Honda CR-V Generations

These are the five generations of the Honda CR-V ... still see plenty of First Generation CR-Vs on the road here in Appalachia. The front grille and cargo area side windows are the things I look at to tell them apart:

First Generation (1995-2001)

Second Generation (2002-2006)

Third Generation (2007-2011)

Fourth Generation (2012-2016)

Fifth Generation (2017- )

Notes for Chat with Traders, Episode 110

Episode 110 ... @RollyTrader (69:09)

• "George"
• Native New Zealander
• Now living in Australia
• Brother 11 months older
• Dad gave them a thousand dollars, brothers would compete buying stocks
• 2001 in University
• Rugby friend said markets were the ultimate game
• Read the Market Wizard books
• You won't get rich quick
• Without a trading plan, it's just gambling
• Pick an asset class and stick to it
• Narrow your focus, and master those set-ups
• Read William O'Neil, learned CANSLIM
• Copied Mark Minervini style
• Worked in corporate finance, but hung out with traders all day
• At old Australian brokerage firm, no one talked about charts
• Started trading on his own
• Moved to Argentina
• Visited Mark Cook in Ohio ... watched his daily ritual, George was 26, 27 yo then
• Paid Mark Cook $5-$10K to do this for a week
• Mark Cook had super simple style, but day trading didn't suit George
• Read Mark Minervini books, met him, Minervini gave him direction
• Paid Mark Minervini for his courses
• Learned a ton from the two Marks
• Find someone with an audited performance record
• Mimic their style, then adapt
• Mark Cook traded bonds and emini only
• Day trading will never work for him because he likes to make a cup of tea (not watch screen)
• Two Marks are super calm traders, they do same thing over and over
• Minervini scales in and scales out
• Record every trade, study them carefully
• Minervini discipline rock-solid, never takes a trade outside his system
• Same is true of Mark Cook
• Most mistakes new traders make are avoidable
• Most new traders don't give trades room to work
• Trade one asset class
• Stick to your set-ups
• Don't add to losers
• Don't trade against trend
• Everything comes down to risk management 
• Doesn't care about the index, just the stocks he's watching
• Looks for strong sectors, strong companies
• Always uses the chart to enter
• Uses volatility contraction pattern from Minervini
• Uses "Pocket Pivot" from Gil Morales (another guy he subscribes to)
• He's a swing trader, not a day trader
• Trades Australian stocks mainly (90%)
• Has 15 scans, uses four religiously
• Looking for volume and price contraction
• End of day: runs scans, builds watch list
• Puts on a documentary then waits for his alerts to ding
• Mentions MarketSmith 
• Uses TradeStation and CQG
• Just looks at price and volume, some moving averages, no other indicators
• Looks for "bases" ... price and volume contraction through the range
• Only buys uptrending stocks
• Volume dries up, price contracts, he'll set his alert above
• Without trading rules, you won't survive
• "Optimal F" formula gives you optimal position size
• Usually doesn't put more than 8% in any one position
• But might put 20% in one stock
• Adapt trading rules to the market since it's dynamic
• Average stop is 6.5% away
• Controlling risk is what all successful traders are good at
• Spread on Australian microcaps is 10% alone
• New traders need to trade leading names, not microcaps
• Gamblers love to buy one cent stocks that go to two cents ("think they've done something right")
• His exits very discretionary, watches for breaks of 20 day MA 
• Rarely trades short side
• Best names to short are the former leaders, "most froth"
• Puts trading profits into venture capital
• Trading nice because you can just go to cash and relax
• Running a real business, you can never relax
• Twitter: @RollyTrader

Notes for Chat with Traders, Episode 111

Episode 111 ... David Bush (79:46)

• Started in TradeStation's EasyLanguage
• Previous guest on CwT podcast, episode 023
• Has won quant trading competitions, "Battlefin"?
• His model has traded with real money for six years [how much money?]
• Going from discretionary to systematic trading
• Good results, crummy Sharpe ratios
• Don't look at average drawdowns, look at max drawdowns
• Code your cherished notions to find that they're ridiculous and you'll abandon them
• Simple things are more robust
• Mandelbrot saying about simplicity??
• Avoid complex travel routes, being overly specific
• You need to be able to generalize well
• Decimalization, new regulations changed everything
• Market microstructure has changed dramatically
• 2000 share average trade size to 200 shares over last decade
• Strategy should be so simple you can write it down on a napkin
• "Poetry is moving easy in harness" -- strategies need a degree of freedom
• Backtesting poorly is easy to do: poor data, frequency of data, missing intraday lows and highs, sample sizes too small
• Must be able to articulate why model is working
• Does same logic for one market's strategy work for other markets? It should (at least have a positive expectation)
• Avoiding curve fitting: minimize rules and complexity, include out of sample data
• He's not a gunslinger, wades into the water
• Paralyzed by fear that your model is ineffective, you'll find reasons to delay launch
• Have super conservative assumptions -- slippage estimates should be large
• Fills and commissions estimates need to be large (realistic)
• Modeling market impact is huge ... trade size, illiquid markets need to be realistically accounted for
• Some rarely tweak their models, others constantly alter them
• After 1987 crash, reversion worked better
• "I've never seen a bad backtest" -- all survivorship bias
• How do you know when your model isn't working anymore?
• You have to be fascinated with markets to succeed in them
• Need more tools to manipulate data ... better than "word clouds"
• Need time and space and silence to have uninterrupted thoughts when coding
• View your own life as theta, "time decacy" ... don't waste time
• Use an egg timer, set it, and focus the entire time -- stay on task
• (Aaron mentions the Life Calendar)
• Practices zen meditation
• "Sit like your head's on fire" -- carpe diem
• You need to be mentally resilient as a trader, lot of stress, setbacks, uncertainty
• You need to be physically fit to trade
• Sunday is his zone-out time, no screens, chills out completely
• Need a healthy mind to trade
• www.alphatative.com
• Twitter: @alphatative

Notes for Chat with Traders, Episode 112

Episode 112 ... Jorge Soltero (73:09)

• Lives in Puerto Rico
• Native Puerto Rican
• Not all flip-flops and shorts in Puerto Rico
• Best of both worlds (commerce & leisure) in Puerto Rico
• US regulations
• Studied in the US
• Philosophy major, University of Chicago
• Lived in Chicago 25 years ago (aware of exchanges: Board, Merc, CBOE)
• Had friends who worked on the floor
• Worked for Archdiocese of Chicago, board member was bond trader
• Admin job at Archdiocese, wasn't leaving a big salary job to try to trade
• Asked quick-thinking math questions in interviews
• Pacific Coast (San Francisco) used to have exclusive options listings for tech stocks
• First job at Apollo Trading (small market making firm)
• Clerk in currency pit on Merc floor, D-mark was huge, Yen big (1994?)
• Always worked on options side
• "Controlled chaos" on the floor
• Eurodollar floor huge, you needed to be tall and strong and loud and aggressive
• "You never want to be the biggest trader in the pit" (you need liquidity, avoid getting stuck)
• Occasional scuffles and shoving matches, have to pay a fine for "non-business-like language"
• Spend all day next to competition, not co-workers -- unique environment
• Lots of settling of slights, real and perceived, off the floor
• He'd be waiting off the floor at 4AM in San Francisco, floor opened at 4:30 AM, needed to claim spot in pit before 6:30 AM open
• Left Apollo, got job at Hull Trading
• Hull was well known, big user of trading technology, no third-party options pricing software
• Timber Hill had its own options pricing software
• Interview question: Stack of pennies as high as Sears Tower, would they fit in this room?
• Hull Trading style -- never boredom traded, not cowboys ... very methodical, more confident
• You have to trust your model if you trade options
• Went from Ten Year Note pit to Equities (OEX) ... used to be super big deal, the OEX
• Just trying to capture bid offer all day long
• "Pit awareness" way ahead of the machines in the past, not true anymore
• Blair Hull, blackjack "wizard" 
• Have an edge, exploit it when you have one, back off when you don't
• Hard to find a copy of Thorp's original book
• NCAA tournament a big recreational gambling thing
• Hull guys would try to model everything, horse racing, NCAA, etc. 
• Hull bought by Goldman Sachs in 1999
• You needed to fit in at Hull, everyone got along, traders, developers, etc. Good teamwork important.
• Goldman Sachs a more competitive place than Hull
• QQQQ just listed in 1999
• Moved to London with Goldman Sachs, had no idea what he was walking into
• Hard to switch from floor to screen, point and click and pick up phone
• No energy, no noise from the crowd ... hard to judge market tone
• Silence of being off-floor very strange, he was told to "please calm down"
• Got into backdoor of institutional side through Goldman buyout
• Moved to UBS, back in US, and then moved to Merrill Lynch (back in London from 2009)
• Information edge that institutional trader has over retail trader is no longer large 
• Heavily regulated on institutional side, duty to find best price and structure for clients
• Playing field no longer as distorted as it used to be
• Position size matters and how you're going to use leverage
• Enjoyed his pit days the most from his trading life
• Now he's isolated, trading his own money
• Institutional traders just reacting to client order flow
• Go where the liquidity is
• Mixed bag results for him for the last six months on his own, but he's optimistic
• May have to hire a programmer to try out ideas, building models
• First saw ETFs in 1996, thought they were a great product
• ETFs liquid, cheap
• Lots of ETFs have options listed on them
• Twitter: @El_9uapo (Old joke from the Three Amigos movie)

You Fear That You're Living in Lebanon

I suffered through the entire Spotify Global Top 50 song list and only found one song I liked ... this one ... she was born in 1997. (The post title is my interpretation of the unintelligible lyrics ... ain't true, ain't true, ain't true, no.) 

"Crying in the Club" Available at: Spotify http://smarturl.it/CamilaCabello_Sptfy iTunes http://smarturl.it/CITC Apple Music http://smarturl.it/CITC_AM Find Camila Here: Twitter: @camila_cabello IG: @camila_cabello Facebook: @97camilacabello Website: www.camilacabello.com Video Director: Emil Nava Video Producer: Mary Ann Tanedo For Rojas Vision, Inc. (C) 2017 Simco Ltd.

Notes for Chat with Traders, Episode 113

Episode 113 ... Benjamin Small (60:02)

Interesting episode ... I know a bit more about Bitcoin now.

• Got Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in 2006
• Wall street firms started hiring people like him to automate things
• At UBS in spring 2006
• "Junior Quantitative Researcher"
• Prop trading allowed before Volcker Rule
• UBS had huge retail market making operation
• Worked on whether to internalize retail order flow or send it to the Street
• Algorithm they design makes the decision
• UBS, Citadel, KCG biggest buyers of order flow
• They want exclusive access to retail order flow
• Most retail orders are market order or marketable orders
• Any order that's willing to cross the bid ask spread has value
• Non-marketable limit orders must be routed to an exchange
• Brokers pick an exchange where rebates highest
• Beginning 10-15 years ago, desks got more aggressive about maximizing profitability
• Equity options orders can't be internalized (illegal)
• Trading desks are profitable, so are retail investors getting screwed by them? Tricky question
• Off-exchange volume is ~30% of total volume
• Worked at Citadel, then Credit Suisse
• Built statistical models to improve prop trading desk algorithms for eight years in all
• Must constantly tweak, fine-tune models used by desk
• Monitoring the algorithms in real time to improve things
• Latency is a huge issue in US equity markets
• Have to optimize computer code so it's fastest, competitive edge
• Memory versus disk versus cache
• Worked at IEX, head of quantitative research for one year
• IEX had ambitions to become an exchange (now it is one)
• One of the inventors of the "Discretionary Peg" order
• Tries to predict on client's behalf to switch between inside peg and midpoint peg
• Works at Gemini currently, head of market structure
• Market structure an interesting combination of microeconomics, statistics, and computer science
• Most Bitcoin exchanges have central limit order book
• Winklevoss twins founded Gemini a few years ago
• Received licensing to trade Bitcoin from New York State Department of Financial Services ~15 months ago
• Gemini a fully regulated, licensed Bitcoin exchange
• Traditional financial services players could be comfortable with Bitcoin on Gemini
• Licensing important because US heavily regulates financial services
• Risk and compliance concerns put to rest
• Need to make an on-ramp for institutional money into Bitcoin
• Need to normalize Bitcoin, just another asset, not a crazy crypto-currency
• Evidence that people are seeing Bitcoin as a virtual store of value, not just a speculative thing
• More institutions are getting involved in Bitcoin
• Majority of Bitcoin trading is by professional Bitcoin market makers
• Only 20-25% of stock trading is retail
• Bitcoin not too tightly correlated with other asset classes, useful for portfolio managers
• Choice of exchange and wallet providers is all important ... your account could be hacked [or Mt. Gox'd]
• Many Bitcoin exchanges and wallet providers are not vigilant about security
• Can manage your own Bitcoin wallet but if you lose the key, it's lost
• Bitcoin trading primitive, only $15BB market cap
• Most sophisticated market makers don't want to deal with Bitcoin because it's too small
• Think of trading SPY by comparison -- tons of market makers, penny spread, hundreds of millions of notional at both bid and offer at any time
• Any aribtrage opportunities in Bitcoin?
• Arbitrage across exchanges worldwide ... liquidity, credit risk different by exchange
• Statistical arbitrage a profitable strategy by itself
• HFT haven't entered Bitcoin ecosystem ... yet
• Lots of scams and ponzi schemes in crypto-currencies, just like penny stocks
• Why is Bitcoin big in China? Avoiding capital controls and Chinese are natural speculators (gamblers)
• There are hundreds of other crypto-currencies, alt-coins
• Bitcoin is only five years old, but it's the "core concept"
• Ethereum network added a lot of new ideas, help ecosystem evolve, "Ether" is the token
• Ether has "smart contracts" -- like a derivative contract but enshrined in computer code, not law
• Ether faster than Bitcoin when it comes to settling transactions
• Founder of Ethereum is a young Russian kid from east Brooklyn
• Bitcoin has first-mover advantage
• 10 or 20 years from now, could be a much better idea than Bitcoin
• Gemini has anti-money-laundering controls
• Bitcoin is no scam
• Any alt-coin that doesn't have an adequate market cap should be avoided
• Look at the source code, all alt-coins are open source, do background research
• Lots of oddball alt-coins based on weird ideas
• Big laboratory for experimentation
• "Shitcoin"
• 4PM auction at Gemini, match buyers and sellers to get a solid price for the asset, one price
• Walrasian equilibrium is the algo they use
• Gemini exchange broadcasts forecasted auction price starting at 3:50 PM
• Bitcoin will eventually take its place among commodities like gold and oil (he predicts)
• Bitcoin has mathematically defined supply, so should become stable store of value [he says hopefully]
• Transactions take 30 minutes to clear on the blockchain -- slow!
• In future, with instant transfer of value, Bitcoin accepted at point of sale is a possibility
• We never touch paper currency anymore, all credit cards and (stored credit cards at) Amazon now
• Banks already have full control of your money, no need to be paranoid about it
• www.gemini.com
• Not on Twitter

Chairman Recommended: Cherry & Olive Pitter

I eat a lot of olives and did a big study on whether it was better to buy pitted or unpitted olives. My conclusion after exhaustive research eating thousands of olives was you should always buy unpitted olives and pit them yourself.

I had been using this cherry pitter to pit my olives, but of course it didn't work very well. Then my wife bought this Cherry & Olive Pitter from Oxo and it is the bomb; it works beautifully! No splatter, easy to clean, and consistently smooth pitting.

I eat $13 worth of unpitted olives a week, so this thing is a steal at $13.

UPDATE (Jan. 2018): I'm on my third one of these as the previous two broke, so expect to replace it every quarter if you pit a lot of olives like I do. 

Notes for Chat with Traders, Episode 114

Episode 114 ... Brannigan Barrett (69:33)

• South African 
• Futures day trader
• Not easy to sit in front of the screens for ten hours a day
• Trading for four or five years
• Getting bigger is a process
• Write down why you want to get bigger
• Liquidity factors to consider
• Hates targets, thinks they are limiting
• "Clipping," "Clip" ... must be a British term for trade size?
• Always wanted to trade
• Formerly a currency dealer
• Landed in UK Sep. 1, 2011
• Got a job with "Futex" ?
• No futures trading in South Africa
• 400-500 millisecond delay in South Africa too great for day trading
• South Africa not a gambling culture
• Wage earners, value family life, not like the Western world
• Never taken "no" for an answer
• Futex took him on because of his enthusiasm
• Successful traders are dog fighters, have to keep coming back
• Types of traders in a firm all important
• Every successful trader super diligent about managing risk
• Lee Gibbs traded in his firm ("legendary trader")
• 6:20 AM every day Lee Gibbs in the office (he was already rich but that didn't matter)
• Everything Lee Gibbs did, Brannigan Barrett emulated
• Successful traders understand how to employ leverage
• Good traders know when to back off, take days off, and also know when to press
• Trusting yourself and your abilities takes at least two years
• One person's 10,000 hours of practice different from another person's 10,000 hours
• 2011 markets extremely volatile
• 2013 2014 markets were dead
• Not going to talk about Futex, but they had some of the best traders in the City
• Futex defunct now for some reason which goes unmentioned 
• Started with new firm in the City with four or five original Futex guys
• "Axia Futures" ?
• Trades across eight markets: 1) German bonds and US Ten Year 2) Emini S&P 500 and Euro Stoxx 50 3) Euro and Sterling 4) Oil & Gold
• Can watch him on YouTube and Periscope?
• Likes to trade "flows" ... going with the flow?
• Likes to trade news
• Prepares for Central Bank news
• If you think you can move the market, you're not going to last long
• He used to average down down down ... risk manager would shout out him
• He now reverses a trade when he's wrong
• Emotional, weak traders need to be taken advantage of ... identify where they are (where he used to be)
• Does daily debriefing
• "There is one good trade every single day" -- analyze it during daily debrief
• Only need to make one good trade a day
• Records his screens every day and then replays it during debrief
• He has daily checklist: 12 things he ticks off every day (going to the gym, etc.)
• Figures out what sets him off emotionally, then avoids it in future
• Not a time-based job, in the office at all hours
• Takes December and January off
• Traded US election starting 10PM till 8AM next day (London time) 
• Alex Hayward was his mentor, had a term "energy capital" ... you've only got so much energy for taking risk
• Most be people need someone to hold their hand; instead, write it down
• Your goals need a process ... make a tick sheet, a.k.a. a checklist
• You can make money doing the wrong thing or the right thing, so making money not a goal
• Open your mind up! Discard your false truths
• Trading is a skill you develop over time
• Everyone in the world would trade if it were easy
• Trading is a simple binary (up or down)
• Trading is a "silly silly game," don't make it complex
• Keep it simple
• Periscopes every Sunday
• Twitter: @Trader_Bran (doesn't remember it)

Notes for Chat with Traders, Episode 115

Episode 115 ... Adam Grimes (107:14)

• Been in the markets for 20 years
• Started out trading small accounts while massively over-leveraged
• Day traded S&P 500 futures
• Got MBA and did a lot of PhD coursework
• Spent time on NY Mercantile Exchange
• CIO for Waverly Advisors 
• Has traded everything over every time frame
• "Been around the block a few times"
• Appeared on Chat with Traders episode 20
• Only looks at price, no fundamentals, no political factors
• Trading style is now very simple
• Used to have very marked-up charts, not anymore
• Tries to understand momentum and volatility
• Can't compete with HFT, but:
• There is power in human discretion, intuition
• P&L tells you if you're learning anything over time
• Need money and time to graduate from the "school of hard knocks"
• Discretionary traders need to "ask the data" about their ideas
• Spend a few hours to learn how to use Excel
• Don't need tick data and C++
• Easy to identify patterns in middle of chart, difficult to identify at hard right edge
• He's a "Numbers Nerd"
• Forward test with small trades
• Many find their brilliant system never beats buy and hold [Indeed]
• To pay for your time and risk, must beat buy and hold by huge margin
• Day trading edges usually don't cover transaction costs or the bid-ask spread
• Many successful traders don't understand why they make money
• Was a professional musician before he started trading
• Former composer of music
• Quants tend to be too rigid, lack creativity (engineering backgrounds)
• Big believer in meditation and breath work
• Doesn't base position size on confidence or a "pretty chart pattern"
• The market will encourage you to do the wrong thing at the wrong time
• Grew up in a farm community, so thought he could trade ag futures (wrong)
• He could have 12 hour conversation about any of these topics [I believe it]
• Had no math background (a musician) but he learned later on, anyone can do it
• Need knowledge first, then develop your skills
• People without emotional control rush to become system traders, but:
• Not a substitute, system trading has its own emotional pitfalls
• Focus on just one thing for a few years at first
• Don't be the bee who bounces from flower to flower
• Learning curve at least several years
• Do a lot of trades, collect a lot of data
• Five step plan for struggling traders:
• 1) stop the bleeding (stop trading)
• It's true that you can't learn to trade without trading (but you know you're a loser so stop)
• Struggling traders have no written trading plan 2) write a trading plan
• 3) Start backtesting (yes, they're worthless but you need to find an edge)
• 4) Start forward testing your successful backtest, but without money
• 5) Start trading it with real money (vanishingly small size), mainly about collecting data (slippage, commissions, etc.)
• Have to earn the right to trade size
• Need patience and discipline, trading is a real grind, most can't do it
• He's a fan of group trading, less likely to do "stupid shit" if it hurts everyone
• Trading journey above takes many many months
• Idea of 10,000 hours of practice is misguided
• Are you up for five years of consistent losses? Can you structure your life to do this?
• If you don't know you have an edge, you have no business trading
• Any money you make at first is pure luck
• Traders who are beaten up in the beginning have a better chance for success
• Has large free trading course at his blog
• www.adamhgrimes.com
• Twitter: @AdamHGrimes

Answers to Lingering Questions from Bloodline

Answers to these lingering questions posed by Bloodline:

1. Seriously, where was Meg? Or, really, where was Linda Cardellini for most of this season?

SAN FRANCISCO

2. And, if we’re working under the assumption Meg really wanted to disappear from her life, we’re assuming she could not practice the law under an assumed name — so how in the hell did she afford that sweet apartment in L.A.?

INHERITED MONEY AND SAVINGS (AND HOUSEMATES)

3. Who really was that Beth Mackey lady? Did we ever really figure out if she was a Rayburn (secret love child of Robert) or what?

THAT'S THE IMPLICATION

4. Where was Evangeline? I know she was “recording” somewhere but what was the point of her coming into our lives in such a significant way in season 2 only for her to disappear completely?

SHE WAS FLAKEY

5. On that note, after creeping menacingly around for a whole season, why did Ozzy just up and kill himself?

HAUNTED BY DEMONS AFTER HIS HEAD INJURY

6. And, more importantly, was he really getting visions before his death thanks to getting his head kicked in?

YES

7. Did Sally Rayburn and Roy Gilbert have an affair?

YES

8. Why doesn’t Ben Rayburn ever get a chance to have a storyline of his own?

HE'S JUST A KID

9. Will the Inn really be entirely underwater in a few years?

MAYBE, THAT'S WHAT THE BANK APPRAISER THINKS ANYWAY

10. If Meg hates boats so much, how on earth does she know how to expertly pilot that sunfish?

SHE HATES POWERBOATS

11. Why did Kevin think he couldn’t get extradited from Cuba? Why didn’t Belle turn off her GPS?

NO EXTRADITION TREATY. BELLE MESSED UP.

12. Is Chelsea (the consistently wonderful Chloe Sevigny) going to be okay? Because if anyone deserves happiness…

SHE'S GOING TO MAKE BETTER MONEY WITH HER TITS AS A BAR MAID THAN SHE DID AS A NURSE

13. Will Eric O’Bannon (also consistently wonderful Jamie McShane) really serve 30 years for a crime he didn’t do? Or will John do right by him?

HE'S SCREWED

14. What was the deal with Diana repeatedly getting drunk out of the blue? Were there any hints to this behavior before this season?

SAD, LONELY, SEPARATED ... OF COURSE SHE'S DRINKING

15. Who was Janie having sex with?

NO ONE. THAT WAS DIANA'S DESPERATE ATTEMPT TO GET JOHN'S ATTENTION

16. What ever happened to Meg’s hot affair dude, Alec (Steven Pasquele)?

WHO CARES

17. What was the significance of Meg’s big back tattoo?

BREAKING FREE

18. Did we ever really get to the bottom of that seahorse necklace thing?

IT'S WHAT SARAH DROPPED IN THE ROCKS THAT LED TO HER DROWNING

19. Why did the Rayburns suddenly become Catholic in season 3?

COULD HAVE BEEN AN EPISCOPAL PRIEST MAYBE? 

20. Who has Robert’s ukulele?

IT'S STILL ON THE WALL

21. Why couldn’t they get Ben Mendelsohn a better wig?

OR YOUNG BEN MENDELSOHN A BETTER WIG

22. Why couldn’t they get Owen Teague a better wig?

SEE ABOVE

23. Why did the show decide to introduce apparently important figures — John’s BFF, Mike Gallagher, or his new comely partner Detective Carol—right at the end?

MIKE HIRED AWAY THE SHERIFF ... CAROL WAS JUST ANOTHER HOTTIE

24. But did Carol eventually get the job of sheriff?

NO

25. Did Mike really come to town just to court Sheriff Franco away?

YES, AND HIT ON DIANA AGAIN (I HOPE)

26. Why was John not mad that Mike made a pass at his wife?

EVERYONE MAKES A PASS AT JOHN'S WIFE

27. What on earth was Roy Gilbert’s deal anyway? How did he get tangled up with the Rayburns and get them the money for the Inn?

HE KILLED SOMEONE WHILE DRUNK, THE RAYBURNS KEPT HIS SECRET, HE FUNDED THEIR PURCHASE OF THE INN. HE WAS A CROOKED GUY INVOLVED IN LOTS OF SHADY STUFF

28. Where did all his money come from, anyway?

SEE ABOVE

29. Why must Kevin be the only Rayburn to be punished?

BECAUSE HE'S THE STUPIDEST (AND WEAKEST, AS SALLY CRUELLY SNARLED IN THE FINALE)

30. How will Kevin survive wearing closed-toed shoes?

WHO SAYS HE'S GOING TO PRISON?

31. Who will take care of Rocky?

BELLE! SHE ISN'T GOING ANYWHERE

32. Why did Sally really leave the day of Sarah’s death?

FIGHT WITH HUSBAND OVER HER AFFAIR WITH ROY, OR ANY ONE OF HER HUSBAND'S MANY AFFAIRS

33. Why did the Rayburns like taking the bus so much?

UNTRACEABLE ... CAN BUY TICKETS WITH CASH (UNLIKE AIRLINES)

34. Whatever happened to John Rayburn’s dog, Surf?

WHO CARES

35. What happened to Mia Kirshner?

SARAH DIED

36. What really happened after John Rayburn’s deep sea fishing accident?

HE SUFFERED FROM OXYGEN DEPRIVATION, MESSED UP HIS MIND, TEMPORARILY

37. Was that marlin’s brutal attacker ever brought to justice?

THE CUBAN WITH A FOUL MOUTH? (SPANISH SWEAR WORDS ARE THE BEST, BY THE WAY)

38. What does John say to Nolan out on the dock?

YOU DECIDE

39. Does it even matter?

IT DOES. WRITE YOUR OWN ENDING TO THIS TRAGEDY, BECAUSE IT'S STILL A TRAGEDY