Barron's Review

This will be brief as it is late, we have not poured through every single article in this weeks Barron's.  Alan Ableson tries to make sense of the near government shut down non effect of the market, but it even leaves him a bit bewildered.  He does point out that the gold bugs are the ones having the last laugh.  He then reminds us that the number of bulls on this boat have made sailing a bit scary.  He implies that the market is up despite many players not knowing the difference between a balance sheet and a bed sheet.  (Hey its late, I've had a margarita, and I'm tired.) He even uses a pretty chart showing the spread between bulls and bears and the spread in very heavy towards the bulls.  Our message is to continue riding the wave with your core holdings and keep a close eye on your stops.  Protect the profits you have made.

Michael "My Man" Santoli has an article that jump off the TOC (Publishing speak for table of contents) at me with both arms.  It was called "What Is The Low Volume Telling Us?"  If you have been reading these notes, you know we have been pontificating about the lack of conviction (Weak Volume) for several weeks.  In a teasing little sentence Michael quotes a reliable source in saying that the continued lack of volume implies more than a correction ahead.  In yet another opinion, he passes on sound information saying that the fact we have no volume is a good thing and when we see the volume pick up it will be a negative indicators.  By the end of the article, he ends up in a place we all know.  A market without volume is a directionless market.  Mmmmm, think I've heard that before somewhere?

Tiernan Ray does a nice pimping of CSCO Cisco.  The article goes into too much detail for this e-mail but a good read if you are doing homework on CSCO.  Jay Palmer does a good "Gadget of the Week" explaining some of the many emergency preparedness Apps for the family of Apple Products.  Theresa Carey tells us about two websites worth looking at.  One is MarketSmith which we had the pleasure of testing for a month last month.  It is IBD charting on steroids.  The subscription is $995 a year and you really need a sizable portfolio to make sense of that purchase.  Don't get me wrong and I came very close to pulling the trigger.  My complaint was we could not pull up a 6 week daily chart, which use almost all the time.  When we asked what we needed it for, we knew my question had fallen on arrogant ears.  This is a separate but related company to the IBD group so I was a bit disappointed.  The other is a site called borntosell.com.  I am not familiar and have not had a chance to play with it.  If it's any good I will let you know.  Shirley Lazo provides some great leads about Dividend increases in 2011.  Most of the names you already know.  It would be shameless of me to post them here so just send me a note explaining why you don't want to got and pick up a copy of this weeks Barrons and Ten Dollars for shipping and handling and I will send you a copy of the article.  (Just kidding Barron's, if they send me 10 dollars I will got out and buy a copy and then beat them with it for making me go get it.)  Thomas Donlan does a great piece about Congressman's Paul Ryan's "A Path to Prosperity"

In Summary Ryan's manifesto is a good start but does not go far enough.  The article explains that the Ryan document is a step in the right direction, but does not go far enough in addressing the servicing of the debt on the 14.2 trillion dollar deficit.  Now we can all relax as the Dems and the GOP have come to agreement so the government won't be shut down.  They have managed to cut 38 billion dollars in order to put the budget to bed.  In case you were wondering if the 14.2 trillion were a simple 30 year loan at 3%, 38 billion would be about 25.4 days interest.  I certainly feel better.

The Week Ahead

We have 13 data points to keep an eye on this coming week.  Fortunately none of them occur before Tuesday so we will wait and check our crystal ball tomorrow night when it is not so polluted by agave distillates.

Tomorrow does kick of another season of earnings.  That's right, Alcoa reports tomorrow.  The earnings estimate is 27 cents a share.  Close but no cigar.  Look for 25 cents but some positive looking statements so the stock won't get whacked.  JP Morgan Chase reports on Wednesday and look for a beat of the 1.16 a share estimate.  We would think a sizable beat.  GOOG and HAS Hasbro should both beat on Thursday.  BAC Bank of America will beat on Friday and Charles Schwab will miss.  (That one is easy everyone has been talking about low volume.)

And that is all she wrote tonight.

Salve Lucrum