Every dog has its day. Hooted at as a malingerer by vengeful packs of yapping pinstriper fans, Carl Pavano pitched nine innings of shut-out ball to lead the Tribe over the Pale Hose last week and enrich Kev. And long spurned by her bitter once-burned suitors, Miss Market continues to tame the bears. Methinks they doth protest too much and will soon be checking their cell phone contacts for her number.
Yet we remain wary, knowing that the coquette has the capacity to lead us on and then pout when she doesn’t get her way. What could cause her to spurn us? Three things: geopolitical/terrorist catastrophe, economic indicators that refuse to validate what Bernanke and others perceive as the incipient recovery and the related discovery that stock prices are ahead of what the economy is promising. Well, I guess that’s two things really.
In any event, what matters in the short run for those with dough at stake is the news flow. Job growth should take a while, but stock prices expect that. Key this week will be Thursday’s release of retail sales data and Friday’s University of Michigan report on consumer sentiment for May. Expectations are that both will point to tentative revival. Also to be monitored is the blitz of U.S. Treasury auctions of notes. The yields necessary to sell them will affect the equity markets as much as the bond markets.
The great deflation-inflation debate is for another day. We’ll get to it eventually, but for now we’re concerned about profits to pay greens fees and Mr. Landlord.
Our darling, PALM, has taken a beating recently, though we’re still significantly in the black. Those wishing to take money off the table would be entirely justified. The Pre phone has been released and the battle with Apple and Research in Motion is joined. News is that Apple is cutting the price of the original iPhone to $99. Let’s get physical.
Brave souls who ventured with Kev into Novavax (NVAX) and GM (ticker is now GMGMQ), have been rewarded. If you bet the ranch on these two you would be considerably better off than if you left Summer Bird out of your trifecta box at Belmont. Both are up more than 30% since purchase May 1 and June 1, respectively. Ford is still a keeper.
But Kev picks losers as well. Sonnanstine pitches a superb game for the Rays tonight at the Yankee Stadium launching pad (NASA should consider blasting space probes to Pluto from home plate), but the homers, like the DJs used to say about the hits on AM radio, just keep on comin.’ I’m swearing off going against the pinstripers at home unless Harmon Killebrew, Hank Aaron, Ralph Kiner and Jimmie Foxx are in the opposing line-up.
Showing posts with label Cleveland Indians. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cleveland Indians. Show all posts
Monday, June 8, 2009
Monday, June 1, 2009
See the USA in a Chevrolet
You can draw a direct line from the Declaration of Independence to Dinah Shore, who touted GM's most visible nameplate.
Walk through Prospect Park and trod the same ground George Washington skedaddled through in August of 1776 fleeing the British and Hessians who had routed the Continentals in the Battle of Long Island. Kev saw no red coats with muskets there this weekend, just red-shirted young ladies, fearless as only the young can be, playing a game with ball and bat that began in the young republic as something called rounders.
Little has changed in the game since the Knickerbockers played all comers at Elysian Fields in Hoboken. Well, ok, the mound has been lowered, the pitch count has become a much-watched statistic, gloves have become lengthier, and players’ bodies have swollen and shrunk with the ebb and flow of, ahem, B-12 injections. But it is still a kids’ game invested with the American dream of pastoral sublimity – a pastime without a clock, as the seven-hour, 25-inning collegiate affair between Texas and Boston College attested to.
In the meantime, though, the clock ticks in the world of striving and getting. Before you know it, the ground shifts under your feet and all the striving doesn’t result in any getting. The latest tremor is the reorganization of General Motors under the aegis of the taxpayer, but it is not a quake. Largely foreseen, the UAW and bondholders inevitably had to bow to the less-worse than the catastrophic. Proof of the inevitability is the blythe reaction of the stock market. Although four shares of GM will now secure a Big Mac (no fries or Coke), Miss Market cares not a whit and goes merrily on her way, gathering her rosebuds while she may. Just hope my dream of owning a new Corvette does not go aglimmering and I can live my own Tod and Buz Route 66 adventures.
As capricious a mistress as she is, she cannot help but respond to the soft summer cooing of newborn whippoorwills. It brings out the nurturing side of her. The latest song of hope comes from the purchasing managers survey (now the Institute for Supply Management). Its diffusion index rose to 42.8% in May from 40.1%. That still indicates contraction in the manufacturing sector, but not as steep as prognosticators thought. More importantly, the new orders sub-index, an indicator of future activity, rose above 50% for the first time in a year and a half.
Miss Market is also a Yankees’ fan, apparently. She giveth and taketh away. The Tribe let Kev down tonight, issuing too many walks to the pinstripers, giving its latter-day muderers’ row too many chances to rattle run-scoring doubles off the wall. Still have the Dodgers tonight, but Kuroda looks like he wants to issue free passes as well. Already 40-some odd pitches into the second inning, what looms?
Well, Washington escaped to Manhattan and lived to fight another day and father a country that lets us take all the time we need on grass and dirt with bat and ball and leather. The clock is clicking elsewhere. Stay invested in equities and commodities, shun government bonds, and enjoy the open road.
Walk through Prospect Park and trod the same ground George Washington skedaddled through in August of 1776 fleeing the British and Hessians who had routed the Continentals in the Battle of Long Island. Kev saw no red coats with muskets there this weekend, just red-shirted young ladies, fearless as only the young can be, playing a game with ball and bat that began in the young republic as something called rounders.
Little has changed in the game since the Knickerbockers played all comers at Elysian Fields in Hoboken. Well, ok, the mound has been lowered, the pitch count has become a much-watched statistic, gloves have become lengthier, and players’ bodies have swollen and shrunk with the ebb and flow of, ahem, B-12 injections. But it is still a kids’ game invested with the American dream of pastoral sublimity – a pastime without a clock, as the seven-hour, 25-inning collegiate affair between Texas and Boston College attested to.
In the meantime, though, the clock ticks in the world of striving and getting. Before you know it, the ground shifts under your feet and all the striving doesn’t result in any getting. The latest tremor is the reorganization of General Motors under the aegis of the taxpayer, but it is not a quake. Largely foreseen, the UAW and bondholders inevitably had to bow to the less-worse than the catastrophic. Proof of the inevitability is the blythe reaction of the stock market. Although four shares of GM will now secure a Big Mac (no fries or Coke), Miss Market cares not a whit and goes merrily on her way, gathering her rosebuds while she may. Just hope my dream of owning a new Corvette does not go aglimmering and I can live my own Tod and Buz Route 66 adventures.
As capricious a mistress as she is, she cannot help but respond to the soft summer cooing of newborn whippoorwills. It brings out the nurturing side of her. The latest song of hope comes from the purchasing managers survey (now the Institute for Supply Management). Its diffusion index rose to 42.8% in May from 40.1%. That still indicates contraction in the manufacturing sector, but not as steep as prognosticators thought. More importantly, the new orders sub-index, an indicator of future activity, rose above 50% for the first time in a year and a half.
Miss Market is also a Yankees’ fan, apparently. She giveth and taketh away. The Tribe let Kev down tonight, issuing too many walks to the pinstripers, giving its latter-day muderers’ row too many chances to rattle run-scoring doubles off the wall. Still have the Dodgers tonight, but Kuroda looks like he wants to issue free passes as well. Already 40-some odd pitches into the second inning, what looms?
Well, Washington escaped to Manhattan and lived to fight another day and father a country that lets us take all the time we need on grass and dirt with bat and ball and leather. The clock is clicking elsewhere. Stay invested in equities and commodities, shun government bonds, and enjoy the open road.
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