That article quoted both a bullish case and a bearish case for gold, originally presented in an FT article Saturday. One gold bug, angry that I included a case against gold in my article, noted that my article was a way of promoting Portfolio Armor, and attacked me as a “tout/troll”.

That part of his comment was excised by the Seeking Alpha editors, but they kept my response (which you can see there), in which I acknowledged that part of the reason authors submit articles to Seeking Alpha is to gain exposure for their businesses, and Seeking Alpha allows that, provided the articles meet their editorial standards and the business is mentioned in a way that isn’t overly promotional.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that a couple of commenters groked that one could “tout” one’s business and still offer useful info. One wrote (replying to the commenter who called me a tout/troll),

I know what you’re saying, but honestly this is a pretty useful article. I appreciate the useful information on how to efficiently and effectively hedge positions. I think that the author has done a nice job of providing valuable information in the context of promoting his app, and I have no problem with that. I wish I had used a strategy like this when silver was in the high $40’s and gold was around $1900.

Another wrote,

David, thank you for offering your suggestions about the offsetting of risk.

The fact that you offer your advice from a position as a professional and an entrepreneur has no bearing on its validity as you are rightly forthcoming about your interests.

So, that was nice to see. Sunday also turned out to be the best day for Portfolio Armor business in the a couple of months (certainly better than April, which was pretty slow with me out of action).

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As for the recent posting drought here, I was pretty much out of action during the month of April, due to some health issues. But that doesn’t explain the lack of posts in March or up until now in May. Part of the reason is that when I have the urge to share a link to the something, where I might have written a blog post about it in the past, usually now I just share the link via Twitter.

I tweet all of my Seeking Alpha articles and guest blog posts on hedging via the @PortfolioArmor Twitter account. Most of those articles are geared toward those who are unfamiliar with Portfolio Armor, and might seem redundant to those who have read this blog. The ones I think might be of slightly more general interest, I retweet via my @dpinsen Twitter account. For example, I retweeted these two recently:

Guest post on @SlopeOfHope: “@PortfolioArmor: Hedging Update: Social Media Stocks — stks.co/3nYR $P $LNKD $ZNGA $FB $SOCL $QQQ”

— David Pinsen (@dpinsen) May 12, 2012

Quotes @johngapper & @fredwilson. RT @PortfolioArmor: Hedging Biotechs As R&D Investment Declines stks.co/3lt0 $AMLN $CELG $GILD

— David Pinsen (@dpinsen) May 10, 2012

When I can’t get my point across about something in 140 characters, then I’ll write a blog post here (if anyone reading this has something they’d be interested in me writing about, feel free to suggest it in the comments below). If you’re interested in my thoughts in between my blog posts here, in addition to following me on Twitter, you can view my comments on other blogs via Disqus.

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Cheap to hedge $GLD against a greater than 20% drop between now & September – 0.8%. Longs should consider it. twitter.com/PortfolioArmor…

— Portfolio Armor (@PortfolioArmor) February 29, 2012

Hedging costs had jumped 46% for GLD by the end of the day, as we noted in this Seeking Alpha article.

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Not the age, it’s the mileage. “@dpinsen: MT @MikeZaccardi: RT @coffeygrinds: Snaps Of Whitney Houston last night bit.ly/xvos7B“

— Andy Swan (@AndySwan) February 12, 2012

Twitter Breaks News of Whitney Houston Death 27 Minutes Before Press – on.mash.to/y2tmUS

— Pete Cashmore (@mashable) February 12, 2012

We Are Better Than This: wp.me/p1RmvN-9m via @Uncrunched

— Michael Arrington (@arrington) February 14, 2012

realdanlyons.com/blog/2012/02/1… Love this. Solid slaying of arrington/siegler/pandodaily et. al., by @realdanlyons

— Jared McKiernan (@jaredmckiernan) February 14, 2012

@albertwenger @christinacaci Definitely, thanks for sharing. A term for what Thiel discusses in the last paragraph: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_w…

— David Pinsen (@dpinsen) February 16, 2012

Another example of high optimal hedging costs acting as a red flag, this time for $ZNGA: stks.co/2Qqa

— David Pinsen (@dpinsen) February 16, 2012

@dpinsen Amen. Immune from criticism, unaffected by market forces. If this was done by a private company they would have no customers.

— DHH (@dhh) February 16, 2012

“your name is Windows. Why are you a flag?” windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/blog…

— Jared McKiernan (@jaredmckiernan) February 17, 2012

Yesterday I was asked, “How did you learn all these development points?” My reply was simple, “10 years.” techoctave.com/c7/posts/57-hu…

— Tian Davis [天] (@tiandavis) February 18, 2012

How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did – onforb.es/AEzib8

— Matt Shampine (@ms) February 18, 2012

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Last week, we noted the high optimal hedging cost for Zynga could be a warning:

Steep hedging cost for $ZNGA (compare to last tweet re $QQQ). A red flag for Zynga longs? twitter.com/PortfolioArmor…

— Portfolio Armor (@PortfolioArmor) February 9, 2012

This was the “last tweet re $QQQ” referred to in the tweet above.

Zynga tanked almost 18% today after posting a net loss of $435 million, on a $510 million charge associated with stock-based compensation issued to its employees.

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The plan is for this post to be the first in a weekly series. If you’re not familiar with Twitter, click on the clickable stuff in the embedded tweets below, and you’ll get the idea.

I’m humbled by the work of all the charities I have thrown out envelopes from.

— Gary Janetti (@GaryJanetti) February 5, 2012

After 30 years of hustling, this guy turned $700 into billions. How he’d allocate a $1 million portfolio now: stks.co/2Gxf $$

— David Pinsen (@dpinsen) February 7, 2012

Lucy Kellaway rips $UBS on a particularly egregious bit of its corporate b.s.: ft.com/cms/s/0/bae01b…

— David Pinsen (@dpinsen) February 7, 2012

Hyperbole is worse than Hitler.

— Andy Levy (@andylevy) February 7, 2012

Facebook graffiti artist might be richer than @mittromney. Stock v. cash: “Likes to gamble”; had faith in @sparker. finance.yahoo.com/news/facebook-… $FB

— David Pinsen (@dpinsen) February 8, 2012

BREAKING: Ann Romney tells heckler, “My husband can’t f@*king throw the ball and catch it at the same time!”

— Philip Klein (@philipaklein) February 8, 2012

What I am told the female students at Cal Tech say of their situation: “The odds are good, but the goods are odd.” Love it.

— Charles Murray (@charlesmurray) February 10, 2012

.@nytimeskrugman is a uniter! Here, 2 nemeses unite in disagreement w/ him: RT @bill_easterly: I agree with Jeff Sachs bloom.bg/yMvu45

— David Pinsen (@dpinsen) February 10, 2012

@dpinsen I hate that. Manufacturing is key. Gotta fucking make something, not just sell worthless paper for Chinese poisoned toys.

— Charlie Crystle (@Ccrystle) February 10, 2012

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This exchange occurred during the second Florida GOP debate last night. Rick Santorum had just snapped at Mitt Romney over the mandate that Romney’s health care law in Massachusetts imposed (state residents either needed to buy health insurance, or pay a fee to help offset the cost of any care hospitals would be obligated to give them if they got sick or injured).

@grivno His essence is competence. Santorum’s is petulance. How do you prevent free riders without mandates?

— David Pinsen (@dpinsen) January 27, 2012

@grivno That doesn’t prevent free riders, because those people will still get free care, by law, when they get sick.

— David Pinsen (@dpinsen) January 27, 2012

@grivno This isn’t Calcutta, we’re not going to let the sick die in the street without treatment. So everyone needs to pay into the system.

— David Pinsen (@dpinsen) January 27, 2012

Since Bill Grivno’s preferred alternative — changing the law so hospitals can deny care to the indigent — is well outside the Overton Window in the US (and probably in every other first world country as well), attacking Mitt Romney for introducing mandates in Massachusetts seems pointless and counterproductive. I can see how it makes tactical sense to use the mandate issue to challenge the Constitutionality of Obama’s health care plan, in order to repeal it because of other, objectionable, aspects of it, but substantively, it’s hard to argue against the logic of a mandate to buy health insurance.

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