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!”

Yankee Ingenuity

Is the ball juiced? Is there some mysterious wind current in the new Yankee Stadium that makes warning track power Ruthian? Home runs are on a pace to double the number hit last year in the House that Ruth Built. Word is the Steinbrenners are consulting the engineers who built the new palace to determine what might be going on. Is there some flaw in the façade that allows broken-bat triples and pop-up round-trippers? Or does the old horsehide come from the flank of Secretariat?

Doubtless, many missed Posada’s video-reviewed home run yesterday because they weren’t in their $2,500 seats, preferring instead to spend a day at the ball park munching on raw fish or savoring the filet mignon. I see this as a good sign. “Hey, kids, let’s go to Yankee Stadium and have lunch; we can always see the game on HD, which will show the players watching themselves on HD.”

I say it’s a good sign because it connotes a certain insouciance about the present and the future, a necessary ingredient for playing bogey golf (the best I can hope for at my advanced age), finding love and happiness, enrolling in that yoga class, enjoying the two hardy tulips that managed to bloom this year in my garden. I’m going with daffodils next year. I’m told they are hardy perennials, and I love the way they bow to you.

Times change, but fear and greed persist in all but the rare Mother Theresa among us, waxing and waning with whatever wind blows our way. Is greed, like the baseballs flying out of the Bronx, getting the upper hand now? Talk of "green shoots" is nudging the needle that way, but the survivalists and conspiracy sisters resist it mightily, hoping that the four horsemen of the Apocalypse come galloping to validate all the pork 'n beans they've laid up in the root cellar. My guess is they will be sorely disappointed. The bottom is in sight. The next tea party will be held not to protest the "the govment" (as Huck Finn's Pap complained), but the great inflation sure to come.

Key this week are first-quarter earnings reports and Friday’s release of durable goods orders for March and home sales data. If within expectations, the green shoots should grow a bit.

Though the market is taking a tumble today as I write, PALM and SLV are keeping me afloat. Avoid the usurious bankers. With the Fed Funds rate at zero and 25% on credit card balances, their means of making dough is exposed. The return to Glass-Steagall and “bankers’ hours” is coming. Paul Krugman tells me so.