One lesson Kev thinks he has finally learned as he approaches the turn to the home stretch is that you can’t tell people how to feel. Least of all Miss Market. Our pouting paramour will not succumb to sunny encouragement, snapping her feral fangs at the hand on her shoulder, laughing maniacally at such bromides as: “Hey, it’s not so bad,” or “Remember all the good times,” or “There’ll be blue birds over the white cliffs of Dover.”
You tell her that Pudge Rodriguez has now crouched behind the plate more times than Carlton Fisk and exhort her to do the same. You tell her that even the graceful, intricate – nay, beautiful – pitching motion of Tim Lincecum must lose a game now and then. To no avail. We must let her edge back to us in her own good time. Not helping her in this direction are the latest economic data.
Wholesale inflation was 0.2% in May. Higher energy prices offset a drop in food prices, according to the government. The core producer price index, which excludes food and energy prices, fell 0.1%. At the retail level, inflation also rose just 0.1% last month.
Industrial production fell 1.1% in May to the lowest level in 11 years and is down 13.4% in the past year, the largest year-over-year decline since 1946. And capacity utilization fell to a record-low 68.3% last month, down from 69%. The Krugmanites have a point. This indicates much slack to be taken up before inflation becomes a problem, a condition much to be wished for.
Inflation and interest rates must rise to convince her she has pricing power again, but the mills of the gods grind slowly. We can’t tell her or anyone else how to feel.
Meanwhile (our fallback transition), stay with PALM. Much chatter about a takeover by industry giants looking for an avenue into the smart phone market. F still has value. Wait for GMGMQ to slip. Hoping NVAX catches fire again.
Wish I had taken the underdog Nationals against the pinstripers last night. Long Islander John Lannan outpitched the suspect Chien-Ming Wang, who nevertheless showed some gumption against the new “first in war, first in peace, last in the American (now National) league” team.
Showing posts with label Ford. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ford. Show all posts
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Tell Me You're Coming Back to Me
Is Miss Market a changeling, one of those offspring of elves and fairies that the wee folk exchange for human babies? Why, just the other day we danced merrily through a meadow of green shoots with her. But when the sun arose the next, we found a slain rabbit in our pot when we attempted to make our morning oatmeal. And there she was, tangled hair and pointed ears, hissing like Catwoman in a field of burnt straw.
Suspicions that the economic recovery on the horizon was a mirage were roused by the Empire State survey of manufacturing conducted by the New York Fed. The data showed a decline in May after two months of improvement. Oil prices fell, as did interest rates, the most recent fear of the financial press. These are not indicative of green shoots. Kev is of the opinion that rising commodity prices and higher interest rates should be cheered as a sign of acceleration in the real economy, not brakes on the recovery.
But the familiar arc of expansion and recession that has marked the post-war period has turned unfamiliar. That’s because the model has been revealed as a changeling as well. As the United States turns from consumption to saving, incomes decline as jobs vanish, which reinforces contraction and the great hunkering down. So despite all the reserves the Fed has pumped into the system, banks find fewer viable businesses to loan to. The liquidity trap is not a tender one.
Yet policy makers surely know this. The cleansing power of a collapse in economic activity and the erasure of iconic American enterprises some call for would be so great as to cut serious gashes in the cord that binds a society together. So Bernanke, et al., must keep pushing on the string, hoping that the trauma of change from consumption to saving doesn’t entirely dissolve the rope to which we are hanging by a thread. The effort of government spending and Fed largesse is aimed at supplying a parachute to slow the descent so the pilot can live to fly another day.
For the investor, this means rewiring the brain. Look for things “to begin stop worsening” as the Bank of Japan said was happening in its latest dispatch. Being nimble and not too greedy will be prized attributes. Waiting for GMGMQ, DXO (oil) and SLV (silver) to get cheap again, keeping PALM and F in the portfolio. Plaxico Burress and Michael Vick look as if they will get a second chance in the NFL soon. So shall we. Miss Market will comb her hair, don the cocktail dress and take our arm.
As we heard Jean Arthur say to Cary Grant the other night: “I’m hard to get, Jeff. All you have to do is ask.”
Suspicions that the economic recovery on the horizon was a mirage were roused by the Empire State survey of manufacturing conducted by the New York Fed. The data showed a decline in May after two months of improvement. Oil prices fell, as did interest rates, the most recent fear of the financial press. These are not indicative of green shoots. Kev is of the opinion that rising commodity prices and higher interest rates should be cheered as a sign of acceleration in the real economy, not brakes on the recovery.
But the familiar arc of expansion and recession that has marked the post-war period has turned unfamiliar. That’s because the model has been revealed as a changeling as well. As the United States turns from consumption to saving, incomes decline as jobs vanish, which reinforces contraction and the great hunkering down. So despite all the reserves the Fed has pumped into the system, banks find fewer viable businesses to loan to. The liquidity trap is not a tender one.
Yet policy makers surely know this. The cleansing power of a collapse in economic activity and the erasure of iconic American enterprises some call for would be so great as to cut serious gashes in the cord that binds a society together. So Bernanke, et al., must keep pushing on the string, hoping that the trauma of change from consumption to saving doesn’t entirely dissolve the rope to which we are hanging by a thread. The effort of government spending and Fed largesse is aimed at supplying a parachute to slow the descent so the pilot can live to fly another day.
For the investor, this means rewiring the brain. Look for things “to begin stop worsening” as the Bank of Japan said was happening in its latest dispatch. Being nimble and not too greedy will be prized attributes. Waiting for GMGMQ, DXO (oil) and SLV (silver) to get cheap again, keeping PALM and F in the portfolio. Plaxico Burress and Michael Vick look as if they will get a second chance in the NFL soon. So shall we. Miss Market will comb her hair, don the cocktail dress and take our arm.
As we heard Jean Arthur say to Cary Grant the other night: “I’m hard to get, Jeff. All you have to do is ask.”
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 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!”
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.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright
Mr. Inge, third baseman of the Detroit Tigers American League baseball club, is my hero of the day, though he scored no runs and did not drive one in. He didn’t bemoan his just-miss luck. He hit a just-foul double off the wall, a just-foul homerun and then placidly stroked what God gave him from hard-luck CC Sabathia -- a fastball that he solved and scooted into the outfield. Check the box score.
OK, later he was caught stealing after being hit by a pitch and then struck out. Yet he started the double play that pulled the plug on the pinstripers in the ninth -- yeoman’s work in the city that is the poster child of crumbling, but still aspirational, America. Life west of the Hudson goes on. The Yankees had 10 hits, for crying out loud, and only two runs with gobs of runners left on base. No need to break ‘em up until A-Rod returns.
Can the Incredibly Shrinking Three match the moxie of the Bengalese cats of northern Michigan?
The UAW will likely own a majority stake in Chrysler according to the plan that has been hammered out among the USA, creditors and private equity owners. GM is finally smelling the coffee and telling bond holders to take equity or get lost and putting Pontiac to its eternal rest (I can still see the jaunty smile of my father when he cranked up the air conditioning of his brand new baby blue Catalina in the 1960s. I think “Help!” had just been released).
Ford stands tallest, like its home town third baseman Mr. Inge, having secured financing before the credit crunch and refusing taxpayer help. It has missed on a few home-run swings but knocked the mud off its cleats and took a single, thank you.
And we have profited as well from buying Ford common stock because the luck of investing is to settle for the infield hit that can spark a big inning when all the world expects a strike-out. Disclaimer: I’ve been a member of all the world many times. But then, it’s no fun unless somebody gets hurt, even if it’s you.
Verlander threw serious heat for the hometown team. Fastballs can be struck by the weakest among us enough times to plate several runs, yet he gave up zero.
Ford bucked the market today as well. It has further to go. Taking gains is forgiven, but its stock price will be higher this time next year. Will the sub-.500 Yankees?
OK, later he was caught stealing after being hit by a pitch and then struck out. Yet he started the double play that pulled the plug on the pinstripers in the ninth -- yeoman’s work in the city that is the poster child of crumbling, but still aspirational, America. Life west of the Hudson goes on. The Yankees had 10 hits, for crying out loud, and only two runs with gobs of runners left on base. No need to break ‘em up until A-Rod returns.
Can the Incredibly Shrinking Three match the moxie of the Bengalese cats of northern Michigan?
The UAW will likely own a majority stake in Chrysler according to the plan that has been hammered out among the USA, creditors and private equity owners. GM is finally smelling the coffee and telling bond holders to take equity or get lost and putting Pontiac to its eternal rest (I can still see the jaunty smile of my father when he cranked up the air conditioning of his brand new baby blue Catalina in the 1960s. I think “Help!” had just been released).
Ford stands tallest, like its home town third baseman Mr. Inge, having secured financing before the credit crunch and refusing taxpayer help. It has missed on a few home-run swings but knocked the mud off its cleats and took a single, thank you.
And we have profited as well from buying Ford common stock because the luck of investing is to settle for the infield hit that can spark a big inning when all the world expects a strike-out. Disclaimer: I’ve been a member of all the world many times. But then, it’s no fun unless somebody gets hurt, even if it’s you.
Verlander threw serious heat for the hometown team. Fastballs can be struck by the weakest among us enough times to plate several runs, yet he gave up zero.
Ford bucked the market today as well. It has further to go. Taking gains is forgiven, but its stock price will be higher this time next year. Will the sub-.500 Yankees?
Miss Piggy
Like Keats listening to the nightingale, “My heart aches and a drowsy numbness pains my sense as though of hemlock I had drunk.” But I am listening to the snorting and oinking of bacon, not the avian cluck of doom in recent years past. The influenza that originated with the porcine staple of subsistence farmers, such as my grandfather, who relented to my mother’s pleas and didn’t slaughter the pig she had raised in the depths of the Depression, has put us in the slop.
Given the panic infecting the markets, I fully expect to see pedestrians with surgical face masks when I venture out for my bacon (make that steak) and eggs this summery, un-flu like morning. But I got a shot back in the Ford administration when the swine flu alarum first sounded. Hope it took.
Miss Market can turn on a dime from seductress to you know what with lipstick. I don’t mean you, Gov. Palin. I look forward to your presidency and admire you for sticking up for everyone challenged by the mess we make of things. Plus you look as good as Obama in a tailored suit.
The day is not over, but I remain cheered. Unlike Keats, whose psyche (to which he wrote another ode) was absorbed with the fleetingness of youth, my gaze is fixed on tomorrow. I remain in the green, thanks to F and SLV. Even the redoubtable PALM refuses to bend. The only virus it fears is the one that could infect its operating system.
The airlines are suffering. NYT is down after Ms. Dowd’s wry farewell address to her profession on Sunday. Oil is dipping, but precious metals could be a refuge.
And Yankees’ fans, your ballyhooed pitching staff is suffering from walking pneumonia. I’m stealing home on them and I’m having a BLT for lunch.
Given the panic infecting the markets, I fully expect to see pedestrians with surgical face masks when I venture out for my bacon (make that steak) and eggs this summery, un-flu like morning. But I got a shot back in the Ford administration when the swine flu alarum first sounded. Hope it took.
Miss Market can turn on a dime from seductress to you know what with lipstick. I don’t mean you, Gov. Palin. I look forward to your presidency and admire you for sticking up for everyone challenged by the mess we make of things. Plus you look as good as Obama in a tailored suit.
The day is not over, but I remain cheered. Unlike Keats, whose psyche (to which he wrote another ode) was absorbed with the fleetingness of youth, my gaze is fixed on tomorrow. I remain in the green, thanks to F and SLV. Even the redoubtable PALM refuses to bend. The only virus it fears is the one that could infect its operating system.
The airlines are suffering. NYT is down after Ms. Dowd’s wry farewell address to her profession on Sunday. Oil is dipping, but precious metals could be a refuge.
And Yankees’ fans, your ballyhooed pitching staff is suffering from walking pneumonia. I’m stealing home on them and I’m having a BLT for lunch.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
I'm Younger Than That Now
Where do original thoughts come from? Or, rather, where do the words come from that express the sentiment and truth that is inherent in every soul? The feeling that glues us all together and wonders and despairs at our fellows who roam outside of this gentle umbrella to feed on the carcasses of the weak and the sick?
In my dotage, I fear for the future, but am heartened by children, though I tear the decal off the top of my new baseball hat and gently curve the bill, though my blue jeans fit snugly (perhaps a bit too much) just below my belly button, despite my tendency to judge ladies and gentlemen by their inclination toward the designated hitter.
Oh yes, original thoughts. Are there any? Perhaps only scientists possess them. Lawyers rely on case law. Doctors refer to symptoms to diagnose what has been diagnosed in the past. Baseball managers call in the closer when up by a run in the 9th inning. The head coach orders a “prevent defense” in the waning moments of a one-score game. Writers usher in dramatic plot points to their screenplays. These are all things the prudent woman or man does.
How little does art imitate life. Life cares not a whit for the artistic spins we may desire to put on it, which may be why we love art so much. It must be an immense disappointment to the artist that all crumbles in his mighty effort to wring meaning out of this vale of tears. There, I just tried to make a sow’s ear into a silk purse!
But narratives persist. Even those outside of our lovely, late-empire American orbit have a story. The last few days have been filled with milestones. The killings at Columbine High School in Colorado (where an ex-girlfriend went to school), the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City (across the street from where I spent my journalism apprenticeship), and one good thing, the Oklahoma land rush of 1889, an event that defines the American belief in the future.
OK (no pun intended), I am a prisoner of my past, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now (thanks, Bob Dylan; original thoughts belong to others).
Here's another one that stirs me to look to tomorrow. Fitzgerald, disproving my original conceit that art can't illuminate, wrote in an otherwise undistinguished story called The Swimmers: "France was a land, England was a people, but America, having about it still that quality of the idea, was harder to utter--it was the graves at Shiloh and the tired, drawn, nervous faces of its great men, and the country boys dying in the Argonne for a phrase that was empty before their bodies withered. It was a willingness of the heart."
Which gives me that incurably optimistic outlook peculiar to Americans. Tony La Russa, despite having been found passed out, or something , at the wheel last year, has turned managing my Redbirds into a concerto, befuddling the Jerry Manuels who are reporters’ favorites but rely on folks who won’t slide because they might get hurt. Hey, Jerry, give it up. Put Sheffield in the lineup while he still has some pop.
Miss Market has been too kind to me lately. Goldman Sachs upgraded Ford and it soared. Faith in Palm’s new smart phone has kept it marching higher. Advanced Micro Devices advances and retreats but is still in the green as the semiconductor cycle looks to turn. Stay with them all, but don't confuse art with life.
In my dotage, I fear for the future, but am heartened by children, though I tear the decal off the top of my new baseball hat and gently curve the bill, though my blue jeans fit snugly (perhaps a bit too much) just below my belly button, despite my tendency to judge ladies and gentlemen by their inclination toward the designated hitter.
Oh yes, original thoughts. Are there any? Perhaps only scientists possess them. Lawyers rely on case law. Doctors refer to symptoms to diagnose what has been diagnosed in the past. Baseball managers call in the closer when up by a run in the 9th inning. The head coach orders a “prevent defense” in the waning moments of a one-score game. Writers usher in dramatic plot points to their screenplays. These are all things the prudent woman or man does.
How little does art imitate life. Life cares not a whit for the artistic spins we may desire to put on it, which may be why we love art so much. It must be an immense disappointment to the artist that all crumbles in his mighty effort to wring meaning out of this vale of tears. There, I just tried to make a sow’s ear into a silk purse!
But narratives persist. Even those outside of our lovely, late-empire American orbit have a story. The last few days have been filled with milestones. The killings at Columbine High School in Colorado (where an ex-girlfriend went to school), the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City (across the street from where I spent my journalism apprenticeship), and one good thing, the Oklahoma land rush of 1889, an event that defines the American belief in the future.
OK (no pun intended), I am a prisoner of my past, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now (thanks, Bob Dylan; original thoughts belong to others).
Here's another one that stirs me to look to tomorrow. Fitzgerald, disproving my original conceit that art can't illuminate, wrote in an otherwise undistinguished story called The Swimmers: "France was a land, England was a people, but America, having about it still that quality of the idea, was harder to utter--it was the graves at Shiloh and the tired, drawn, nervous faces of its great men, and the country boys dying in the Argonne for a phrase that was empty before their bodies withered. It was a willingness of the heart."
Which gives me that incurably optimistic outlook peculiar to Americans. Tony La Russa, despite having been found passed out, or something , at the wheel last year, has turned managing my Redbirds into a concerto, befuddling the Jerry Manuels who are reporters’ favorites but rely on folks who won’t slide because they might get hurt. Hey, Jerry, give it up. Put Sheffield in the lineup while he still has some pop.
Miss Market has been too kind to me lately. Goldman Sachs upgraded Ford and it soared. Faith in Palm’s new smart phone has kept it marching higher. Advanced Micro Devices advances and retreats but is still in the green as the semiconductor cycle looks to turn. Stay with them all, but don't confuse art with life.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa, Men Have Named You
There’s no need to fear, Underdog is here.
Hoping to redeem my last place finish in my group’s bracket challenge and 1,009,587th finish over all, I took the Michigan State Spartans and the points against the Tar Heels of North Carolina. It was the equivalent of rejecting momentum investing for the contrarian pick. The outcome is one more reason that Wall Street coined the phrase, “Don’t fight the tape.”
But I still have issues. Why does NC have a ram as a mascot instead of a guy in a black foot suit? And why does Alabama, the Crimson Tide, have an elephant as a mascot emblem instead of a surfer riding a wave, back lit by a blood-red sunset? These and other weighty matters bother me while re-tooling my golf swing to the stack and tilt and licking my handicapping wounds.
I suppose I could google the answers, but I resist. I prefer to ponder these mysteries as Plato or Thomas Aquinas or some other deep thinker of yore would have done, without the benefit of instant access to all sources for all things. I want to have someone whose grandfather told them tell me, a much more satisfying path to knowledge than the digital crutch that makes experts of everyone and every blog a newspaper.
Though my mind is distracted by these imponderables, hail to the sticky footprints of Chapel Hill and the tarred toe of Ty Lawson. This was no bear market rally, which is the debate Miss Market is moderating now. Which team will win? Miss Market is giving us a Mona Lisa smile, impossible to interpret. Come hither or You fool?
F, PALM and AMD have been good to us so far. Taking profits would be forgiven. But I’m sticking with them and avoiding financial names.
One Mona Lisa I think I do know is C.C. Sabathia. If he would put his hat on straight, he might get someone out.
Hoping to redeem my last place finish in my group’s bracket challenge and 1,009,587th finish over all, I took the Michigan State Spartans and the points against the Tar Heels of North Carolina. It was the equivalent of rejecting momentum investing for the contrarian pick. The outcome is one more reason that Wall Street coined the phrase, “Don’t fight the tape.”
But I still have issues. Why does NC have a ram as a mascot instead of a guy in a black foot suit? And why does Alabama, the Crimson Tide, have an elephant as a mascot emblem instead of a surfer riding a wave, back lit by a blood-red sunset? These and other weighty matters bother me while re-tooling my golf swing to the stack and tilt and licking my handicapping wounds.
I suppose I could google the answers, but I resist. I prefer to ponder these mysteries as Plato or Thomas Aquinas or some other deep thinker of yore would have done, without the benefit of instant access to all sources for all things. I want to have someone whose grandfather told them tell me, a much more satisfying path to knowledge than the digital crutch that makes experts of everyone and every blog a newspaper.
Though my mind is distracted by these imponderables, hail to the sticky footprints of Chapel Hill and the tarred toe of Ty Lawson. This was no bear market rally, which is the debate Miss Market is moderating now. Which team will win? Miss Market is giving us a Mona Lisa smile, impossible to interpret. Come hither or You fool?
F, PALM and AMD have been good to us so far. Taking profits would be forgiven. But I’m sticking with them and avoiding financial names.
One Mona Lisa I think I do know is C.C. Sabathia. If he would put his hat on straight, he might get someone out.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Me and Miss Market -- We gotta thing goin' on
Did anyone seriously believe the United States would let the car makers go down because some posturing blowhards prevented cloture in the Senate? The stakes for the rest of the economy are far too high to let buffoons carry the day, regardless of where the blame lies (management, unions, legacy benefits, cheap Southern labor for the transplants, etc.).
Full disclosure: I own Ford shares, bought last month at $1.15. After last night's rump rebellion from the bloviators playing to the anti-union hillbillies back home (I am of hillfolk stock myself, so no angry "you think you're better than me" stuff), I admit I was ready to bail and preserve a short-term profit but held off from pressing the button when the administration unfolded the TARP to catch the falling Town Car this morning.
For the moment, greed trumped fear. My original reason for buying was supported -- I didn't believe that even the most rabid Ayn Rand freaks would release the hounds on what remained of the last limping female fox on the estate. Surely, I reasoned, the lord of the manor would want to keep her alive so that the species could repopulate and enable future hunts that would entertain his peers and keep enough commoners employed to hold the torch and pitchfork crowd to a minimum.
Ford (trading at $3.09, up $0.19 on the day as I write) is probably the safest (that is certainly a relative term) way to play the auto bailout. Its balance sheet is the strongest of the two publicly traded American car makers, and I take F at its word that it doesn't need the dough right away.
Who knows, but I still think Miss Market has a crush on me. At least today. Tomorrow I may be dealt a hand with no Greed trump cards courtesy of political events. And that last lady fox (no foxy lady she) may prove barren.
Full disclosure: I own Ford shares, bought last month at $1.15. After last night's rump rebellion from the bloviators playing to the anti-union hillbillies back home (I am of hillfolk stock myself, so no angry "you think you're better than me" stuff), I admit I was ready to bail and preserve a short-term profit but held off from pressing the button when the administration unfolded the TARP to catch the falling Town Car this morning.
For the moment, greed trumped fear. My original reason for buying was supported -- I didn't believe that even the most rabid Ayn Rand freaks would release the hounds on what remained of the last limping female fox on the estate. Surely, I reasoned, the lord of the manor would want to keep her alive so that the species could repopulate and enable future hunts that would entertain his peers and keep enough commoners employed to hold the torch and pitchfork crowd to a minimum.
Ford (trading at $3.09, up $0.19 on the day as I write) is probably the safest (that is certainly a relative term) way to play the auto bailout. Its balance sheet is the strongest of the two publicly traded American car makers, and I take F at its word that it doesn't need the dough right away.
Who knows, but I still think Miss Market has a crush on me. At least today. Tomorrow I may be dealt a hand with no Greed trump cards courtesy of political events. And that last lady fox (no foxy lady she) may prove barren.
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