Ok now. It's been a crazy weekend. My lovely wife made it to Utah and discovered our vehicle (1996 Ford Expedition, on of the first new models off the boat in Orange County in 96.) had a dead battery even though we had the insight to have a neighbor hook up a trickle charger. She has multiple wedding related meetings with daughter and not having a vehicle created even more stress. It's good to be 729 miles away.

We were dealing with our own multi-tasking issues. After getting Devin off to the airport, we got things ready for Man Child to get to the Saturday Freshman Football game. I got him to the school and then we had a freak little storm come through the area. We have a golden retriever who goes whacko in Thunder and Lightning. While I was getting out of the shower she managed to open the dog gate and surprise me by staring at me thought the glass shower door.

While consoling the Golden which we named after my dad, (Jaycee ON THE LEFT IN THE PHOTO), I got dressed, took care of the other dogs, read a bit of my Baron's, answered e-mails, picked up dog gonkers in the back yard and straightened the kitchen. Then I had to bring in a cage to keep my psycho dog in as it was still storming. We got all that done it time to watch a nail biter of a game. We won, but it was close.

Once Jack got back to school, I picked him up grabbed lunch and recognized that he was really tired and possibly on the verge of getting ill. He rested the afternoon so he could make it to his High School welcome dance. While he rested, I finished Barron's, The Journal, The Financial Times, worked on the wine inventory, watched Friday's Mad Money (most of it anyway), cleaned up my content on my kindle, did some long overdue computer updates, (all the while with Alabama and Penn State in the back round.), ran to the store to get something for dinner, fed the dogs, put away some dry cleaning, and got to spend a little time reviewing all 15 portfolios.

By that time it was time to get dinner ready. Jack wanted some Panda Express so that was easy. I have bought a 8-9 oz filet trimmed, tenderized, seasoned and scorched each side on super high heat, prepared it blue rare, spread a real thin coat of stilton blue cheese on one side, took some of the steamed rice and stir fried veggies and had a great little meal. But the real surprise was my wine selection.

Karl, one of our employees gave a nice bottle of cabernet at Christmas. The bottle survived the flood and is a very affordable and common bottle of cab so my expectations were not to high. I was pleasantly surprised. 2008 Francis Coppola / Niebaum-Coppola Black Label Claret   This has a 85ish rating, which is a shame as I am sure the rating is a reflection of the price point (well below 20.00 a bottle). There was no huge bouquet on the nose, and that was what I was expecting. The color was just what you would expect. Deep dark and inky purple. In the mouth I was taken back with the taste. It was chewy, earthy, jammy, peppery, and really enjoyable. This wine snob was embarrassed as I assumed a 16 dollar bottle of cab could not be enjoyed. I look forward to knocking back the rest tonight.

As expected Jack woke up sounding like Broderick Crawford. We will be running him off to urgent care once he gets his but moving. It's about 9:15 at the moment.

It's Puzzle Time Boys and Girls

First off let me apologize to the hundreds of you I scared with Fridays post. The Market was not down 4.7% last week. I ran numbers using a 5 day report which sucked in the previous Friday as Monday was a Holiday. We were close to our guess on the correction. We suggested a 1-1.5% correction and we were down 2.7% on the Dow and 1.6 on the S & P 500 (the index we prefer.) Sorry for the confusion.

We are not going to do an in depth review of Barron's this week as we would rather spend the time building a puzzle you might use. In a quick summary Abelson is a BEAR suggesting the S&P earnings estimates for 2012 might be 30% too high. Santoli is a downer as well. A side bar tells us the Deficit Super Committee has already decided not to talk about tax hikes, entitlement programs, and defense cutting. Great Start guys and gals. Laing has an outlier opinion that QE III will be good for the country. Santoli pimps Jarden. (Good article by the way) Ververka slams Yahoo. Epstein plays down recession fears. Bary is bullish on airline stocks (good article, not sure we buy into it? We are thinking a 20 dollar bump in oil will change the slant of this article. We are long XOM, CVX, SSN and TRP.) Tiernan Ray is pimping chip stocks at these values. (Hint-ARMH-not in the article. Back on our watch list.). Veverka is hopeful for MSFT. Theresa Carey gives a very positive review of Schwab's Street Edge Smart trading platform. (Can't say we agree, We find it clunky and confusing, but after this write up will revisit.). Coleman tears apart an advisory firm's ETF holdings. (Interesting read.) Straus does a great positive piece on JNJ. (Cramer fav and nice yielder at 3.5%) Neil Martin does a great interview with Murenbeeld (Chief Economist) and in a nutshell keep buying gold till the mess is straightened out in Europe.

Now let's build that frame for the puzzle for next week. We have about 13 influential economic data points next week.

Don't worry we will not bore you with them all. We have done the homework on all of them and that is important to building the puzzle, but here are several of which you should be aware. Of course behind all of this we have the back round music of the sovereign debt issues in Europe. (Calling it back round music is a lot like calling that low rider Buick Regal with the hip hop music blasting loud enough to crack your motor mounts is back round music.)

Not much happening Monday in the US market as far as data points go. ) Keep an eye on an Italian industrial report due out Monday. That and the Greece debt issue will have an impact on our opening. It is hard to tell how the new property tax imposed last night will impact world markets. It is a long overdue step though very drastic. The new tax will be imposed on all property owners through their utility billing. If you want your electricity and water to stay on you will have to pay the tax. Let the riots begin. Look for the market to continue to slide. Take 1% off today.

Tuesday we have import pricing being reported. Oil was relatively stable and everything we read indicated this number should be falt or little down. The over educated folk are expecting a drop of .9%. We are thinking it will not go that low, say.5% down. Bargain hunting will kick in so look for a 1-2% mini rally.

Wednesday we have the consensus saying the producer price index will drop to -.1%. (Adjusting for food and fuel it is estimated to be .2%) We are thinking that might be in line with our guess. If we were going to contest the figure it would be to the down side. The biggie on Wednesday will be the Retail Sales Support. Quite a few folk will be watching this. The consensus is a drop from .5% to.2%. (Adjusted for autos they think .3%) We don't see it. Consumer confidence and the battle lines in Washington have people moribund to open their wallets. Look for a significant disappointment and a 2% drop in the market on Wednesday.

Thursday is a busy day. CPI, Empire State Survey, jobless claims, industrial production, and the Philly Survey all report. After looking at all of them, we think the production numbers will beat estimates, but an ugly jobless number will keep the market treading water for the week.

Friday we have consumer sentiment. The consensus has the number improving by a microscopic measure. What are they smoking? Ok the index is developed and run by the University of Michigan, so let's cut them some slack. Now way it hits the expected 56. Look for 54 and another 1% down.

So if my math is correct, we will be looking at another week of softness to the tune of about 1.5% down. If I got it right, GLD and SLV look like decent plays as more people look for safer places to park money. The VXX will continue to run up to the 45-50 mark making it and its call options look attractive. Look for price drops in your core holdings to add shares. Again we are ONLY talking about your core holdings. If you are not committed to your holding, dump them. This is not the time to be anything than truly committed, meaning you have done the homework and you feel the equity is worth owning.

Now with all of that said, there is a reoccurring them in all the readings and the TV financial pundits. September is the worst month of the year. That the month will continue to have its way with Mr. Market. We are not buying into it.

IF we can divorce ourselves from the Euro Scare, we are liking the values we are seeing and see no reason not to not only stay solid in our core holdings, but add to them and start revisiting our watch lists. That is our game plan for the week and as we kick the tires on our watch list, we will share some of those ideas with you.

Salve Lucrum