In normal times (whatever those were), rising oil prices and interest rates would be a cause for worry. Oh for the early ‘80s when the Hollywood actor became president and there was a USSR trying to tame Afghanistan and Paul Volcker targeted bank reserves!
In these fascinating days, hikes in energy prices and bond yields should be welcome. The not so hidden agenda of the controlling authorities is to inflate away debt and worry about the consequences later. Krugman and others insist that inflation Cassandras are false prophets and that deflation is the enemy. They may well be right, but Kev thinks the Nobelist and his ilk are betting as wrongly as Kev did on baseball this past week.
Though rates dropped after spiking earlier last week, they can only go up this year. If they don’t, then the Obama presidency will be a failure because it will mean the problem that was thrust upon it – restarting economic activity – has not been solved. Fiscal and monetary captains will not turn off the spigots until the prices of goods, services and money go up. Lock in a mortgage now if you have a job.
And jobs data will be key this week. ADP will report corporate layoffs on Wednesday, and the Labor Department will tell us on Friday how many more lined up at the soup kitchen in May. Any negative number below 550,000 will be greeted with cheers in the equity market.
But there are no normal times. They have never existed. What’s good for General Motors is good for the USA? It has taken Kev, because it’s all about him, well into his later years, to realize his expectation that eventually all secrets would be revealed was a mirage. Yet, we still court Miss Market. We can do no less. Finer minds than Kev’s summon her. Be nimble, be quick, and believe in God or not, but take your time on putts.
Still in with PALM, F, AMD, and looking to get back into DXO. Get out of government bonds while the getting is good.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Animal House
Economists embrace mathematical models because they offer the illusion of authority. And indeed they are right to stick with the rigor of numbers. Facing facts and manipulating them into an algorithm that predicts the future is the truest avenue open to men and women. We only have our history to draw from. Past encounters and experience inform our decisions, wrong as they may turn out to be.
Kev’s “dog “ theory has taken a beating this week at the old ball game, but Miss Market has been a fierce lioness. She is a hungry mommy, intent on feeding her kittens (or is it cubs?), her mate and herself, enabling Kev to feed his brood and keep Mr. Landlord happy. In short, she is an animal.
In a speech today, the Dallas Fed president, Richard Fisher, patted himself and his colleagues on the back with the remark that monetary policy had succeeded in reigniting “animal spirits” in the strivers and sportsmen who toil in the fields, golf courses and streams of these United States of America. This is what is called going out on a limb. There are many who see only darkness and cave-dwelling ahead.
We may have shot errant arrows at ball clubs that escaped our hunt, but we spy an antelope, or ibex, or some kind of antlered beast brought down by our loving mate for protein-loving investors. Let us feast.
PALM’s Pre phone will be much coveted. After Sprint’s exclusive arrangement expires, Verizon and ATT will pounce to offer this rival to Apple and Research in Motion. PALM is volatile, but wait until Christmas sales take off. Ford is a stalwart. Buy oil (green is good, but dinosaurs died for a reason). We can’t predict the future, but try we must.
Anything can happen. When was the last time both catchers (masks in place) and both managers were thrown out? It happened today in youbetcha Minnesota in a game between the bloody hose and the twinkies.
And by the way, Zambrano was right to protest in his demonstrative way. I’ve done the same thing when blowing a three-foot putt or a second serve. We are animals with spirit after all.
Kev’s “dog “ theory has taken a beating this week at the old ball game, but Miss Market has been a fierce lioness. She is a hungry mommy, intent on feeding her kittens (or is it cubs?), her mate and herself, enabling Kev to feed his brood and keep Mr. Landlord happy. In short, she is an animal.
In a speech today, the Dallas Fed president, Richard Fisher, patted himself and his colleagues on the back with the remark that monetary policy had succeeded in reigniting “animal spirits” in the strivers and sportsmen who toil in the fields, golf courses and streams of these United States of America. This is what is called going out on a limb. There are many who see only darkness and cave-dwelling ahead.
We may have shot errant arrows at ball clubs that escaped our hunt, but we spy an antelope, or ibex, or some kind of antlered beast brought down by our loving mate for protein-loving investors. Let us feast.
PALM’s Pre phone will be much coveted. After Sprint’s exclusive arrangement expires, Verizon and ATT will pounce to offer this rival to Apple and Research in Motion. PALM is volatile, but wait until Christmas sales take off. Ford is a stalwart. Buy oil (green is good, but dinosaurs died for a reason). We can’t predict the future, but try we must.
Anything can happen. When was the last time both catchers (masks in place) and both managers were thrown out? It happened today in youbetcha Minnesota in a game between the bloody hose and the twinkies.
And by the way, Zambrano was right to protest in his demonstrative way. I’ve done the same thing when blowing a three-foot putt or a second serve. We are animals with spirit after all.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Decoration Day
Heard a bunch of good jokes on the golf course on Monday, none of which can be repeated in a family column. Enjoyed stories from the “oldest members of the club” (see P.G. Wodehouse). These honorable fellows were gracious enough to permit this hapless duffer to invade their muni preserve and enjoy their company in an aged and hallowed tournament in the county of Kings. I learned much, far more than just how to manage a golf course or wave a wand with conviction. You had to be there.
But, though my group would recoil in horror, I have to admit that putting bores me. Three- and four-putts – among other flubs – doomed me, but I just can’t get interested. I have this superstition that you only have so many good putts or base hits in any one stick, and that you shouldn’t waste them on the practice green or in the batting cage. This is perverse, I know. Other than a lack of the requisite motor skills, it explains why I will never make the senior tour or learn to hit a breaking ball. Therapy is called for and I will seek it immediately.
That confession made, Miss Market seems to have the same malady. She leaps at “green shoots” (a soaring drive to the middle of the nicely cut fairway) then Dutch elm disease (insouciant putting) in the form of a record drop in home prices in the first quarter blights the promising foliage. Yet consumer confidence as measured by the Conference Board surged last month and hope springs anew on the next hole. We understand each other, Miss Market and I, which is to say we are goslings who have lost mom and dad to golfers with shotguns in their bags and must waddle about figuring out on our own what to eat and how to find it.
Now, the consumer confidence readings are notorious for inaccurately predicting future spending, but they do, at least, give us an idea of whether animal spirits are stirring. The onus is on Obama and the Democrats to deliver. Americans know stimulus is coming. Whether it does the trick, “only time will tell,” as the TV reporters say in concluding their stand-up recitations of “news.”
For now, I can’t let loose of PALM yet. If consumer confidence is rising and the Pre phone lives up to the hype, the stock could be worth well more than at midday May 26. Ford, which will soon be the only American car company left standing on its own two feet is a keeper, too. AMD still has value, we think. Sticking with Novavax in the biotech sector for no other reason than a New Delhi-native golf partner on Saturday assured me it was a solid Indian company (HQ in Maryland) on the right track. Though I wonder if this is tantamount to Cubs manager Lou Piniella sending in pitcher Carlos Zambrano as a pinch-hitter last night. The ploy failed, much to Kev’s delight since he took the Bucs, but it was original.
Cashing in on SLV and DXO for the bucks they’ve made so far and to keep the wolf from the door, but for the long run, precious metals and oil should pay off when inflation gets going again if you want to stick with them as summer and the driving season begins on what has come to be known as Memorial Day.
In 1866, the ladies of Columbus, Mississippi, are said to have been the first to honor the fallen in the recent War Between the States, decorating graves of the rebel dead and then strewing flowers on the scorned Union graves moldering from the Battle of Shiloh, but Waterloo, New York, is also said to be the site of the first Decoration Day. It matters little, of course, who began the tradition, but it has evolved into a universal nod to the United States and its sons and daughters, whether they be descendants of the Grand Army of the Republic or the United Confederate Veterans, who have covered themselves with glory.
Played golf, took profits, grilled ribs for the family and picked up potato salad and baked beans at the deli last night, got a good night’s sleep. Nobody has it better.
But, though my group would recoil in horror, I have to admit that putting bores me. Three- and four-putts – among other flubs – doomed me, but I just can’t get interested. I have this superstition that you only have so many good putts or base hits in any one stick, and that you shouldn’t waste them on the practice green or in the batting cage. This is perverse, I know. Other than a lack of the requisite motor skills, it explains why I will never make the senior tour or learn to hit a breaking ball. Therapy is called for and I will seek it immediately.
That confession made, Miss Market seems to have the same malady. She leaps at “green shoots” (a soaring drive to the middle of the nicely cut fairway) then Dutch elm disease (insouciant putting) in the form of a record drop in home prices in the first quarter blights the promising foliage. Yet consumer confidence as measured by the Conference Board surged last month and hope springs anew on the next hole. We understand each other, Miss Market and I, which is to say we are goslings who have lost mom and dad to golfers with shotguns in their bags and must waddle about figuring out on our own what to eat and how to find it.
Now, the consumer confidence readings are notorious for inaccurately predicting future spending, but they do, at least, give us an idea of whether animal spirits are stirring. The onus is on Obama and the Democrats to deliver. Americans know stimulus is coming. Whether it does the trick, “only time will tell,” as the TV reporters say in concluding their stand-up recitations of “news.”
For now, I can’t let loose of PALM yet. If consumer confidence is rising and the Pre phone lives up to the hype, the stock could be worth well more than at midday May 26. Ford, which will soon be the only American car company left standing on its own two feet is a keeper, too. AMD still has value, we think. Sticking with Novavax in the biotech sector for no other reason than a New Delhi-native golf partner on Saturday assured me it was a solid Indian company (HQ in Maryland) on the right track. Though I wonder if this is tantamount to Cubs manager Lou Piniella sending in pitcher Carlos Zambrano as a pinch-hitter last night. The ploy failed, much to Kev’s delight since he took the Bucs, but it was original.
Cashing in on SLV and DXO for the bucks they’ve made so far and to keep the wolf from the door, but for the long run, precious metals and oil should pay off when inflation gets going again if you want to stick with them as summer and the driving season begins on what has come to be known as Memorial Day.
In 1866, the ladies of Columbus, Mississippi, are said to have been the first to honor the fallen in the recent War Between the States, decorating graves of the rebel dead and then strewing flowers on the scorned Union graves moldering from the Battle of Shiloh, but Waterloo, New York, is also said to be the site of the first Decoration Day. It matters little, of course, who began the tradition, but it has evolved into a universal nod to the United States and its sons and daughters, whether they be descendants of the Grand Army of the Republic or the United Confederate Veterans, who have covered themselves with glory.
Played golf, took profits, grilled ribs for the family and picked up potato salad and baked beans at the deli last night, got a good night’s sleep. Nobody has it better.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Game on!
The World Champion Philadelphia club of the National League brought the mighty American League pinstripers to their knees tonight, taking advantage of the mysterious winds of the Bronx bandbox, putting Kev in the plus column. We will forgive our taking the bloody socks of Boston against the glove-challenged Metropolitans of Queens, but Kawakami, alias KK, stood up brilliantly against Halladay in the home of Sherman’s gift to Lincoln. It must be hell for unreconstructed Confederates to see that statue at 59th Street with Nike hailing the victor astride his prancing mount. But it’s just a game, after all.
Just a game? What nonsense. Why, it is the very reason for living. If it were not for games, the world would be a dreary place, fit only for debtor prisons and dour sires and mares counting the pennies they earn while the mules in their harnesses plow the 20 acres allotted them.
God (your higher being or whomever) has now given us summer. A delicious sweat trickles on our brows. Shorts and polo shirts are required wear. A golf glove keeps the left hand noticeably paler than the rest of the exposed appendages. The same glove protects the mole on my index finger knuckle that has reminded me which is my left hand since I was a boy. I pray it doesn’t fade.
But I stray beyond what makes the world goes ‘round – fear and greed.
Just as the previous administration knew its bread was buttered by preventing another terrorist attack on U.S. soil, so does the present one know that economic recovery will define it. Fiscal and monetary policies have as their single goal reviving animal spirits even at the cost of soaring inflation down the road.
Bush, Cheney, et al., were willing to sink to waterboarding to prevent another 9/11. Obama, Geithner, Bernanke, et al., will risk all to get the U.S. fully employed again. The bet they are making is that growth will be robust enough to pay for the debt used to get it going. They could well be wrong, and the U.S. could be saddled with slow growth, massive inflation and a collapsing currency, but given that they hold all the reins of power, I wouldn't doubt that climbing out of the mess is all but certain, though it may land us in another mess.
In the meantime, though, staying with equities, oil and other commodities seems the path of least resistance.
And Lebron is indeed King James, the guy who ruled Britain when Shakespeare wrote “The Tempest.”
Oh yeah, broke 100 the other day with a brilliant display of course management. I’ll insist on nothing less in the future
Just a game? What nonsense. Why, it is the very reason for living. If it were not for games, the world would be a dreary place, fit only for debtor prisons and dour sires and mares counting the pennies they earn while the mules in their harnesses plow the 20 acres allotted them.
God (your higher being or whomever) has now given us summer. A delicious sweat trickles on our brows. Shorts and polo shirts are required wear. A golf glove keeps the left hand noticeably paler than the rest of the exposed appendages. The same glove protects the mole on my index finger knuckle that has reminded me which is my left hand since I was a boy. I pray it doesn’t fade.
But I stray beyond what makes the world goes ‘round – fear and greed.
Just as the previous administration knew its bread was buttered by preventing another terrorist attack on U.S. soil, so does the present one know that economic recovery will define it. Fiscal and monetary policies have as their single goal reviving animal spirits even at the cost of soaring inflation down the road.
Bush, Cheney, et al., were willing to sink to waterboarding to prevent another 9/11. Obama, Geithner, Bernanke, et al., will risk all to get the U.S. fully employed again. The bet they are making is that growth will be robust enough to pay for the debt used to get it going. They could well be wrong, and the U.S. could be saddled with slow growth, massive inflation and a collapsing currency, but given that they hold all the reins of power, I wouldn't doubt that climbing out of the mess is all but certain, though it may land us in another mess.
In the meantime, though, staying with equities, oil and other commodities seems the path of least resistance.
And Lebron is indeed King James, the guy who ruled Britain when Shakespeare wrote “The Tempest.”
Oh yeah, broke 100 the other day with a brilliant display of course management. I’ll insist on nothing less in the future
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
The Wedge Will Return
Kev is a melancholy baby, not because he has anything to complain about, but because he is embarrassed by his riches when much of the world is filled with danger and sorrow. Golf score was in triple digits again today, but he is enthused about his full swing under the tutelage of a good friend and smart guy in the sun and breeze of Dyker Beach.
The check will hit the bank tomorrow. He has tickets to the U.S. Open and Belmont. His supply of diet coke and Hungry Man TV dinners will keep him hydrated and fed. His children are beautiful and healthy. The Athletics pulled through for him tonight against the Rays, more than compensating for his loss by taking the O’s vs. the pinstripers, who used the jet stream to knock three homers in a row off an otherwise artful moundsman.
Didn’t have to worry about bombs lobbed onto the first tee by drones. Enjoyed deepening his tan and head of hair that needs a crew-cutting now that summer is upon us. Didn’t have to care that he lost his sand wedge at a prior hole, knowing, somehow, that it would return.
No, we are brought to our knees by recalling the verse of John Keats, a genius who died at the age of 25, who wrote of the nightingale’s immortal life beyond the experience of those who wave a wand at a dimpled ball and pretend it means something.
“What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs.”
What a description of putting strokes, or stock picking. Kev grows worrisome about the stock market. To paraphrase Keats, there is no long run for the sentient species. Somebody told me that homo sapiens are the only animals that laugh because they are the only ones who know they will die.
But let’s not despair in our inability to reach the green in two. The wedge returned, finished 18 with a double bogey and that lucky ol’sun will be out tomorrow.
Palm has killed us recently, Ford has hung in, AMD has been a stalwart. NYT is up because takeover rumors are rife. Life is good. Buy oil.
The check will hit the bank tomorrow. He has tickets to the U.S. Open and Belmont. His supply of diet coke and Hungry Man TV dinners will keep him hydrated and fed. His children are beautiful and healthy. The Athletics pulled through for him tonight against the Rays, more than compensating for his loss by taking the O’s vs. the pinstripers, who used the jet stream to knock three homers in a row off an otherwise artful moundsman.
Didn’t have to worry about bombs lobbed onto the first tee by drones. Enjoyed deepening his tan and head of hair that needs a crew-cutting now that summer is upon us. Didn’t have to care that he lost his sand wedge at a prior hole, knowing, somehow, that it would return.
No, we are brought to our knees by recalling the verse of John Keats, a genius who died at the age of 25, who wrote of the nightingale’s immortal life beyond the experience of those who wave a wand at a dimpled ball and pretend it means something.
“What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs.”
What a description of putting strokes, or stock picking. Kev grows worrisome about the stock market. To paraphrase Keats, there is no long run for the sentient species. Somebody told me that homo sapiens are the only animals that laugh because they are the only ones who know they will die.
But let’s not despair in our inability to reach the green in two. The wedge returned, finished 18 with a double bogey and that lucky ol’sun will be out tomorrow.
Palm has killed us recently, Ford has hung in, AMD has been a stalwart. NYT is up because takeover rumors are rife. Life is good. Buy oil.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Time and Time Again
Why does the phrase "timing is everything" resonate when applied to stand-up comedy and meeting the love of your life, but is smirked at by "financial advisors.”? Don't try to time the market, they insist. Yet, when to buy or sell is the only advice we want.
The “lost decade” for equities flies in the face of the stocks-for-the-long run crowd. Rob Arnott, an analyst recently roiling the advice waters with a study in a financial journal, is persuasive, not because he produces data that show bonds beat equities for 40 years, but because Kev thinks he actually makes a case for picking equities now and going to cash when inflation kicks in, which it surely will. A tricky move, sure, but there's no other way to make dough during one's investing lifetime. In the long run, the sun will burn itself out and the earth will become a frozen ice ball. Before that happens, you can buy low and sell high, or at least try. Otherwise, just stuff it under the mattress. Not that there’s anything wrong with that if you’re so inclined.
Yesterday Kev was faced with a long par 3 over water on a course he hadn’t played for several years. Large outcroppings of rocks loomed on the left, his usual landing place when he attempts to put some mustard into his swing, but the temptation was too great. Out came the driver. Didn’t hit the green, but managed a smooth hit that faded to the right. Chipped on and two-putted for bogey. He was pleased. We will spare you the stroke-by-stroke recounting of various 8s and 7s that peppered his score card. Those are the toxic assets he must somehow get off his balance sheet, and he’s confident he will.
But pessimism abounds. Nick Paumgarten’s "The Death of Kings" in The New Yorker this week is a brilliant piece about the meltdown of Wall Street and is recommended reading for Karousing with Kev’s followers, but is far too scolding. Paumgarten is smitten with the doomsayers who saw the catastrophe, to their credit, but expect more catastrophes to follow. It’s as if they insist that only the cleansing of world war will set things right again. A great quote Paumgarten comes up with is “Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without hell.”
Well, in the purgatory we now inhabit in this life, we are tortured for perhaps several hundred thousands of years, as the Sisters of St. Joseph told us in the second grade, but the good sisters assured that we venial sinners would get out when our time was served. Kev thinks we’ll get out sooner if we refuse to lay up. Go for the green and if you come up short, take a 4.
The week ahead will bring NAHB housing data on Monday, U.S. home starts on Tuesday, FOMC minutes on Wednesday and Philadelphia Fed survey results on Thursday. We all know housing statistics will be in the dumps, but expect a renewed sense of less difficult times.
We believe stocks have room to move higher. The day will come to get out, but not yet. Miss Market is coy but not unfeeling. She has a sentimental streak for the greedy, whom she counts as her soul mates.
The “lost decade” for equities flies in the face of the stocks-for-the-long run crowd. Rob Arnott, an analyst recently roiling the advice waters with a study in a financial journal, is persuasive, not because he produces data that show bonds beat equities for 40 years, but because Kev thinks he actually makes a case for picking equities now and going to cash when inflation kicks in, which it surely will. A tricky move, sure, but there's no other way to make dough during one's investing lifetime. In the long run, the sun will burn itself out and the earth will become a frozen ice ball. Before that happens, you can buy low and sell high, or at least try. Otherwise, just stuff it under the mattress. Not that there’s anything wrong with that if you’re so inclined.
Yesterday Kev was faced with a long par 3 over water on a course he hadn’t played for several years. Large outcroppings of rocks loomed on the left, his usual landing place when he attempts to put some mustard into his swing, but the temptation was too great. Out came the driver. Didn’t hit the green, but managed a smooth hit that faded to the right. Chipped on and two-putted for bogey. He was pleased. We will spare you the stroke-by-stroke recounting of various 8s and 7s that peppered his score card. Those are the toxic assets he must somehow get off his balance sheet, and he’s confident he will.
But pessimism abounds. Nick Paumgarten’s "The Death of Kings" in The New Yorker this week is a brilliant piece about the meltdown of Wall Street and is recommended reading for Karousing with Kev’s followers, but is far too scolding. Paumgarten is smitten with the doomsayers who saw the catastrophe, to their credit, but expect more catastrophes to follow. It’s as if they insist that only the cleansing of world war will set things right again. A great quote Paumgarten comes up with is “Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without hell.”
Well, in the purgatory we now inhabit in this life, we are tortured for perhaps several hundred thousands of years, as the Sisters of St. Joseph told us in the second grade, but the good sisters assured that we venial sinners would get out when our time was served. Kev thinks we’ll get out sooner if we refuse to lay up. Go for the green and if you come up short, take a 4.
The week ahead will bring NAHB housing data on Monday, U.S. home starts on Tuesday, FOMC minutes on Wednesday and Philadelphia Fed survey results on Thursday. We all know housing statistics will be in the dumps, but expect a renewed sense of less difficult times.
We believe stocks have room to move higher. The day will come to get out, but not yet. Miss Market is coy but not unfeeling. She has a sentimental streak for the greedy, whom she counts as her soul mates.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
The Name Is Bond
Oh the humanity! Retail sales -- all that stuff we buy -- fell 0.4% last month, the Commerce Department tells us, and Miss Market gave us a quick backhand slap across the face. Who are we to argue? She responds as she will and we must take it like men. “For king and country…” as James Bond (alias Sean Connery) famously reported as his reason for dallying with a cold war spy.
But all will be forgiven. I can see Connery canoodling with the Bond girl in the lifeboat after defeating Dr. No and Auric Goldfinger and crushing Smersh, or was it Spectre?
Oh well, whomever the foe, the rally will resume, I think.
Consider that Ford, though we shareholders suffer from the dilution, has enough confidence to test the appetite of equity investors (aka, gamblers) with its intention to bolster its balance sheet from the sale of new stock.
Consider that banks are champing at the bit to be rid of TARP dough so they can again compensate their brilliant employees as much as they want.
Consider that oil is flirting with $60 a barrel.
We are leaving our secret lair as if all were going to plan. Obama, Bernanke, Pelosi, Reid, Geithner (or whoever will eventually replace him) will not be denied, despite the gnarled remonstrances from the ancien regime.
We are also working on our hideous short game. If I chunk too many tomorrow, then so be it, but staying with F, PALM, AMD (getting a boost from the EU sanction against Intel), DXO. Money supply and deficit spending will get it going
Kev (yes, he’s still a third person and green-shoots guy) is looking to make it four in a row. Chipper Jones and Martin Prado are my heroes today. You can look it up.
But all will be forgiven. I can see Connery canoodling with the Bond girl in the lifeboat after defeating Dr. No and Auric Goldfinger and crushing Smersh, or was it Spectre?
Oh well, whomever the foe, the rally will resume, I think.
Consider that Ford, though we shareholders suffer from the dilution, has enough confidence to test the appetite of equity investors (aka, gamblers) with its intention to bolster its balance sheet from the sale of new stock.
Consider that banks are champing at the bit to be rid of TARP dough so they can again compensate their brilliant employees as much as they want.
Consider that oil is flirting with $60 a barrel.
We are leaving our secret lair as if all were going to plan. Obama, Bernanke, Pelosi, Reid, Geithner (or whoever will eventually replace him) will not be denied, despite the gnarled remonstrances from the ancien regime.
We are also working on our hideous short game. If I chunk too many tomorrow, then so be it, but staying with F, PALM, AMD (getting a boost from the EU sanction against Intel), DXO. Money supply and deficit spending will get it going
Kev (yes, he’s still a third person and green-shoots guy) is looking to make it four in a row. Chipper Jones and Martin Prado are my heroes today. You can look it up.
Friday, May 8, 2009
A Day at Forest Park
The greensward glistened in all its rain-softened lushness before us. My professor friend and two more elderly gents who happened to join us stepped to the tee box with visions of par dancing in our heads.
The maitre d’hôtel of this paradise, a diminutive crew-cut son of Italy, had welcomed us with a smile and laugh, greeting me with a “Happy New Year” and a handshake. I had not visited his Tuscan villa off the Interborough for almost a year, but he constructed a perfect bacon and egg sandwich on a roll with butter to properly slicken my right hand in preparation for the first swing of the driver. Predictably, I dribbled it up the middle and lost my second shot in the deep rough.
A repeatable swing I have. I just want to replace it with a good one. Shot the same score on the back nine as the second, but need to lower each by ten, a seemingly impossible task but one which I will pursue this sporting season with all the zest of our host. I was in fat city, so to speak, all day, but not living off the fat of the land. Pitches that should have landed pin high for a chance turned into three-shot chunks and then three-putts.
Our majordomo showed up again driving the beverage cart as the professor searched for his ball in the trees and rough to the left of the 14th green. “Hey, it’s on the cart path, shankanopolous. Take a drop” he roared. We roared as well.
But life is good. On the 15th, over the water, hit the green and made par. The 16th, eminently birdie-able, became multibogey-able, and the rest I’ll leave to your imagination.
Yet I believe in the future, just as Miss Market does. This redoubtable dame refuses to give into the gloom. The world economy is braking well short of the depression that helped spawn a global war which shaped the world for us boomers. The New York Times' Krugman on the skeptical center-left and the Washington Post's Samuelson on the skeptical center-right are way too pessimistic.
Many more jobs vanished in the USA in April, but the pace is slowing. Australia reported a decline in its unemployment rate. China alleges a firming of demand. Oil is climbing.
Just as I will fix my wedge play, Miss Market will not be denied. She must have her way. Stay with F, PALM, AMD, DDR, SLV, DXO and NVAX.
The maitre d’hôtel of this paradise, a diminutive crew-cut son of Italy, had welcomed us with a smile and laugh, greeting me with a “Happy New Year” and a handshake. I had not visited his Tuscan villa off the Interborough for almost a year, but he constructed a perfect bacon and egg sandwich on a roll with butter to properly slicken my right hand in preparation for the first swing of the driver. Predictably, I dribbled it up the middle and lost my second shot in the deep rough.
A repeatable swing I have. I just want to replace it with a good one. Shot the same score on the back nine as the second, but need to lower each by ten, a seemingly impossible task but one which I will pursue this sporting season with all the zest of our host. I was in fat city, so to speak, all day, but not living off the fat of the land. Pitches that should have landed pin high for a chance turned into three-shot chunks and then three-putts.
Our majordomo showed up again driving the beverage cart as the professor searched for his ball in the trees and rough to the left of the 14th green. “Hey, it’s on the cart path, shankanopolous. Take a drop” he roared. We roared as well.
But life is good. On the 15th, over the water, hit the green and made par. The 16th, eminently birdie-able, became multibogey-able, and the rest I’ll leave to your imagination.
Yet I believe in the future, just as Miss Market does. This redoubtable dame refuses to give into the gloom. The world economy is braking well short of the depression that helped spawn a global war which shaped the world for us boomers. The New York Times' Krugman on the skeptical center-left and the Washington Post's Samuelson on the skeptical center-right are way too pessimistic.
Many more jobs vanished in the USA in April, but the pace is slowing. Australia reported a decline in its unemployment rate. China alleges a firming of demand. Oil is climbing.
Just as I will fix my wedge play, Miss Market will not be denied. She must have her way. Stay with F, PALM, AMD, DDR, SLV, DXO and NVAX.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Tra La It's May...
“…the lusty month of May.
“That lovely month when ev’ryone goes Blissfully astray.”
Apologies to Lerner and Loewe and the gambling public, which includes those who trek to the track known as the stock market.
But Kev insists. Sweatered and blue jeaned this May morning, pondering whether to shave and what the weather will be at 10 o’clock tomorrow when he tees off at the course Babe Ruth used to play, he is remaining buoyant and taking the cue from Camelot’s lovely verse, not the Wall Street chestnut of “Sell in May and go away.”
Not that there’s anything wrong with being a fan of show tunes. I wore out the cast recording on our Silvertone stereo from Sears as a kid.
But let’s not get carried away like Guinevere. Trimmed positions in Ford and PALM this morning to take profits and pay the Little Sisters of the Poor who manage my sporting life, but still holding on. Cringing at my swine flu play, Novavax, which has plummeted since my tout, but still holding on. The faint of heart will be forgiven if they bail. Now they tell me this virus is not that big of a deal! Oink. But a guy who told me to take Dunkirk in the Derby was wrong, too. Whoa, Nellie.
Getting out and getting back in is becoming a problem for the investing (read, gambling) public. Hope you got back into new Yankee Stadium last night when they began the game after nine o’clock, but you should have hung out with the family at the Hard Rock Cafe for a multi-bucks hamburger dinner before heading to the Escalade purchased by selling credit default swaps for AIG.
Into each life a little rain must fall.
Construction spending rose last month. Bernanke is chirping about economic growth later this year, though high unemployment will continue to persist. But it’s clear now to all but the crybabies that the economy will soon start hitting more greens in regulation
Resist at your own peril. Reason and rhyme tell us the corner has been turned. The market for equities will not swoon because the survivalists and conspiracy brothers wish it. Not to be invested is to put down the rifle with all the fish in the barrel.
And, anyway, It’s May, it’s May!
“Those dreary vows that ev'ryone takes, Ev'ryone breaks. Ev'ryone makes divine mistakes. The lusty month of May!”
“That lovely month when ev’ryone goes Blissfully astray.”
Apologies to Lerner and Loewe and the gambling public, which includes those who trek to the track known as the stock market.
But Kev insists. Sweatered and blue jeaned this May morning, pondering whether to shave and what the weather will be at 10 o’clock tomorrow when he tees off at the course Babe Ruth used to play, he is remaining buoyant and taking the cue from Camelot’s lovely verse, not the Wall Street chestnut of “Sell in May and go away.”
Not that there’s anything wrong with being a fan of show tunes. I wore out the cast recording on our Silvertone stereo from Sears as a kid.
But let’s not get carried away like Guinevere. Trimmed positions in Ford and PALM this morning to take profits and pay the Little Sisters of the Poor who manage my sporting life, but still holding on. Cringing at my swine flu play, Novavax, which has plummeted since my tout, but still holding on. The faint of heart will be forgiven if they bail. Now they tell me this virus is not that big of a deal! Oink. But a guy who told me to take Dunkirk in the Derby was wrong, too. Whoa, Nellie.
Getting out and getting back in is becoming a problem for the investing (read, gambling) public. Hope you got back into new Yankee Stadium last night when they began the game after nine o’clock, but you should have hung out with the family at the Hard Rock Cafe for a multi-bucks hamburger dinner before heading to the Escalade purchased by selling credit default swaps for AIG.
Into each life a little rain must fall.
Construction spending rose last month. Bernanke is chirping about economic growth later this year, though high unemployment will continue to persist. But it’s clear now to all but the crybabies that the economy will soon start hitting more greens in regulation
Resist at your own peril. Reason and rhyme tell us the corner has been turned. The market for equities will not swoon because the survivalists and conspiracy brothers wish it. Not to be invested is to put down the rifle with all the fish in the barrel.
And, anyway, It’s May, it’s May!
“Those dreary vows that ev'ryone takes, Ev'ryone breaks. Ev'ryone makes divine mistakes. The lusty month of May!”
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Weep No More, My Lady
The sun shines bright on our old Kentucky home, just as it does for each of us who longs for his Indiana home on the banks of the Wabash far away; or New York New York, the city that never sleeps; or the left coast where birides sing and everything; or Swanee, where you’d give the world to be among the folks in D-I-X-I-E, or Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweeping down the plains. Add to the mix New Mexico, for which no iconic lyric has yet been penned. It's home to a gelding named Mine That Bird.
But America is more than a home. It’s a romance that causes men and women, young and old, to sigh with joy that men in ten-gallon Stetsons, ladies in sleeveless crinoline and flouncy caps of their own and horseflesh as beautiful as a spring day exult in two minutes of glory as mud flies onto the silks of the jockeys. Anyone who didn’t tear up his losing ticket without a care and take a sip of his mint julep is to be pitied. As someone said, everything, including life, is too short not to partake. Needless to say, my pie-in-the-sky Exacta box of Dunkirk and Flying Private lies in shreds. I picked the wrong strong horse and the wrong long shot.
Mine That Bird, trundled to Churchill Downs in a trailer by his lame trainer, Bennie Woolley, a no-nonsense son of a gun with a broken ankle, sunglasses and no necktie, somehow slipped through a narrow opening at the rail in the home stretch and exploded when he and jockey Calvin Borel saw no equine haunches in front of them.
The sporting life has been bountiful today. Yankees at 1:00 pm, Mets at 4:00, Derby at 6:30, Bulls-Celtics at 8:00 (listening on the radio as I write, but will get to the TV shortly), not to mention a scintillating girls’ softball game at 9 this morning in Prospect Park to start things off.
The economic calendar next week is filled as well. Expect better news, culminating with the jobs report on Friday. The past week offered support for those who root for underdogs. The economic future may be a 50-1 shot, but improvements in the University of Michigan consumer confidence and purchasing managers’ surveys tell me that Miss Market sees daylight on the rail. Her nostrils are flaring.
But America is more than a home. It’s a romance that causes men and women, young and old, to sigh with joy that men in ten-gallon Stetsons, ladies in sleeveless crinoline and flouncy caps of their own and horseflesh as beautiful as a spring day exult in two minutes of glory as mud flies onto the silks of the jockeys. Anyone who didn’t tear up his losing ticket without a care and take a sip of his mint julep is to be pitied. As someone said, everything, including life, is too short not to partake. Needless to say, my pie-in-the-sky Exacta box of Dunkirk and Flying Private lies in shreds. I picked the wrong strong horse and the wrong long shot.
Mine That Bird, trundled to Churchill Downs in a trailer by his lame trainer, Bennie Woolley, a no-nonsense son of a gun with a broken ankle, sunglasses and no necktie, somehow slipped through a narrow opening at the rail in the home stretch and exploded when he and jockey Calvin Borel saw no equine haunches in front of them.
The sporting life has been bountiful today. Yankees at 1:00 pm, Mets at 4:00, Derby at 6:30, Bulls-Celtics at 8:00 (listening on the radio as I write, but will get to the TV shortly), not to mention a scintillating girls’ softball game at 9 this morning in Prospect Park to start things off.
The economic calendar next week is filled as well. Expect better news, culminating with the jobs report on Friday. The past week offered support for those who root for underdogs. The economic future may be a 50-1 shot, but improvements in the University of Michigan consumer confidence and purchasing managers’ surveys tell me that Miss Market sees daylight on the rail. Her nostrils are flaring.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Innoculation Nation
Attempting to make money from misery is miserable, positively swinish. But someone’s got to do it. And directing capital to drug makers who aim to profit by alleviating misery makes me feel better, which I could use after my common cold caused me to find every bunker at Dyker Beach yesterday. At least that’s my story for shooting 106 and I’m sticking to it.
How many of us have been able to survive and reproduce, have stellar careers in the arts, sciences, professions and hamburger flipping because of a mold called penicillin?
Now, my stellar career has been more white dwarfish than super nova, so I hesitate to offer ideas to all but the intrepid sailor willing to test his balsa wood Kon-Tiki against the mighty Pacific. But just as I know my next approach shot will hit the green next week, I know there are people brainier than I attacking the H1N1 influenza and they could be right -- saving lives and enriching investors.
Kev (yes, in his megalomaniacal certainty that it’s all about Kev, he is referring to himself in the third person) is adding Novavax (NVAX) to the portfolio at $2.03. This Rockville, Md., company reported encouraging results from its virus-like particle (VLP) vaccine in mice and ferrets dosed with the 1918 Spanish flu virus.
I’m no scientist or lover of rodents, and this is obviously a speculative roll of the dice that only the lonely should play, but I’m buying into it for now.
PALM, F, AMD, DDR remain as well. This is no bear market rally. Obama’s competence becomes more evident every day, and markets are responding.
Don't know much about the NBA, but Bulls-Celtics series is terrific. Derrick Rose sunk me in last year's NCAA championship game. Maybe he'll make up for it in Boston tomorrow like he did last night in Chicago. The Bulls will win outright.
Meanwhile, taking Dunkirk in the Kentucky Derby tomorrow. Hopefully, some horse’s behind (there are a bunch of them) won’t get in his way.
How many of us have been able to survive and reproduce, have stellar careers in the arts, sciences, professions and hamburger flipping because of a mold called penicillin?
Now, my stellar career has been more white dwarfish than super nova, so I hesitate to offer ideas to all but the intrepid sailor willing to test his balsa wood Kon-Tiki against the mighty Pacific. But just as I know my next approach shot will hit the green next week, I know there are people brainier than I attacking the H1N1 influenza and they could be right -- saving lives and enriching investors.
Kev (yes, in his megalomaniacal certainty that it’s all about Kev, he is referring to himself in the third person) is adding Novavax (NVAX) to the portfolio at $2.03. This Rockville, Md., company reported encouraging results from its virus-like particle (VLP) vaccine in mice and ferrets dosed with the 1918 Spanish flu virus.
I’m no scientist or lover of rodents, and this is obviously a speculative roll of the dice that only the lonely should play, but I’m buying into it for now.
PALM, F, AMD, DDR remain as well. This is no bear market rally. Obama’s competence becomes more evident every day, and markets are responding.
Don't know much about the NBA, but Bulls-Celtics series is terrific. Derrick Rose sunk me in last year's NCAA championship game. Maybe he'll make up for it in Boston tomorrow like he did last night in Chicago. The Bulls will win outright.
Meanwhile, taking Dunkirk in the Kentucky Derby tomorrow. Hopefully, some horse’s behind (there are a bunch of them) won’t get in his way.
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