.. vim: set syntax=rst nosmartindent spell spelllang=en_us:

This was my last shift
======================

It went fine.

I've been doing the internship, and going to school, and waiting tables.

But after that lady Lois, retired, and I took over scheduling her gas,
and it actually worked OK, Brian got me a raise.  I make as much now per
hour as I did working a slammed Saturday night.

And he told me that he's working with HR to update Lois's job
description so that I could apply for it.

Except instead of running back and forth on my feet, I sit in a comfy
chair.

Yesterday afternoon I spent like an hour just reading this book that I
found on Lois's shelf all about risk management accounting.

In August, I'll have finished.  I'll switch to working here full-time in
September.

Side note: it's funny that risk management generally means trying to
REDUCE price volatility.  Like smoothing out the peaks and troughs.

But what we are actually doing by adding and dropping these futures
contracts based on day to day changes in the weather or whatever, we're
really just speculating under the cover of a hedging program.

I heard Brian call it Texas hedging.

It's funny... we literally tripled our monthly revenue last month doing
this stuff.

We bought and sold the same natural gas like five times last month, each
time, buying it back when prices fell, and then selling it again when
prices went up.

Tripled our revenue.  When that hurricane was off the southwest coast of
Africa, and prices were heading up, Paul, our president sold 100% of our
production at that price.

Then a few days later, the hurricane dissipated, just like our weather
dude said it would.  Prices fell.

Paul undid our swaps.  We essentially bought back the gas that we were
committing to sell.

I asked him why he didn't just let the first sale ride all the way.

He said, "where's the fun in that?  Besides, month ain't over yet, and
there's more hurricanes coming."

Sure enough, I watched and in a week another hurricane formed and
started moving toward the Gulf of Mexico, and of course, natural gas
prices started heading up again.  I watched Paul use that weird ancient
calculator he carries in his pocket.

He said to lock in prices for like 20% of our production, and he
said as long as the price stays above $2, sell another 20% every day.

It's so bizarre watching this guy work.  Paul was like the right hand
man for T Boone Pickens.  He knows what he's doing.

I've tracked his trades.  The guy beats the market every fucking month,
by huge amounts.

But when I try to understand his methods, they make absolutely no sense
to me.  He throws out some vulgar cowboy aphorism and then winks at me.