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We had a full house last night as daughter was home with her dog Captain (ABOVE). Mom was home telling us things that went on in Palm Desert. There is a reason what goes on in the desert stays in the desert.
I woke up this morning and actually made money in the market. I don't know how it happened, but we added a few bucks to a few portfolios by guessing right about those AA Alcoa call options we told you about last week. The finally hit a 20% return and we took the money and ran.
Ooops, loosing the people who want to hear about our latest in the never ending saga of the Cronin family.
 | | Devin and Jack at Hanna's. |
I swam this morning and discovered something. I only used my legs for about half of the laps. That was a great workout. I felt the burn and was breathing heavy. (be nice out there!)
Devin was taking Man Child to school and we felt bad for him as he feels his summer is slipping away with nothing but school and football.
I am going to take him to a huge comic book media trade show in San Diego Saturday and then get in my car and we will head off to historic Route 66.
This has been on my bucket list for a while, but I think Jack will enjoy it as well. The game plan would be to pick up the trail in San Bernardino and head out to Yermo for Lunch and then back. It should be a swell trip, just man child and I. I think I can get away with this as the ladies are having wedding shower for Kirstin on Saturday. That is a good day to be gone.
Once I got in the office today, I got the Ellen version of the wild Palm Desert weekend and there were no gaping holes of truth. After that it was cleaning up about 400 e-mails I had managed to ignore all weekend. Missed the market closing as I was in a brief meeting with our CFO. Gary P. is one of the nicest CFOs you could ever have on your team. (No he is not a reader and I am not over budget this month.)
Then I had to get down to business and write the next installment of my message in our publication The Undersea Journal. The theme was bit challenging (sorry we have a few PADI members as readers so that was a tease) but after some homework, I got a draft to my magical mystical ghost writer (Karl S.) who will make me look marvelous as usual. |
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In The Market Today
It was not a Burning Ring of Fire, but it was not pretty.
We did not make any guesses other than the fact that ZION bank would beat. The had a blow out quarter. (WE HOLD ZION BONDS IN PORTFOLIO) We are looking at a pre market order to take advantage of the huge beat. If we can catch a long position below $23.00, we will hope to see an upside of 3-5% in the next few days. We will take it. There are no attractive call optins right now and the earning news will be baked into the call prices at the opening in the morning.
Other than that, Mr Market fobbled as more European squigglies (Investing term meaning pieces of bad news.) mad their way into the press room here in the states. Those tidbits of scary news were only interrupted by the fine job our elected officials are doing keeping everyone feeling warm and comfy about the debt ceiling situation. IBM numbers came in strong after the close, so it will be interesting to see if that is the medicine we need to get the market to open nicely tomorrow. We would have thought the marginally good news out of the home builder report today would have moved the market in the right direction, but by the end of the DOW was down 95 points and the S&P was down 11 points each just under a 1% drop. Volume was just a hair above the average so this slide did not have a lot of conviction, but we are do for a positive day. Maybe tomorrow.
Let's take a closer look at ZION Zion Bank for no other reason that we are trying to catch the opening and its been a few posts since I tour apart a stock.
Here is the chart.
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You can see the volume line across the bottom and we have circled three distribution days and two accumulation days. Typically a distribution day is a heavy day of trades driving the price down. Accumulation is heavy with the price going up.
In looking at their fundamentals, we circled what caught our attention. The P/E ration is attractive at 12.80. The Price to Book is very attractive at .62 indicating you can buy this at 38% below the book value of the company. The earnings forecast for next year looks huge and this was all before the CEO's very positive comments this afternoon.
Continuing on to the other fundamentals, we do not like the ROE. We do put a lot of credence on the management ability to manage resources and this is not a glowing return. However we know the sector they are operating in and we know the company. We have a place in Utah and have had one experience with Mr. Harris Simmons regarding a community store that ZION had to take guardianship of. While the outcome was not what we wanted, his office handled the issue very professionally. The margins cited here are terrible, but that is what has turned around this quarter, according to the early reports. (WE HAVE NOT read the sec filings as they will not be posted until tomorrow.) You can see we also noted the target price which gives us a 22% margin of safety.
All of this info came from the free area of finviz.com which is one of the links here on the e-mail your receive. Please feel free to click through to finviz to see the charts on the stocks you own. |
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From The Whitehouse Gallery
As Congress gets down to the last two weeks of negotiating the deficit default issue, President Obama is directing both sides of the aisle to get to work and make this happen. In a meeting with aides prior to the next meeting, The President was reviewing the details of the meeting.
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"Ok,you are sure there are that many zeros in a trillion?" |
