What's In a Name?

With the New Year comes a change to this blog.

I have decided to put my name at the top of the page. TheButtonwoodSpeculator is now history. If I’m wrong about something – no secret identity for me to hide behind – you’ll know who I am. For now the present URL will remain, but i do have a temporary site up under http://www.jimkingsland.com/ and at some point I will migrate this blog over there and redirect traffic there as well; but one step at a time.

Yes, I'm Jim Kingsland. Kingsland is an old English name derived from one of the ancestors being a Viscount to the King's land about 600 years ago, or so the story goes. Most of the Kingslands were actually killed off in the early 1500's during a brutal feud between the O'Sullivans and the Kingslands. It seems the Kingslands whacked a few of the O'Sullivans, but then the O'Sullivans came back en masse and killed most of the Kingslands in Britain at that time. The family line survived because a number of Kingslands were living in Barbados -- there are only a few hundred Kingsland families in the world today. In the early 1850's, a Kingsland by the name of Ambrose was elected mayor of NYC and served one- 2 year term... long enough to set aside the land for what is now... Central Park! But I digress.

Originally, I had intended to keep a low profile as thebuttonwoodspeculator and show off a few stock pics and make some market comments. But why let nearly 30 years of credentials in broadcasting, with names on the resume including Bloomberg, CNBC and FNN, 1010 WINS and WBZ, go to waste?? Plus, why take the word of someone who won't tell you their name, especially when it comes to matters concerning your money? I realize these blogs are not dispensing official advice per se (see my disclaimer below), but anonymity in the realm of an effort that presents itself as an informational or educational entity is just a bit odd, but maybe that's just an odd hang up I have.

I'm going to strive to go beyond the well commoditized elements of the business news coverage. Everyone and his brother has lists of stock and options picks and coverage of top business stories. I am not going to fool myself into thinking I can do a better job than some of nimble young guys out there with their scalp picks, options plays, etc. Sure, I will look at a lot of that commoditized stuff, but I will dig deeper and find unique angles whether through quantitative, qualitative, or technical analysis (using my reporters sleuthing skills) that will hopefully give the both of us at least a small edge.... a leg up of just a short time over the competition can make a big difference.

For years I woke up at 2 in the morning to drive (would get car sick in car service, especially if driver showered by using cologne - I could tell) to midtown Manhattan to broadcast financial radio reports from 5 a.m. to 10 a.m. on a 50,000 watt a.m. stick to cover mostly stocks, plus a little on bonds, currencies and commodities; then I would run up a flight of stairs and hop on a t.v. set to do similar reports on camera. But behind the scenes, options, forex and commodities became a focus for me personally, and that will be a focus on this blog as well. There’s so much out there about stocks … and not nearly enough about anything else. I'm going to make sure to provide some decent information about commodities and forex on this blog.

Before my days in the studio, I spent a bunch more years down at the Exchange on Wall Street situated just above the floor near a bunch of options guys. Wow, did that make coverage loud and exciting. One trader could shout with such strength that I nicknamed him "Mr. Polyp", because I felt that someday his vocal chords would develop some sort of disease! So I've built up a wealth of contacts and eventually I will get around to generating some interviews and putting them up on this blog for some interesting special guest shots. I promise a "no cheer leading zone!!"

As time goes by in ’07, eventually I will get a feed, or email service of some sort up. Since I am partially sighted, the email feed is problematic, since I often will dash off a post, then realize that I need to do touch up corrections. Once I work through that issue, I will get the feed up.

-jimk