RobbieG

SOPROD are the only ones I know of. The process is very tricky and very expensive. They are also phasing them out. There won't be any more made there for a while so if you want one you should grab it soon. http://www.wiegandwatches.com/index.php?ac...19ba59c4e3f5956

I meant to ask you Laz, where did you score those cufflinks?

I lived in Hawaii in the 80's. It is always a good idea to go there. The most magical journey in nature you might ever have. Just amazing. Make sure to make a stop on Oahu and say hello to Lani though... On Maui go up to the top of the crater and check out the Iao Needle. And yes, do go out to Hana for an overnight. Vegas is my second favorite place to travel in the US. The biggest little city in America. If you love to eat like we do, the restaurants alone are a reason to go. Gambling is not even a reason to go there anymore as the city has so much more to offer now. It is like New York but more compact and the weather is better for more months of the year. If I didn't need to be on EST for trading reasons right now I would live full time in our new place at City Center when it is finished. No possesions besides a weeks worth of clothes and shoes and the watch collection is my ultimate goal. Room service and maid service for the rest if my life. Howard Hughes had the right idea. So go out to eat a lot if in Vegas. I'm a beef guy so you might try some of my favorites: SW Steakhouse at Stevie Wynn's new joint. Emeril's Delmonico Steakhouse. And check out the Burger Bar at Mandalay Place for a Kobe burger. Sit at the bar and ask for Jamie. And show wise check out Criss Angel's Believe which is the new Cirque production. Also check out Cirque's Mystere at Treasure Island. Blue Man Group at The Venetian is always fun too...

16610 if your goal is to have the best all around watch that is timeless and goes with everything. 16710 if your goal is to have a little more versatility with a complication. Visually it is basically the same if you get one with a black bezel. Plus with this choice you get a watch which is a bit more collectable since it is being discontinued by Rolex. I doubt that you will found one in your price range though because of this. Especially since you are waiting until next year...

Great watches as usual guys. I'm still on the Datejust kick. You know, I have fairly large 7.5" wrists and as long as this is worn just outside of a long sleeve as shown it absolutely does NOT look small. Not even remotely so. It is just so understated size wise, yet the polished surfaces make it pop... My biggest problem though is I have now decided I want to expand my small Rolex collection and it is going to get expensive. I want to assemble a three piece set which includes this in Everrose with tahitian MOP: And this with Glacier Blue dial: ...Although I will do it in WG instead of PT as I like the patina of Rolex WG better. I don't think Rolex does so great with PT compared to other companies. Besides, their PT is ridiculously overpriced and getting a WG gold one and swapping the dial will be 20K less money...

Thanks guys - and yes, I agree. I would love to see many of the senior members do something like this. I posted pictorials of all these watches once upon a time, but there is something about seeing them all together that is fun and charts the progress of yourself and the reps as they get better and better...

Thanks guys. It is always fun shooting watches as well as wearing and owning them. These were all some mighty fine watches. You know, this hobby is funny. As I look at these photos, the watches look so delicious I can't imagine why I would ever sell any of them. But then I realize what happens to you when you actually own them for a while is why you end up selling sometimes. For me it isn't enough to just love to look at them. I have to love wearing them and in my experience that has little to do with liking the way they look in photos. You have to try them out and see if they speak to you on YOUR wrist, you know?

Tasty is right. Pull that lever and draw me a pint...

I was going through the Bucket recently looking for photos to contribute to the upcoming calendar after a discussion with Lani. I had forgotten how many cool reps and gens I have had and sold over the years and I thought I might start a pictorial thread to honor some of them. I only wish I had the chance to shoot all the watches I have owned over the years, but these are I think a good cross section. You can also see how my photo skills have developed over the years. In other words, not so many of these pics are all that great - but the watches sure were. So without further delay, may I present some of my favorite reps from 06' to present... Please note that these are only watches that I no longer own. For pics of whatever is in my watchbox now, please see the RobbieG's Collection thread here: http://www.rwg.cc/members/index.php?showto...t=0#entry554022 Breitling Superocean Steelfish 08' (gen): 1900's Enamel Dialed Homage (gen): Titanium Marina Homage (gen): IWC FA Jones: IWC GST Ti: Chronoswiss Kairos: PAM 009 PVD: PAM 063: PAM 177h: Rolex GMT Master II: Rolex Yachtmaster Rolesium: Vacheron Constantin Malte Chronograph:

Thanks brother. I'll always feel my collection is pale compared to yours, but it is certainly getting more refined and diverse. I finally feel like despite the limited number, I have a watch for any occasion. Although I can see some additions in the dress watch department in the future. Problem with that is those are some serious bucks. All the gen dress watches I like are 4 times the cost of the sports watches I have...

Yeah man, it sure is tough to shrink it beyond that 8 or 9 number. I already want to build a vintage Rollie rep now and I also decided I want to have a trio of Day Dates in a trio of metals (PT or WG, RG, YG) one day as well plus some other dress watches as you know, but I think a collection of under 8 sports watches is easily do-able like you are doing. You gonna keep the ceramic GMT?

Yes, random numbers are NOT random. Interestingly, we actually PROVED mathmatically that in a craps strategy we were working on for giggles and profit. This will blow your mind. Dice throws are totally random right? Wrong. In craps, we proved that a new shooter who has made it to throwing a point roll is just as likely to throw two passes as he is to throw twelve. Could you make money knowing those odds? We did (and do). Meanwhile, a shooter who doesn't get enough consecutive passes to make a point roll is more likely to crap out than he is to make a point. How can that be? Random numbers are not random, they run in streaks. For some reason success seems to breed success and vice versa. Weird. Regarding authors, yes, Dr. Elder has written maybe the most valuable basic book on trading for trader and it is required reading for anyone serious about trading. Given the current debt crisis and its ties to OTC bank trading and the swaps/currency arbitrage markets, I would like to also recommend a book called Traders, Guns, & Money, by Satyajit Das, which will scare the sh*t out of you if you didn't already know how banks pass paper around. Check it out...

Dude, did anyone tell you that you could be Steven Baldwin's lost twin brother? Wow. I had no idea CBR.

Ah yes, Fat Tails. I haven't heard that talked about in some time. Bravo. You are 100% correct in your comments, but please understand that the point of the article was to oversimplfy really to answer general questions which are routinely asked to me. But I do appreciate your additions to the thread. Fortunately, we also don't encounter much fat tail risk simply because we never hold any positions overnight. Anyway, it was really just a general explanation of some basic gambling principles and not meant to be a full explanation or construed as hard trading advice. That said, let me add to the article by explaining how some of your concepts depend on the trading timeframe and how quantified risk is related to it. My alpha fund is setting records each month because the current volatilty plays into the model by increasing the size of winning trades while holding the average losses (risk) constant. In fact, the fund returned over 100% on equity in the first 10 trading days of October with a risk model of 1% per trade, and trading only one market which is the S&P Emini futures contract (ES). The fat tail events hardly ever come into play with (any) intraday models such as ours mostly because reaction times are greatly diminished. This is because news events are on a clock and very predictable during the trading day. We never have postions on at news times, nor do we create new ones around those times. Our average time in trades is also so small due to the short term TF's we take triggers from. We are in a trade on average for less than 15 minutes. It really takes a black swan on top of a black swan to play out to de-rail our intraday expectation as a result. The likelyhood we would be in a trade on devastating news overlap and not be able to exit is small. Getting wacked and blown out on both the stop and the hedge is unlikely, but even if we did in that one trade the recovery would be quite quick and robust. The price for this inherent safety we have is limited position sizing. That is why more large funds don't (read can't) do what I do. And yes, position sizing relative to triggers is very important and we are no different than most funds in that it is a big part of the success of the strategies. you just can't trade a hundred million in equity with my model. You couldn't get your postions and hedges on and off fast enough. All told, my fund plus our institutional clients who white label my software have only $30M employed in multiple markets. We cap the investor returns with no fees, so we don't need much of a surplus to earn for oursleves fairly significantly with equity which is quite tiny in institutional terms. My own fund is capped at $7M equity and trades a max size of 700 contracts per trade 3-8 times in an average day. I could (and might) write a book on the myth of asset diversification as a risk management tool. It is the other giant Wall Street lie aimed at getting people to buy more stuff IMO. Nearly all assets, including ones that are inversely coorolated are coorolated. Coorolation is coorolation and that is why I hate the word. Just because instruments move in the opposite direction doesn't mean they are uncoorolated. I always found it funny for instance that people would use say, the long bond as a hedge for an equity index trade. A better example of an uncoorolated pair might be say, sugar and swaps as opposed to equity and bonds as a simplifed example. Sure equities and bonds are inversely coorolated, but other than arbitrage really, where is the gap in the hedge? Anyway, I believe in employing what I call directional hedging strategies which involve hedging with non-coorolated strategies in the same instrument and direction, as opposed to hedging using these supposed non-coorlated markets in the opposite direction. In sum, we have many models but they all employ the same basic principals which is really nothing more than we don't ever assume overnight risk. The black swans are always overhead, but you can't shoot them if you are sleeping when London opens. At 9:30 AM we are bright eyed and bushytailed and the shotgun is loaded. Case in point: A swan wacked us last week for 110 ticks in one day actually. Ouch. nearly 14% drawn down in a day. I shot the bastard and we went on to make over 200 ticks over the next two days. Those big numbers have nothing to do with me. It is just the volatilty. Like I said before, I am no genius, but the fact is a lot of great traders are getting killed right now because the overnight volatility risk is nearly untradeable. The pain threshold for stops and hedges is just too tough to fade. Meanwhile, our average loss intraday is around 7 ticks a trade. I could use 70 overnight and I still might not like it... In conclusion, I am well aware that my numbers are silly big right now but so are the intraday ranges so it is expected. Of course the returns will mirror that when your system wins more than it loses. In a more typical month (like last summer for example) our average win might be something on the order of 10 ticks a trade and the loss will run 8 ticks or so. In October 08' month to date, the average win is 26 ticks and the average loss is 13. That explains why we are making so much unlevered money this month. The market dictates it, not me. I'm just well set up intraday to maximize pocketing what the market gives when it does and minimizing what it takes away when it does. As the numbers get bigger so will my profits. The bad news is that it will end and we will go back to earning a third as much when it does. I hope that clarifies a few things and I appreciate the contributions. Keep them coming!

Actually the Fish is for sale again. I have to do a sales thread again so thanks for the reminder V. And thanks for the compliments on the other two.

If you want a Sub, check out Bytor's review of the WM9 Sub. That or the Euromarnier are certainly the best bases for Subs to mod. Certainly BK will steer you in the right direction for modding Subs or classic GMT's in any event but you have to decide on your own which base watch has which flaws and which you would rather live with. Happy hunting!

Thanks guys. I should also probably disclaim that professional trading (gambling) is not for the faint of heart and requires skill and dedication. I don't mean to oversimplify the process, but I can't stand to see people needlessly lose money at the hands of managers who would have you believe that they can pick stocks, time the market, or both. This brings up an addition to the article that I need to address. Stock pickers love to cite Warren Buffet as evidence that stock picking works. That makes me laugh. Mr. Buffet is the greatest investor ever, but not the greatest trader - big difference. The most important thing about him to remember is that when he invests in companies he always buys a MAJOR stake in them. That changes the rules. With that comes juice. There is a big difference between picking a stock so to speak that will do well and buying a hundred shares and buying 10% of the deal. The rules change. Plus, everything he does becomes a self fullfilling prophecy because he did it. The fact that Berkshire Hathaway grabs an interest in something creates a buzz that makes everyone else want to own it too. If Buffet bought it, I want it too - that kind of thing. Again, the important distinction is the difference in outcome when you are actually buying a company as opposed to buying the stock in a company. BIG difference. Buffet is an investor that buys companies, not a trader that buys and sells stock. I just get annoyed when people mix apples and oranges using him as an example, and then say fundamental trading is great because Buffet does it. Plus, I should know a thing or two about him. One of my partners is a champion bridge player and he has been Buffet's math partner in many tournaments. The Oracle of Omaha can play some bridge I'll tell ya', and he is quite a gambler too I might add. But he doesn't gamble in the market. He bets on sure things and he makes them sure things by controlling the whole company. And that my friends ain't trading. The moral of the story is if you are in investor, don't invest like a trader, and if you are a trader, don't trade like an investor. Buffet is neither really. He is an owner who is very good at controlling what he owns through strategic trading and effective management. Don't get me wrong, Warren is an incredible genius, but even if you had his brains, it takes a tremendous amount of capital to accomplish what he does. Billions, not millions... OK, I'll get off my soap box now - I promise...

Thanks a lot guys. It means everything to me to be able to proudly share my collection with a bunch of guys who truly love watches as much as I do. And I love the challenge of trying to take goot photos as well - although my talent is limited compared to many other members (yeah Bytor & Pug & Jiro, I mean you, bastards...)

Thanks brother. Yeah, for me it is all in the details of which you speak. They are minor details for sure to many here, but there is just that special look and feel that I can only satisfy with a gen. So even that is more of a semantic decision really. I basically said to myself as long as I can easily afford a gen I might want, and I can pay for it without any impact to my lifestyle or giving to my family, I'm going to do it. It's like, "Hey why not, you only live once...". But as such I have nothing changing as a result emotionally, if that makes any sense. So if there comes a day when I can't afford so many gens or whatever I will be more than happy with the reps without missing a beat. And that said, I have reps to thank for all of these gen purchases anyway. By owning the reps of all of them (except the UN of course), I got to really know and love them so much that I wanted to take it all the way and get the gen. For me, reps have evolved into a great way to see if I really love a watch before I consider throwing five to ten grand at the gen. I just can't say enough about RWG and what it has done for my watch collecting experience. Can't say the same for TZ, home of the post that exists wholly in the subject line. LOL. Plus, we have the coolest people here and I have built some lasting freindships. Even though my collection is all gens at the moment, I'm still a rep guy through and through. The only difference between the RobbieG that first joined the rep communities in 06' and the RobbieG today is I can afford more gens than I used to. But my love for watches continues to grow because of this place. It has been and continues to be my favorite source for both gen and rep information. And now I'm starting to get bit by the vintage bug and I am going to have a blast learning and building some great replica recreations. Thanks again to RWG!

Just awesome. Truly enviable. Yu made me realize how much I want something stichless and sort of a deep burgundy/dark brownish/deep reddish color...

Thanks. You are welcome.

Thanks Dog, From what I hear, the rumour is that there should be a really nice 1:1 UN rep before the year end. Although I hear it isn't the MMD sadly...

I get a lot of communication (especially lately for obvious reasons) about trading and trading strategies. For those who don't know, I own a private equity hedge fund and trading software development company. I'm not going to go into any real nitty gritty stuff, but many questions can best be answered by yourselves in the same way I might if you understood how I view markets and trading and the industry in general. The ability to predict market direction is the biggest Wall Street lie that to this day is still going on. People misconstrue success with knowledge. Most of the time fund managers are right they just got lucky, but yet their career validity is based on making people believe that they won those trades because they are smart. What a joke. Any market always does what it wants to at all times. Don't let anyone EVER tell you differently. They are either ignorant or not telling the truth. Period. All the big insitutional dogs know this and it their business to make sure you don't know that. Otherwise, why would you pay them to do something you can do yourself? All markets are perfect and imperfect all at once. As such, no formula or intellect can consistently be successful other that what I call controlled omniprescence. You have to be available if the market you trade should decide to move, and apply a trade management strategy that will maximize getting a large percentage of what it gains. Conversely, if you are wrong, which I'm proud to say I am at least 50% of the time, you have to employ a strategy that limits the amount you lose which is consistent and precisely quantifiable. In sum, FOOLS try to be right. Let the market do whatever it wants to and just be ready for whatever that is and know exactly how you will react when it does. If you consistently win more than you lose and you are right 50% of the time you will make money. Period. Then lever up (but not too much, Bear Stearns...) and you can make more with quantified risk in the long run. However, you don't always win in the short run. Nobody does. The reasons for this are best explained with gambling theory. Most investors aren't comfortable with the idea that trading is gambling. Like it is a dirty word or something. But yet I can honestly say that I'm sure I wouldn't be able to make consistent money as a trader if I didn't apply gambling principles to the game. As a card counter, there isn't a casino in Vegas that will let me play that way. The reason is simple. In the long run I'm going to beat them. My trading is the same thing except that my casino lets me play. Mathmatical expectation is a simple concept, and it is flawless if properly applied. To use this gambling analogy to what I said about "being right" in the previous paragraph, trying to take a trade only when you think you will win is the equivalent of wanting to play blackjack with a 48 card deck, or only hitting 16's if both cards are red. Huh? You want to play basic strategy which is the trading equivalent of following simple money management and risk quantification rules on each hand (trade). The expectation to a card counter comes from betting more when they have the nuts. Very simple. In trading it is the same. Let the market tell you when the conditions are favorable to bet more, not before the trade which is just prediction, but after the trade is on. That way you are not predicting, but instead you are interpereting. Big difference. It is amazing to me how many traders don't know the difference between those two words. Once you have devised a consistent and repeatable method to do all this, discipline is the key. You have to do the same thing every time and not let emotion get in the way. Look, to return to the blackjack scenario, you can be playing and while the deck is extremely favorable to you the dealer still pulls 10 blackjacks in a row and busts you for the day. It happens and it sucks, but trust me, you will come back tomorrow and bust them almost every time that happens. I have seen it many times. The math works both ways. You have exactly a 50% chance of pulling any two cards which are more favorable than what the dealer has on every hand regardless of what the count is. But by using a tiered betting strategy that takes into account how many tens are out and the order to act you change the expectation of returns while keeping the expectation of outcome the same. Only the most disciplined guys can wait it out and you have to have faith in what you are doing. In other words, don't lose the count! In trading it is the same and the "count" is whatever you have decided are good ways to interperet (not predict) what is happening (not what will happen) You never know when the market you trade is going to wander off course and mess with your math in the short run but you must not allow it to make you alter what you do or you are dead. In my world we call those black swans and they are always there but you can't let them scare you. But if you are always in and bet like a card counter you can make money in any market you trade. I'm oversimplifying obviously for illustrative reasons and you can't just roll out of bed and implement this stuff. I'm not soliciting either BTW. I don't cross those boundaries. I wouldn't take your money if you had millions and you put a gun to my head. But I know a lot of people here are trusting their money to managers who may not know what they are doing. It makes me feel good to help others and so I try and take something I know more than just a little about and educate friends. I do this in the hopes that you will educate yourselves enough to keep from going broke in these crazy markets. If you take nothing out of this but this next statement, you will have come almost as far as you need to. And that is at the very least invest/trade in instruments in both directions. That is to say you must be abe to bet on the market going down as well as going up. These days that is easier than ever for individuals as many of the most popular indices are represented by ETF's (exchange traded funds) that are also available as reversed instruments whereby in buying a "short" version of said fund you are betting that it is going down instead of up. Good luck and good trading...

Great pic Freddy. Yeah, Lahde is weird dude. He is an aquaintance of mine actually. He is really into pot and thinks it is going to save the world. he may be right, who knows? But we do share a lot of trading practices in terms of philosophy. Speaking of trading, I have been getting a lot of market related questions lately and I figured rather than answer them all, (which takes time because I'm long winded - lol) I would just do another post devoted to trading stuff. It is here: http://www.rwg.cc/members/index.php?showtopic=85219

I realized that I never really had a My Collection thread so I thought I would start one that I can keep track of and modify as changes are made. I have recently been on a mission to thin my collection to only those that make the constant wrist rotation, so I really have to love a watch now to either keep it if I have it or aquire it if I don't. There are still a few pieces that I haven't had the chance to shoot yet, but here are pics of the ones I have shot so far. For the complete list, see my signature which is always up to date... Also note that I only keep the current watches in this thread. For some more pics of past reps and gens, please see my Blast From The Past thread here: http://www.rwg.cc/members/index.php?showtopic=85317 Ulysse Nardin Dual Time 42MM (gen): Omega Planet Ocean 42MM (gen): Ulysse Nardin Maxi Marine Diver (gen): Rolex Datejust "M" (gen): IWC Aquatimer Titanium Chronograph (gen):