Ok, first off (after the Postus Interuptus) I have to acknowledge Dana, one of our readers who correctly associated my creative use of the word Luddithian, as a corrupted adjective of the word Luddite.

Here was his reply today:

You had to challenge me!

Its spelled Ludditian (without an h) and the computer spell checks do not recognize it. Since a Luddite was named for their involvement in the early 1800s social movement of British textile artisans, as they destroyed forward progress (new textile machines that saved labor costs) in fear of losing their jobs, I am confused as to your correlation. I guess you are referring to the tendency to hold on to the old way of doing business.

Welcome back!

Today was relatively normal as we took the dogs out, woke up man child who was till not feeling perfect but forced his way through another day of practice, then checked the market and bought a couple of call options based upon recent earnings reports. More on that later. One of you pointed out I have not mentioned swimming. I have not swam since my return from the UK. Just lazy I guess. I will get on it.

Made it into the office to spend some time with Ellen upon her return from the wonders of Oregon. She seemed to have a good time and was missed.

Then we trucked up to the LA area for a meeting that lasted to early afternoon and kept conquering our e-mails and the stack which in all honesty is not much smaller that the picture we shared yesterday.

It's Time For A Vacation

When we decided on the title for today's post we were not actually talking about me, but the market. This volatility is driving everyone crazy. I even went out on a limb today and called the market ending this year 7-10% up from this points. I was perfectly sober when I made that comment. It seems fair to share it with you as this is the place to track my stupid ranting.

The craziness that we suggested would take place today did take place and for the reason cited. The wheeling and dealing in Europe lead to a low open, then there was some promising comments, then we had what appeared to be some good earnings news out of WalMart and Home Depot. (Keep an eye on the Walmart number. This is the 9^th quarter of same store sales decline leaving the bottom line improvement to grinding vendors and laying off people.)

Eventually, the Euro Party ended the day with no party favors and the Mr. Market Turned UGLY.

Volume was heavier than Monday, but still nothing to get excited about. Needless to say The IBD has us in Correction. The dollar and oil came down a touch.

It is fun to listen to many of the investments talking heads trying to figure out the new resistance and support level for the indexes. The last 10 trading sessions have ruined any reliable technical analysis.

But things should quiet down after we have our

options expiration day on the 20^th and then Wall Street and Chicago usually enjoy a lot of traders and insiders taking a much needed break before school starts. We could all use a few down days from crazy equity swings like we have seen.

Earlier in the post we mentioned some call options we placed early this morning based upon earnings. Here is what we are doing, but do not recommend you replicate unless if you are using the "Stupid Bet Vegas Money". This is RISKY.

First let's look at TJX The TJX Companies, Inc. operates as an off-price retailer of apparel and home fashions in the United States and internationally., We do not OWN the stock, but like what we heard on the earnings news. We did not do our homework on the stock, but checked the fundies on FinViz and researched past performance when they beat earnings estimates. Then we saw the market opening down as expected. It looked ripe for picking up some call short term "in the money" call options. The stock opened at 53.63 and dropped to the high 52 range, we bought the 50.00 September calls for 4.00 a contract. We are looking for a 3-5% bump on the stock which should throw a 20-30% bump on the call options.

Ok let's do it again with another one. A Agilent Technologies, Inc. provides bio-analytical and electronic measurement solutions to the communications, electronics, life sciences, and chemical analysis industries in the United States and internationally. If you have never heard of them it don't matter to play this dare devil game. We took a look at the FinViz chart and see it was well over sold recently, they had a great earnings report coming in 4 cents over estimates, researched the history of beat and how the stock reacted and liked what we saw, so we looked at the 36.93 opening and liked the 35.00 September call option for 3.60 a contract. We are looking for a 2-7% increase in the stock over the next month and the call options should fall in the 15-20% gain area.

One more. WMT WalMart. You know them so I will spare you. They have a decent history of not doing well when they do not beat the earnings estimate by much. In this case they only beat my a penny. Looking back, it looks like we could see a 3-9% slide in price. We liked the September 52.50 Put (opposite of a call we are looking for a drop) for $1.60 an option. If we get a 5% drop, we should see 20-25% gains on the PUT.

Your eyes are all glassed over so I will let you head back to bed and rest.

From the White House Gallery

So many people are criticising President Obama.  I wanted to share with you a picture proving that he is single handedly trying to jump start the real estate market in the US.  Here he is personally trying to auction off a Barn somewhere in the Midwest: