iamshack

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 19, 2012 -> 10:55 AM) It took them 10 days to figure out a new work-around to the rules changes. 10 days to find another loophole, but that was one that already existed. The MRTU was implemented Q1 of 2009. The rule change you are referring to was an emergency filing with FERC to eliminate the first loophole that JP exploited. The second always existed, it just took a different impetus to cause JP to find it.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 19, 2012 -> 10:50 AM) And it took JPM what, a couple months to figure out how to cheat that technology upgrade? I don't understand what this has to do with your original point. Are you arguing that JPM supported the MRTU so they could game it?

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 19, 2012 -> 10:43 AM) "Operating within the rules" is not a sufficient basis for morality imo. As you say, whatever rules CAISO sets up is not the basis for morality. If JPM was intentionally manipulating the market, then all they did was suck up hundreds of millions for themselves. There was no market purpose served, nothing added, no economic gain. It's not enough to say "sure, we gamed the system, added zero value, provided zero services, but we found a loophole!" That doesn't justify their actions and points to something inherently flawed in the system where such actions are rewarded. Again, I understand that...but the rules are designed in a way where this line you are drawing is very much blurred. CAISO will pay you for doing all kinds of things that really don't serve much of a legitimate market purpose, but instead, serve their silly system because it has so many flaws. For instance, they will pay me money to take energy out of California even when they desperately need energy, because they don't have adequate infrastructure in place to accommodate the flows of electricity necessary. There is no market purpose served here, only a very real logistical purpose which exists only because of their inadequacy. I know you will argue that relieving congestion is serving a market purpose, but then I would argue that JP Morgan was serving a market purpose by having it's units online, even if they manipulated the odds of them being dispatched by changing their bids in the RT market. If the energy was really needed, they would be able to dispatch it, whereas they would not have had they not been incentivized to have it online.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 19, 2012 -> 10:43 AM) It's not just "Supporting", you can get lots of people who will line up behind supporting deregulation. It's much more "the ability to insert obscure clauses that allow you to game the system but that no one else can care about until the law is in place" that is hurting here. I think you are off-base here, Balta. The original CAISO rules, maybe...but since then, they have implemented the MRTU, which was designed to stop all the abuse. The CPUC was heavily involved in implementing that.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 19, 2012 -> 10:42 AM) You say "California has determined"...but you're side-stepping my point. That determination was made because the utilities bought and paid for that system so that it could be easily gamed. The existence of the CAISO and the ability to manipulate it was built into the system when it was designed and has been protected by those same utilities using their political contribution arms. So you are saying that SCE and PG&E are the ones profiting most of the CAISO?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 19, 2012 -> 10:29 AM) Why do you think the original deregulatory bill that created the CA ISO did things the way that they happened? Because the deregulatory bill was bought and paid for by the people who would benefit most from the deregulation. I can't pretend to have any knowledge of the history of that...I'll defer to you on that one. Who are you saying supported the deregulation?

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 19, 2012 -> 10:26 AM) In my view, it's fraud and theft. It transferred millions of dollars from Californian energy users to a handful of people at JPM. No useful social purpose is present, only a handful of people making themselves wealthy while not actually contributing anything to anyone at best and actively harming the economy at worst. I can understand that you would view it that way. But it really is much more complex than that. California has determined that the best way to dispatch electricity to their customers is to create a complex system of rules controlled by software systems that incentivize others to behave in certain ways. They must do this because their current infrastructure and resource pool is not self-sufficient. They have made a conscious decision to create this complex system, controlled by software instead of humans. They invite counterparties to participate and utilize the optimal business acumen possible, because they need more participants to increase their resource pool. Counterparties transfer millions of dollars from California energy users all the time, without accomplishing any social purpose, using methods which CAISO determines are well-within the rules. It is only when one of these counterparties finds a way to do this which the CAISO did not foresee, that they become angry. I don't see how you can draw a moral or ethical line in the sand based on the difference of whether CAISO contemplated an action or did not. That alone has no bearing on morality or ethics; it is only a failure of the CAISO to create the best rules.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 19, 2012 -> 10:21 AM) That doesn't mean we should accept the morality of knowingly gaming the system, though. I don't view it as a moral subject. Perhaps there is an ethics involved, but not sure about morals.

I can't believe only one Braun vote so far. He is, IMO, the BEST hitter in all of baseball. Kemp is a close second. Need to see more of Trout before I put him up there, even though he has been spectacular thus far. CarGo is right there too.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 19, 2012 -> 10:08 AM) So...what happens when they are the ones who write the rules and do so in a way so that they can game them? That's a pretty great summary of our entire system. California doesn't need to be an ISO. They could be a part of the WECC and take almost all of this nonsense out of play. We rely on supply and demand and traders and analysts to make decisions as to how to best serve our own native loads. We allow marketers to come and play too. Part of the problem is the CAISO is almost entirely controlled by software systems that are easily fooled.

Just another comment...I love the tone of that article As if it is the market participants' fault for finding the best way to play the game because the rules are inefficiently designed. GMAB.

Ahh...yes. So basically there are a few different types of energy markets in the US. There are RTO/ISO's, which are Regional Transmission Operators or Independent System Operators, there is ERCOT, which is the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, and then there is basically the WECC, which is the Western Electricity Coordinating Council. All are regulated by FERC, which is the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. RTO's and ISO's and ERCOT and others are very structured. They have extremely complex software that determines how much energy coming in and going out should be priced at, and tries to encourage the most economic and reliable dispatch of the system via these pricing signals. There are all kinds of crazy rules created to try and accomplish this. The CAISO, or the California Independent System Operator is sort of the gorilla in the room. At least out west. Many banks/marketing companies employ many very smart people to try and find the most optimal methods for doing business in California. They employ very smart people whose goal it is to find loopholes in the rules and exploit them. Enron was the first to really exploit the CAISO in the California energy crisis in the early 2000's. They not only found the loopholes, but then made business arrangements with small California utilities, who controlled critical transmission lines necessary for their schemes to work. They also made business arrangements with larger utilities in the WECC, such as Portland General Electric and El Paso Electric, to manage their assets - basically, to take over their trading function and take control of their generation resources to game the CAISO and then split the profits. Anyways, fast forward to 2012. Banks/marketing companies are still finding ways to exploit the CAISO. I read the documents associated with JP's alleged misconduct yesterday. Disclaimer: I am not yet an expert in the CAISO market or its rules, as we have been in a legal dispute with them for 10+ years and haven't traded directly into it, however, I am learning. Basically, they were exploiting California's willingness to pay startup costs and minimum run costs by playing with their bids in the Day Ahead and Real Time markets. CAISO will pay you as much as twice your actual startup costs and minimum run costs even if they never actually dispatch your power. So JP would bid in the DA market to get CAISO to dispatch their units for the following day, then they would alter their bids in the Real Time market so they rarely, if ever actually got dispatched, thus capturing double the startup and minimum run costs and profiting in the millions for generation they never dispatched. FERC has been focusing on market manipulation and hammering companies with big fines in the last 24 months. Constellation, the company that Exelon just merged with, was hit with a $250 million fine a few months ago. I basically was able to leverage this current climate into creating my new position here, which is FERC Compliance for our Resource Optimization department, which is all our short term trading functions. So I am slowly but surely mastering all the FERC Orders and starting to learn the CAISO market rules. Very exciting stuff.

QUOTE (JoeCoolMan24 @ Jul 18, 2012 -> 10:12 PM) You are meeting your Thai friend at a Thai restaurant......hmmm..... Yeah, take your thai friend to Rick Bayless' Mexican joint or something...

Liriano continuing to improve his trade value.

Well, I think the moral of the story is we all have to live with the hand we're dealt. There are certain things we can do to improve our chances, at least things that are most likely to improve our chances.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Jul 18, 2012 -> 09:05 PM) OK, so when does this end? Is this going to go on until 2015? Unless greg gets banned, he's not going anywhere. For a while it was just the marlins thread. Now this crap is spreading like wildfire throughout pht. Why is it so hard for people to just ignore him? Qwerty did this years ago. Oh I agree with you. I don't argue with him either. And I have openly asked others why they bother to. Greg does this because it makes him feel special or important to have all the attention.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jul 18, 2012 -> 07:49 PM) No, it was because of where it happened (randomness), swelling which happened to press against nerve clusters in my solar plexus. It was random chance, nothing more. Had this occurred mere millimeters elsewhere, the pain would have been minimal. So what if you would have been a lazy fat slob? Wouldn't have mattered?

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Jul 18, 2012 -> 08:46 PM) That doesn't matter. If 25-30 people daily are going to continue to respond at will to greg's "foolishness," then it's him vs the board. And not everything greg says is dumb. When I think about the failure that was 2011, the first thing that comes to mind for me is Adam Dunn. I'm sorry. I'm not blaming Ozzie for the catastrophe that was his season. I blame Adam and only Adam. Now he's bounced-back. Great. I don't buy for a second that it's because Robin's here and Ozzie's gone. So why is this phenomenon so rare? Why does this only happen to about two or three posters out of hundreds who regularly post? The vast majority of topics we discuss here, reasonable minds can disagree on. Then you get Greg's contributions, and it's like ALL reasonable minds agree that Greg is wrong. Dead wrong. There is a reason for that. And the reason is that his arguments stand in the face of voluminous evidence to the contrary. I'm not saying everything Greg posts is dumb. But the overwhelming majority of it is certainly not what I would characterize as thoughtful.

I know I'm not a frequent participant here and I certainly don't waste much of my time on politics, so you guys will probably (correctly) dismiss my opinion, but the entire system is so incredibly out-of-whack that I'm not sure who could succeed in the role of President, at least in terms of success as it relates to things he or she actually is responsible for doing. I don't think Barack is the smartest man who ever lived, but I'm willing to concede that he is an incredibly bright guy; to say that he's done nothing or that he and Romney are "dumb and dumber" seems very symptomatic of the entire political process IMHO. I'm not sure what the playbook is for any President in this political system anymore.

It's sounds to me like Reddy has gotten his hands on "In Defense of Food," by Michael Pollan. Y2H, do you think you would have been worse off had you not taken great care of yourself in your twenties?

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Jul 18, 2012 -> 07:34 PM) Pretty much. I was gonna post something similar but I'm staying out of this greg vs the board crap. s*** is tired. It's not Greg vs the board. It's sheer foolishness versus facts, 90% of the time. For comparison, a lot of the board piles on Marty, but Marty actually argues some facts once in awhile and not just some nonsensical opinion. There is a distinction. As for Alex, DA is right. When you make the amount of money that mlb players make, it is because you are considered a true professional. You are expected to produce results just like any other professional employee is. That being said, there is a distinction between crediting a manager for having particular skills that elicit results from those that report to him and placing accountability on the player to perform despite his manager. These are two different things people are stating, not one.

QUOTE (Stan Bahnsen @ Jul 18, 2012 -> 06:51 PM) Marty is to DV, as Cowley is to Ozzie - completely incapable of discussing ANYthing else. Keep derailing threads, Marty. I think it appears that way because when you take the extreme minority opinion, you have many more people to answer to. I admire Marty for having the courage to do so. Not many here do.

Greg, you form opinions quickly and stand by them in the face of facts that clearly expose you as being wrong. For whatever reason, people waste their time arguing with you over and over and over again. I'm not sure why.

QUOTE (Kalapse @ Jul 18, 2012 -> 05:33 PM) Well, Hawk is clearly full of s***: after being traded to the Indians early in the 1969 season Hawk went on to play 6 games at Fenway that season in an Indians uniform. The thing is: that HR didn't take place until his 29th and final AB of the 6 games. The only scenario in which this is feasible is if the Fenway faithful gave him 29 standing ovations or 1 final standing O for his last AB of the series and then did not cheer him again by default since his next AB in that park wouldn't come until the following season. To be fair, he didn't really say it that way. He bet Stone that Youkilis would get a standing ovation in his first at bat. Then he said they would cheer him until he beat them, and then it would be a different story. He then said "been there, done that."

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Jul 18, 2012 -> 03:35 PM) Ha! Is that where I got that from? It's very true though, and I am trying to live by that as much as possible including really cutting down things in my diet as well as alcohol (the hardest part). Yep..."Take care of your body and your body will take care of you." Kenpo, I believe