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The Night After The Morning After Oh What A Night
Today we had to play hooky from the office as our intent was to make it in by nine, but we are really and truly wrapping up 109 details as this project comes to an end. We were ready to head meetings with the contractors early in the am, had furniture delivered during the lunch hour, had more meetings with contractors, and had to discover our framing at the base of back of the house will need to be replaced. Two steps forward and one step back. Looking at the devastation today in Texas, Alabama, Mississippi and other states makes me realize we did get off easy. It's just hard to see that sometimes.
Now I am ready to jump right onto the stock and portfolio stuff, but I was told tonight that quite a few of you actually enjoy the junk up front, about our lives even people who don't normally open the e-mails were popping that one open. Last night's post is going to be tough to top.
Ya see all we did was hook up with our golfin buddy played 9 holes and then went back to the scene of the crime, Hanna's. Quite a few people read the blog and made a point to ask about it. Dave Hanna not only read it, he made reading it a condition of continued employment for many of the employees. (Note to Dave, check the constitutionality of that one under cruel and unusual punishment.)
Golfin was good. Had a great time. We skipped all over the course as there were people playing in front of us. Imagine the nerve. We finished at the 15th on the north course a 135 yard par three. Some people actually aim for the green and put it directly on the putting service to attempt to make a par. Having done that once in the last five years, that was way too easy. I hit into a scrub oak tree about 30 yards away from the green and bounced it off the limb so it would spin towards the green stopping 5 feet away from the whole. It was actually a very simple shot. A decent little put and we had our fist ever birdie on that whole. My buddy actually put it much closer to the green, but chose to aim right for the putting service and that did not work out so well for him.
We finished up our evening at Hanna's and we enjoyed a phenom Asian Chicken Salad. It was accompanied by a nice Zinfandel called The Federalist, but then Ben my golfin buddy insisted we try a big cab. Dave presented us a wonderful Cab, Cab Franc, Merlot blend called Oracle by the Miner Winery in Napa. In the wine which had the big Bordeaux nose, I got some chocolate, berries and spices. A real nice pour even though I had no meat. You should grab a bottle. That may be the best tip you get tonight.
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Show and Tell
It has been a while since I gave the readers peak at the Salve Lucrum Portfolio. Actually I think it was in November 2010. Here it is:
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A few explanations might be in order. This has changed drastically since it was last published as we did pull out of everything except GLD and SLV in February expecting the inevitable correction, which seems to have come and gone. (Did I say that out loud? Technically no, I typed it out loud.)
As you can see we still have a few calls that are anchors on our overall performance. Intermec, Badger Meter, and Origin Agritech will probably expire worthless. We have high hopes for the promising call options on Waste Management and UNP. Below that we have a mutual fund CANGX which follows the guidelines set forth by the CANSLIM investment strategy set forth by William O'Neil, IBD's founder. We are taking a flyer on this as we normally oppose MFs. We want to watch this through a few market cycles as we may use it long term for retirement funding strategies. According to Barron's and AAII it is one of the best performing funds on record over the long run. We are happy with the almost 6% gain in three weeks. Next we have our current oil play, COP which has adjusted down since we bought it, but it is only following the commodity in days of late. We do have an 8% stop in place in case the stock goes funky on us. (Technical financial term we suggest you look up.) We have some bond offerings that have been doing well for us and generating an average yield of about 7%. The yield to term is closer to 9%. Then we have our newer position that we discussed here last week IRBT. We are considering adding some more at the current level as we really do like the stock. We really enjoy getting behind our readers picks when ever we can, because we like to show that ANYBODY can do this. Then you can see we have about 20% of our portfolio in gold and silver. We are protecting these gains with well managed stops. We suggest you do as well. When these commodities adjust, it will be quick and wicked. Then you have another newly acquired stock we pimped here about a week ago, NVO. Pharms are starting look attractive again and we like hat we saw on this one. We have also just started a position on OPEN Open Table. We have mentioned here a couple of times, they look like an internet based model that has a lot of legs. We think that if you mix social networking with the food service industry with a utilitarian value like restaurant reservations, they might have a winner on their hands. JJG and DBA are our inflation insurance bets. We have a couple of put options that our underwhelming us at the moment. Keep in mind a purchased put is a bear position and this market has been in a confirmed uptrend so it is not surprising that these puts are not doing well. We spoke a couple of weeks ago about a small Canadian Mining concern RIC. We hope you were listening as it us up about 18% and we continue to add to the holding. We also continue to add to our SMTC position and it has not disappointed yet. This is another one we have stops placed to protect the gains. And we still hold out hopes for the UNG, Nat Gas postion that will pay off for us some day.
We hope you enjoyed a peak into the Salve Lucrum portfolio.
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Happenin's In The Market
SBUX met expectations today but had some questionable things to say bout the rest of the year and next year. It was interesting to note that some of the commodity groups fell today. Corn was down, wheat was down, soybeans were down, and ethanol was down. Could this be a sign of softening inflation fears?
The market sems quite comfortable blowing off poor labor reports and downward adjustments to the GDP. Is social unrest and Tsunamis the only thing that gets this market's attention? Even a miss by the DOWs litmus stock PG did not get any attention. XOM beat, wow an oil company beating expectations, dah! Ebay faired well as did PepsiCo. Gold and Silver shined up several of our portfolios.
US stocks posted modest gains today, even after the release of a lower-than-expected read on 1Q GDP and an unexpected increase in jobless claims, which highlighted a full slate of economic data. The disappointing reports were somewhat offset by the continued resiliency in consumer spending and a jump in pending homes sales. The equity front did its best to further the day's gains, as Q1 earnings continued to pour in. Dow member Procter & Gamble came up just short of top- and bottom-line expectations, but managed to gain market share, while fellow Dow component Exxon Mobile exceeded earnings projections but fell short of revenue estimates. Elsewhere, PepsiCo and eBay both topped profit expectations, while Starbucks posted results that were inline, but issued disappointing guidance. In M&A news, Constellation Energy Group and Exelon Corp reached a definitive agreement to combine the two companies, valued at about $7.9 billion. Treasuries moved higher on the GDP data, while the prices of gold and silver surged to all-time highs as the US dollar continued to move lower.
(Published on my MacAir, first time.)
Salve Lucrum
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BAGAKOAA;
I am not a professional investment advisor. Anybody reading my blog and investing accordingly must be out of their minds. I have made more money than I have lost. There are many more qualified people than I to actually tell you how to invest your money.
BAGAKOAA=Boys And Girls And Kids Of All Ages
Salve Lucrum=Latin for Hurrah for Profit. |
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