What a great weekend it has been.  Friday evening we got to hang out by our pool, yes our pool.  The mud was gone, the frogs are gone, and most of the equipment is working properly.  We then went and had a great Mexican meal at a place called Carmelita's.  At that dinner and that evening we were reacquainted with some old friends of our school and church and have two new readers of the Salve Lucrum Newsletter.  She happens to be one of the financial stewards of the Orange County Diocese and her daughter has taken a profound interest in economics.  We also discovered a new reader who is a Professor of Economics from a very prestigious school.  Welcome.  (Pressure's on to keep the typos to a minimum.) Our great  weekend continued as we prepared our home for the return of our dogs.  It has been a month since some friends were kind enough to watch them while the 7 layer lacquer painting began.  The dogs remembered us and within moments had market their sports in the back yard.  This morning I was lucky enough to hook up with some golf buddies and play a round before coming home and getting ready for one of our Sunday Night Pink Flamingo Trailer Trash Barbeques.  A good time was had by all, but now we must pay for our crimes and publish the news letter about three glasses of Grgich Hills Zinfandel wine into the night.  So let's get to it.

Alan Abelson kicks off this weeks issue with a positive summary of a questionable week.  Actually most of the issue was very bullish in tone while reminding us of how much the market has recovered in the last two weeks.  While rejoicing about the 6.4% gain in the Dow in the first three months of 2011 he reminds about all the insider trading information cases roaming around various court rooms.  He then gives a very succinct breakdown of Friday's Job report.  Citing several sources as he usually does, Alan declares this jobs report healthy and advises that there seems to be no hidden surprises.  In previous good reports we had some census worker number clouding the results.  He does point out that low scale cheap jobs (which he called eat drink and get sick because they are restaurant, bars and health care facilities) contributed 29% of the growth indicating that these are not high end manufacturing or technology jobs.

Tiernan Ray puts together a great piece about AAPL Apple and how it makes sense to value you this thing above that of Exxon Mobil.  That's right it is on target to be the largest cap stock in the world.  He points out that Exxon or Mobile NEVER created a product or a market worth 17 Billion Dollars in under two years.  That is what Apple has done with the iPad.  Think about it.  Great article and glad we are long in the stock.  The only downside dwelled upon in the article is the health issues surround Steve Jobs and the impact on the value of the stock.  Ray feels that short term to mid term the fears are over rated.

Gene Epstein does a magnificent job on a heady piece about the Jobs report.  For you economic voyeurs, please get this weeks issue as his article wit very informative.  He spends a little too much time side tracked about the housing bubble, which should be addressed in another article and was not.  Knapp provides some very interesting insight as to why this market has another 10-15% on the upside and he does so by providing very sound explanations.  He looks at the Institute of Supply Management reports and historical values of the markets to come to his conclusions. He picks apart the ADP employment surveys of small and mid cap employment trends and the news is very bullish.

As we said the bulk of the issue is very promising.  So what about the week ahead. 

Friday night we laid out what we figured would be the key data points for this week and we got them right.  We are going to cheat and use that list to quickly give you our guess as to what might happen.

Bernanke goes to Stone Mountain to give a speech to the Atlanta Fed (nothing new here and no impact on the market.), Tuesday the Institute for Supply Management index report comes out(First off we have to pint out this is the non manufacturing section of the ISM report so it is serviced based.  Despite the job growth in this sector we think it might disappoint but won't do much to the market.), the Fed releases the minutes from its last meeting zz z z z z z z  z(no impact on the market), Wednesday we have the petroleum inventory report and that could be interesting as today we broke $108 and barrel for while  (Depending upon what goes on in MENA, we could see oil break 110 this week.  That oculd be a real downer for the the market even though this report should be healthy.) , Thursday we have the Bank of England and The European Central Bank announcing monetary guidance (Financial speak for with they raise their rates?  They won't and no impact to the market.), Thursday we will see initial jobless claims  (Up but not enough to worry), as well as Consumer credit numbers (The will be up and they should be up enough to make the market happy.), and Friday we got nothing.

Now we have some bad news.  Boy's and Girls, your truly is taking a break from the newsletter.  This week we are headed towards Augusta, Georgia to go to the Masters.  We might have apost tomorrow to wean you off slowly, but then we will be down until next Sunday Night.  So keep an on on your stops, protect your gains, and remember Bears Make Money, Bulls Make Money, and PIGS get slaughtered.

Salve Lucrum