The rest of the saying goes, "but you can't do everything you want."  That holds true for ambitious plans around the house with difficult time lines.  After getting the house back in livable order, we are realizing we have a lot more to do as we expand man child's room and get the house prepared for what should be a special night in October, the Southern California Boone/Cronin reception.  (We found out that there might be one in Colorado as well.)

As we sit back and appreciate how far we have come, we have a long way to go.  When your house is filled 3 feet with mud, cacti, and animal feces,  it is easy to overlook that the earth moving equipment clearing the street and the driveway have chunked up your driveway.  Yes we need a new driveway.  Of course we waited to fix up the garages because when we expand Man Child's bedroom, we need to add support in the garage.

Like anything else in life, it is just an exercise of sitting down and taking the big hairy spider apart and seeing it is really just bunch of cute little spiders.  Let's hope one of them is not a black widow.

We got to enjoy lunch today at Hanna's and my buddy Dave actually waited on me and did not mess things up too badly.  The tomatoes today were spectacular.  During the course of my relatively healthy lunch, I proceeded to choke on piece of pepper that went down my wind pipe.  My little convulsion got Dave's attention and he quickly whisked a glass of water in front of me saying, "Are you OK, I can't afford to loose you!"  It's nice to be loved. 

I sneaked out a bit early today as one of good friends of more than 40 years crawled out of the deep scorching solitude of the desserts of Arizona.  (They live in Mohave Valley, AZ)  We had a great visit at the house as they had not been there in a while.  Then we headed over to Hanna's for a phenomenal meal (as usual).  My buddy tried risotto for the first time and liked it.  He then enjoyed a nice plate of scampi. 

Devin was on best behavior and had a nice salad while I had a small filet and some asparagus.  I had brought over a bottle of 2006 GrGich Hills Miljenko's Old Vine Zinfandel.  I have posted this wine before but each time its like a little party.  It is deep dark and seductive.  There is a big fruit taste to it without being sweet.  There is a bit of pepper (could be the acids which occasional come on strong) and a smokey meaty feel to pour.  It is thick and rich and really grabs the glass.  Oh yeah, Dave also arranged (cause I begged and pleaded) for a few more of those Bacon Lobster Crunch appetizer that we all went gaga over last week.

The evening wrapped up a few minutes ago so I could tidy up the blog and put it too bed.

Today In The Market

We had an up day today with only a hint of volume.  We took profit in a few call positions and will share those with you later in the week.  We called a better than expected existing home sales though our guess was a lot higher than what was reported.  (Buried in that report is a very healthy "pending" sales number which should make next months numbers look good.  That was built into some of the pricing today.)  The retail numbers that we expected to disappoint did not.  Hope of a brighter future for Greece also helped the market scoot up a bit.  In summary, the indexes were up, gold was up oil was up and we got the call wrong today.  That is good news.    

We called the 3 cent beat for Walgreens, yet the stock dropped 4.8% because the company announced the end of a huge script program with Express Scripts.  We also called the big miss on BKS Barnes and Noble.  Analysts expectations were suggesting a 91 cent loss, we suggested a buck and they lost $1.04.  We said Adobe would be close and they were they beat to upside by four cents. 

Silver and Gold

Ok I won't bore you again with the history of Burl Ives and that song, but a quick little lesson about why gold is out performing silver of late.  We were a bit surprised that Jim Cramer did not address this issue when last night (Monday) he was asked about SLV, the iShares performance.  Yeah he ranted that he does not like silver, but he failed to mention the huge correction last month and cause. 

On or about May 1^st, the Chicago Board Mercantile Exchange drastically changed the margin requirements for several commodities in order to avoid a possible crash.  Silver was one of those commodities and it took an 18% dump in a few days.  Ouch!  We got back in at 36.50 so we are still behind the curve a bit, but our guess is the market is adjusting to the new margin requirements and should recover in time.  If we had to choose one it would be GLD.  Most if not all the accounts still have a decent gain.

Somebody recently asked me if it would be safer to have the gold at home rather than holding an ETN (Not a typo, commodities are actually notes not fund hence the ETN vs. ETF.).  I said yes as long as you have a bunch of guns.  If anything catastrophic happens and the dollar becomes worthless and if we go to a gold standard, you should have gold and guns.  You will need to protect your gold.  So hold gold how ever you want.  And buy a gun.  Even if you don't have the gold at home one of your neighbors will and you and your gun can go and take it away.

(Speaking of Cramer, he had a decent read on HON and after a little homework we started a position on the stock.  Do your homework.  We will write it up in detail later.) 

We will leave you with that happy thought as we say,

Salve Lucrum