souvenirs, including million-mark notes of the great inflation of the 1920’s, Nazi Reichmarks, and pieces of the Berlin wall.   He even wore lederhosen, but these were apparently problematic in bathroom situations, and Alexander was pretty-much dancing back and forth as he was waiting for his mother to pick him up at the end of the night.

And until the next time …

Prosit!
Allocator
a.k.a. George Parkanyi

TU#232 – thoughts on Japan and Spain

TRADING UPDATE

Not all that much was resolved in today’s trade, though the account equity continued to recover with a modest gain, mostly from the Canadian dollar taking a break. The S&P500, while threatening to break lower earlier on, eased into the close with a modest 3-or-so point loss. Natural gas looked like it was going to get pummeled, and actually did at the opening, but rallied to close even higher today than yesterday. Oil was moderately down while gold was strong at the close after a tepid opening. Silver followed suit. So the dollar limbo story is still there – “how lo-o-o-w can you go?” – but I think a rally is coming soon, to the detriment of the so-called “risk trade”, and to commodities, especially oil.  All indications are that there’s plenty of  inventory out there, so these loftyish prices are more financially driven (store of value) than consumption driven.

Today’s trading was just tidying up the buy side of yesterday’s REAP C-ETF sell trade. The proceeds from EDZ were rolled into an opening position in Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (GMCR).   Coffee (JO), sugar (SGG), cows (COW); anyone see a theme here?

REAP TRADES			Trading Update # 232
#	Trade	Qty	Stock	Symbol		Price		Grp
	Bought	100%	Green Mountain Coffee	GMCR	@	$64.94		5
REAP methodology detailed in the blogroll under “My Portfolio”
Qty % are amount by which shares counts are decreased/increased

Two things have come onto my radar lately that I consider to be noteworthy, and bearish. The Japanese stock market has gone down 4 weeks in a row while other markets have been going the other way. The Japanese government itself used the “D”-word in some announcement yesterday on the state of their economy for the first time in something like 3 years. (OK, OK, “D” stands for “deflation”.) And Spain has a staggering (at least in Euro-zone terms) 20% unemployment rate. In the past, countries with those kinds of problems could devalue their currency, but without that option and with this level of unemployment, how does that bode for Spain and the cohesion of the European Community? In the late 90’s I was doing business in Argentina when they had their peso pegged to the US dollar, which incredibly strong at the time. You could choose either pesos or dollars at the ATM, and the two were interchangeable and accepted equally everywhere. Then the Asian crisis hit and the Latin American economies followed suit with a spectacular nose-dive. Brazil devalued their currency overnight by 30% against the US dollar, and Argentina was suddenly getting killed economically as their exports evaporated. Their peg to the dollar was beyond painful and completely unsustainable, and eventually they had to abandon it in the midst of a terrible recession. Now fast-forward to 2009 and I’m wondering if Spain is in the same situation. Let’s say it had to opt out of the EC and the Euro; what dominoes would that set off?

Both of the developments I’ve mentioned above I think are symptoms of deflation. I don’t think we’re out of the woods yet by far. And by the way, have a nice week-end.

Cheers,
Allocator
a.k.a. George Parkanyi

TU#231 – a eureka moment

Lately I’ve been doing on a lot of analysis and testing of reversal systems using progressive scaling approaches.  Basically this translates to averaging down safely and then averaging out of the position into the rise.   The more wiggles the market does, the more profitable this becomes.   You can vary price increments and trade size, and different combinations produce different returns.  With enough samples, you can optimize these parameters to get a “good enough” rate of return in relation to a certain drawdown risk.    The results with more volatile instruments like leveraged ETFs are pretty kick-ass, as long as you don’t start averaging down after steep runups.  (Best are markets that are already beaten up but still have a volatile character.  Natural gas is absolutely in the sweet-spot right now, and I think ags are too.)  My C-ETF program is one implementation of this approach.   And the reason why I went down this path is because I asked myself the questions “why is it that specialist firms, who are always on the other side of a trend as market-makers, are so profitable”, and “can I emulate that?”

Anyway, today at lunch I was looking at the market action, and the triple-short emerging markets ETF (EDZ) had made a nice bounce right after I bought a relatively big bite of it two days ago.  (The S&P500 was down 15 points today.)  All of my short equity ETFs are scraping along the bottom after the big post-March rally.  They could go lower of course but they’re in the right general area for a decent pullback in the equity markets.  (This is the profile I just mentioned for the kind of market that you would want to start a progressive reversal system on – one that’s been on the wrong end of big move for a long time.)  And then it hit me. Make them my wild-card securities in the REAP portfolios, and slowly trade out of the jam like EDZ seems to be doing.  When I checked their charts, there were quite a few opportunities to sell down the positions (on rallies) even as the market was rising.  REAP was not nimble enough to catch many of those – this is.  So that’s how I think I can get out gracefully, and if the market pulls back a couple of hundred points, even profitably.

EDZ actually signalled today, so I was able to sell off a little bit (exactly the kind of action I’ve just been talking about).  And, I got to buy a nice chunk of natural gas, to bring that position almost to the same size it was at the last low in September.  If I have to, I’ll scale the whole C-ETF account into natural gas, and it would have to go a heck of a lot lower to suck up all those resources.  I think gas is in a real sweet-spot, and in fact the ETF rallied to $8.93 after I bought in at $8.60.  That’s not to pat myself on the back (with a 35% drawdown since 2007 I’m still a long way from that), just the illustrate the volatility and potential of this particular market.

 

REAP TRADES			Trading Update # 231
#	Trade	Qty	Stock	Symbol		Price		Grp
	Sold	14%	Drx EMkt Bear 3X ETF	EDZ	@	$5.54		5
REAP methodology detailed in the blogroll under “My Portfolio”
Qty % are amount by which shares counts are decreased/increased
C-ETF TRADES			Trading Update # 231
#	Trade	Qty	Stock	Symbol		Price		Grp
	Bought	32%	HBP NGas Bull+ ETF	HNU	@	$8.60		ET
Qty % are amount by which shares counts are decreased/increased

The light-bulb went on today, but if you hear a loud “pop” ….. 

C heers,
Allocator
a.k.a. George Parkanyi

TU#230 – developing the bovine look

Long ago when I worked at Telesat Canada, I became sales manager for government accounts.  My boss at the time, Paul B explained it all to me this way.  “When you’re dealing with government, the first thing you need to do is to develop your bovine look. Never get excited. If they tell you they’re giving you a million dollar contract, just nod and keep it vacant.  If they tell you you’re going to lose a  million dollar contract … just nod and keep it vacant.   Because if anything happens at all, it’s going to happen over a very very long time.”  I work in government now, but that’s not why I’ve got the bovine look.  I’ve been carrying a crap-load of short ETFs on the wrong side of the market for 8 months, my equity is deflating slowly like some forgotten party balloon, and any kind of breakthrough success seems light-years away.

So in the interest of consistency and the spirit of plowing good money into bad, I capped yesterday’s flurry of trading by further shorting gold shares and the Russell 2000 (left-over trades from yesterday’s signals).

REAP TRADES			Trading Update # 230
#	Trade	Qty	Stock	Symbol		Price		Grp
	Bought	46%	ProSh UlSht Rus2000 ETF	SKK	@	$22.09		3
REAP methodology detailed in the blogroll under “My Portfolio”
Qty % are amount by which shares counts are decreased/increased
C-ETF TRADES			Trading Update # 230
#	Trade	Qty	Stock	Symbol		Price		Grp
	Bought	88%	HBP GoldSh Bear+ ETF	HGD	@	$4.05		ET
Qty % are amount by which shares counts are decreased/increased

My dilemma is that as soon as I sell off the short positions, the market will immediately plummet 200 points.  This is as certain as sunrise, the tides, death, and taxes.  (So if anyone wants to buy a whack-load of put options and underwrite my losses, I’m listening.) 

I’ve got to tell you, I’ve been on the wrong end of a lot of sweeping one-way moves over the past almost three years – the market rally in 2007, the commodities run-up in 2008, the commodities collapse in 2008 (I’m still in that one with natural gas), the stock market collapse of 2007-2009, the stock market rally of 2009, and the Canadian dollar rally.  I’m amazed I have as much equity left as I do.

Meanwhile, “ moo” …

Cheers,
Allocator
a.k.a. George Parkanyi

TU#229 – swamped with trades

All hell broke loose today as 7 ETFs gave signals, and much of it was selling into the big moves of the last couple of sessions.  Surprisingly, I wasn’t manhandled by the market all that badly – it was a bit more of the slow hemhorraging.  REAP didn’t do all that great because of all the short positions, but the commodity ETF portfolio bounced back to compensate, with decent moves in natural gas, gold shares, and the ag ETF.

 

REAP TRADES			Trading Update # 229
#	Trade	Qty	Stock	Symbol		Price		Grp
312	Sold	59%	ProSh Ult RlEst ETF	URE	@	$6.26		4
312	Bought	31%	ProSh UlSht Silver ETF	ZSL	@	$4.27		4
ETF	Sold	41%	ProSh Ult RlEst ETF	URE	@	$6.26		4
ETF	Sold	100%	ProSh Ultra Silver ETF	AGQ	@	$67.65		1
	Bought	11%	ProSh UlSht QQQ ETF	QID	@	$20.47		1
ETF	Sold	33%	PwrSh DB Ag 2X ETF	DAG	@	$10.60		3
ETF	Bought	32%	Drx EMkt Bear 3X ETF	EDZ	@	$5.13		5
	Sold	22%	MkVec Gold Mng ETF	GDX	@	$51.25		5
REAP methodology detailed in the blogroll under “My Portfolio”
Qty % are amount by which shares counts are decreased/increased
C-ETF TRADES			Trading Update # 229
#	Trade	Qty	Stock	Symbol		Price		Grp
	Sold	35%	HBP DJIA Ag Bull+ ETF	HAU	@	$17.64		ET
	Sold	51%	HBP GoldSh Bull+ ETF	HGU	@	$15.14		ET
Qty % are amount by which shares counts are decreased/increased

Quite the free-for-all, and that’s not even done –  as I couldn’t squeeze in a couple of trades at the close (generally work is my higher priority) and they’re still queued up for tomorrow.

This market is highly treacherous in the sense that no-one knows for sure how much more money there is sloshing around out there to chase stocks that yield far more than bank paper, and are more desirable than bonds because of low interest rates and distrust of debt.  You would normally expect a serious correction at some point after this much of a run, but it is really hard to get a sense of when it will run out of steam.  The other negative is that any surprise bad news out of left field still has the power to spook the market violently because of recent memory.  So that translates to roughly equal danger for both the long and short side.  Right now my portfolio bias is back to slightly net short by 5.6%.

My equity is grinding down because I made the mistake of beefing up the short side a couple of months ago and that has set me back.  Had I left things the way they were, the long side profits on stocks I sold too soon at the time would have mitigated or even prevented a good part of this recent drawdown.  But it is what it is.  I’m neither getting agressively long, nor lifting my shorts right now (sorry about the visual), because this thing could go dramatically either way.

Cheers,
Allocator
a.k.a. George Parkanyi

TU#228 – stepping on the gas

Today the C-ETF program bought more natural gas as gas again continues to bang out new lows – at least on the current near contract it is. The double-long ETF (TSX:HNU) is a bit higher from where I made my large bottom-picking purchase at the beginning of the September rally – and what was captured in that rally has mostly stuck. Then the C-ETF porftfolio was down 26% in equity, now it’s down “only” 12%, in relatively better shape.

 

C-ETF TRADES			Trading Update # 228
#	Trade	Qty	Stock	Symbol		Price		Grp
	Bought	27%	HBP NGas Bull+ ETF	HNU	@	$9.36		ET
Qty % are amount by which shares counts are decreased/increased

I’ve been keeping my averaging purchases modest on this scale down, but now I’m ready to start taking larger bites if and as I get buy signals – even if it means cannibalizing the other positions. The rationale is the same as before. Even though there may be lots of gas in storage right now, what counts is what comes out at the spigot. The energy in the gas still has economic value, and companies are not going to give it away for free, or extract it for too long below their cost of production. And at some point being compellingly cheap and relatively clean-burning is going generate demand.

The main worry here is that the near contract price is still at just under $4.40 per million British thermal units. At the last bottom it dipped under $3. So although the ETF is getting close to where it last bottomed, the commodity hasn’t yet, to the tune of 40% or so. That means the position could still go substantially lower before prices again get truly desperate and irresistable. In the early part of the decade I remember buying natural contracts at $2.40/MMBtu.

But in mind slowly building a larger and larger position in this price range will pay off with good profits down the road when NG next spikes. It just takes cash and patience.

Cheers,

Allocator
a.k.a. George Parkanyi

TU#227 – no opinion

At least that’s what my portfolio weighting would suggest.  With a .6% net-long bias, hardly am I a raging bull, nor a rabid bear.  It’s more like “d-o-o-o-o-o-h! … I can’t make up my mind!”  That’s what we’ve come to with today’s REAP embedded ETF trade.

REAP TRADES			Trading Update # 227
#	Trade	Qty	Stock	Symbol		Price		Grp
	Sold	100%	CME Group	CME	@	$314.92		5
ETF	Bought	28%	Drx EMkt Bear 3X ETF	EDZ	@	$5.55		5
REAP methodology detailed in the blogroll under “My Portfolio”
Qty % are amount by which shares counts are decreased/increased

System says! -  buy emerging market short ETFs!  So, that’s what was bought.  To fund it I sold CME, the stock that was most up at the time in Group 5.   Immediately after buying at $5.55 EDZ slide to $5.52, and I thought “Here we go again”.  But markets softened through the day with the S&P500 eventually closing down 11.3 points, and EDZ moved smartly higher to $5.77.  Just as well, as right now it is fully 9.0% of the total REAP portfolio, slightly behind the Dow short ETF DXD which is 9.2%.  With a couple of back-to-back C-ETF signalled trades this week, I basically doubled the EDZ position at prices below today’s close, so overall the position is still only down 8.8% despite the price dropping from $7.40 to $5.48 in November’s straight up equity rally.  If the S&P500 pulls back to the 50-day moving average trendline even, about 25 points below, this position would likely go profitable, as it is triple-leveraged, and emerging markets are more volatile than the S&P500.

Oil is looking weak, natural gas has hit 15 new intra-day lows out of 16 in this correction, silver is struggling having gone nowhere since mid-September, and even gold looks like it may be done here.  (You’d need balls of steel to buy that chart – at least a value guy like me would.)  If we correct here, the short equity ETFs will do well, but all my commodity stuff will turn to crap for a while.  If I had to pick one directional trade right now I would short oil – and that is why it will probably soar $3 tomorrow.

Tomorrow I have to buy more natural gas.  I also had C-ETF signals to buy the oil ETF and sell the short oil ETF, but they’re both almost at the same prices as the last trades and it’s not really worth doubling my long exposure risk without being paid for it with a short-side profit or a cheaper long-side buy.  (OK, it’s my roundabout way of shorting oil after all (i.e. holding off getting more long until lower prices), so oil will soar $3 tomorrow).

With a totally neutral portfolio weighting here, I’m not quite sure how I’m going to make money.  Some chop would probably help, so, time to conjure up some wind and waves…

Cheers,
Allocator
a.k.a. George Parkanyi

At the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier covered in red was quite a site to see, almost completely buried in the little red poppy pins that everyone wears leading up to Remembrance Day in Canada every year. Legionnaires and veterans organizations distribute them to fundraise for Veterans. In the bright sunshine of a crisp and beautiful November 11th morning, they truly looked like the real thing. Why November 11th? Armistice Day in 1918, the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, when World War I finally ended. It is at this moment every year that we all stand for one minute of silence to remember those that gave their lives. And the poppy is now the powerful and widely recognized symbol of Remembrance immortalized by John McCrea’s beautiful poem “In Flanders Fields”

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Our poppies were on that tomb. Shortly after the final wreath was laid, and before the general public was allowed back onto Confederation Square, each of us of the 63rd Ottawa Scout Troop stepped up, one at a time, laid our poppy on the tomb and saluted, as had the military personnel before us. The kids looked great doing it too, each having their own special moment at ground zero of the Remembrance Day ceremony. When we laid down our poppies, there was just a smattering of them, like the first fall leaves. After the public was done, the Unknown Soldier was warmly shrouded in both poppies and love.

Before that we started the morning by meeting at our agreed staging point, where, in short order, we invested 3 Scouts - Nicholas M, Dylan, and William - who had missed investiture night the week before. (H1N1 is going around the city and many were off sick.) I told them it was a “field promotion”, and had them recite the law, promise, and motto directly under the statue of a large bear on the Sparks Street mall. As official Scouts, they then eagerly jumped in with the others to distribute programs to the crowd. This is part of our role in the ceremonies every year.

After exhausting our supply of programs, we crossed the security cordon for the last time and took our place on Confederation Square, about 30 feet from where the Prime Minister, the Governor-General, and Prince Charles, currently visiting Ottawa, would take their place before the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier during the formal part of the ceremony. After the minute of silence, the 21-gun salute, anthems, a couple of commemoration speeches including a beautiful one by a local rabbi, came the laying of the wreaths.

When I had arrived at 9:30 AM two of my more enterprising Scouts Alexander and James were already across the street in the square, and had somehow arranged themselves to be involved in the wreath-laying, despite not actually being in the plan. So throughout the ceremonies they stayed in a separate area from the rest of us amongst all sorts of dignitaries, with the officially-selected Scouts. As it turns out, it worked out. Although two other Scouts laid the wreath for Scouts Canada, Alexander somehow ended up laying the wreath for the Jewish National Congress, and James a left-over wreath from an organization whose representative failed to show. Now these two are always scheming something, and to their credit, I don’t know how they did it, but they ended up hob-nobbing with the Mayor of Ottawa Larry O’Brian, the leader of the New Democratic Party Jack Layton, and a number of foreign ambassadors. Alexander even got a wink from the Prince of Wales. It so reminded me of the Woody Allen movie Zelig, where the main character keeps turning up fortuitously in the middle of major historic events. (This device was also later used in Forrest Gump.) At our luncheon afterwards at Eggspectation (all eggs, all the time) I turned to Alexander and James and dubbed them Zelig 1 and Zelig 2.

Others in our party who attended were Scouter Steve, his airline-pilot friend Brian, his ex-boss Scouter Cal with daughter Erin, Scouts Tyler, Brandon, and Nicholas P (my son) and Venturer Thomas P (also my son). It was a very memorable Remembrance Day on many levels.

Cheers,
Allocator
a.k.a. George Parkanyi