Congratulations Tom Trouble!

When you were born your momma thought about changing your name.  She knew that with a name like Tommy Trouble there was only one way for you to turn out.  She also “knew” that the moon landing was faked and that the government had teleportation technology, though.  So she wasn’t a terribly reliable source.

Sure enough, you grew up nice and scrawny, a young man straight out of UCSC with a degree in economics and history.  You settled into a nice entry level job at a firm where you engage in “financial advising,” which consists mostly of you looking at patterns in financial markets and occasionally making adjustment to client portfolios so that you can optimize long term growth while minimizing potential risk to investment.

You’re pretty okay at it.  Not spectacular, but good enough to keep your job and get promoted a few times, usually around once every three years.   As time drifted on you helped your mom settle into a comfortable, honest nursing home where you visit her once every week or so, less when things get busy around the office.

But today all that’s going to change.  Today you’re going to be lining up the potential earnings and comparing it to the overall risk estimates in the market at present and you’re going to realize, in a stroke of genius, that the calculations that you’ve been using to estimate market peaks and valleys are actually based on pre-2007 numbers and, as such, aren’t terribly relevant to the current economic climate.  You’ll mention this to your boss and propose a set of new variables and calculations, which he’ll review and find both adequate and accurate.

‘Nice work, Trouble,” he’ll say.

You’ll smile and nod in response before leaving his office and returning to your cubicle to go over your numbers anew, double checking to see if you’ve made any errors about potential risk factors in blue chip tech stocks.

Congratulations Tom Trouble!