Stamford Marriott, 9:30 AM, 4/6/07

A gathering of private equity and hedge fund folk. The publisher of Trader and DealMaker magazines stands at the podium with the "Top 100 Traders of 2006" issue, including the guy from Centaurus in Houston on the other side of the Amaranth trade who made $2 billion for the year. "Can you imagine what that feels like?" she asks, awestruck. It was pretty pathetic to see a grown human -- who herself made surely reasonable money -- get excited like this, and the mostly guy crowd tittered a little as well at the mere thought of it. Thing is, the Centaurus guy was smart, but he got lucky as hell, and he basically did the same thing as Brian Hunter, just got luckier. There's nothing to emulate. And the problem is that there's no downside, failure is understigmatized. Hunter is back in business, as is John Meriwether of LTCM.

Next, a stop off at the Burlington Coat Factory in city center for a good value on a raincoat. Feels a lot like deparment store, not all that discount an atmosphere, rather pleasant. But there are shirts with 20-20.5 necks, and a 16 is very hard to find. Which says something.

The Target across the street looked like an old-fashioned department store too, making the downtown feel almost real.