Hickory Dickory Truck

We told you, wife lady made her way up to Utah and the battery was dead on the Ford Expedition. Well her resourcefulness and a membership in AAA got things back on the road again. However when she and lovely daughter left the house they saw some kind of debris on the floor of the garage. Devin and Kristin got of the truck and there was a colony of mice, mice feces, and mice pieces.

Oh the micemanity of it. They scooped up the tiny baby mices and carried them across the street and sang Born Free. (Great, they will grown up run back across the street and I will have little black surprises in my cereal by the Holidays this year.)

Today, it took all of my sanity and organizational skills (I'll wait for a few of you-OK most of you to stop laughing 2 3 4) to get Man Child on the road this morning. Ya see the school has Spirit week. I sent him off with a bottle of Irish Whiskey-Bada Bing. No, today they could wear red, white, and blue in honor of the 10th anniversary of 9/11. As we were ready to walk out the door, Jack had blue tennis shoes, blue jeans, and a white t-shirt. I looked at him and said, "Red". Now he still sounds like Broderick Crawford because of his sinus infection so he mumbled something ending in a question, to which I said, "Red". "Huh?" was his retort. I then said, "Last night I asked you if you had something Red, White, and Blue?" To which he said "Ok". I asked, "Where is the red?" He said, "I don't have anything in red to wear." About this time I was going to send him to Greece.

 (Ok I'll let you off the hook their flag is blue and white.) He went upstairs and miraculously found a red T-shirt.

After dropping him off at school, I had time to run by the bagel shop. Apparently most of Santa Margarita Catholic High School has a color blindness issue as I saw one young lady come in with grey warm up pants (white I assume), and orange T-shirt (red I assume) and a blue ribbon tied in her hair. What are you going to do.

I managed to get in the office early enough to get all my e-mail cleaned up and check in with Chucky Schwab (more later). We had the big truck this morning as we needed to have it checked out before Devin and Ryan drive it up to Utah for the big event. Ellen was kind enough to drop me off at home to get my car. With Devin gone, I have the pleasure of letting the dogs out on a somewhat regular schedule. We also got to buy another science book at the school store and go back one more time to buy tickets for Friday night's football game.

Time to Polish Up The Gorrilla Glass

We indicated we would be looking at our watch lists to find some nuggets to buy. It did not take long to find one. An article we read last night in the Seeking Alpha blog, reminded us that back in July we had looked at GLW Corning and because of the overall market jitters did not pull the trigger (GLW was at 18 and change.). When we ran the company through the Buffet Analysis we were looking at a 41.16% year after year return. Now we do not expect that to happen, needless to say it was one of the most promising of all the stocks we have crunched using the Buffet Analysis. With the stock now selling at 13.16 it puts its price to book value at a 1.0 level. But we did not get crazy and buy the farm. (Mostly because our farm money has gone to the house rebuild, a wedding, a new high school and its football team to name a few.) We did spend lunch doing some serious good old fashion homework.

Now I could punish you by telling you about the SEC filings for their period ending June Quarterly, (Relevant excerpt: "The Specialty Materials segment led those segments reporting sales improvement in the three and six months ended June 30, 2011, when compared to the same periods last year, driven by continued robust retail demand for portable display devices that utilize our Corning Gorilla glass products.  Telecommunications segment sales also improved in the second quarter and first half of 2011, reflecting improvements across all products lines.  When compared to the same periods last year, sales in the three and six months ended June 30, 2011 in our Environmental Technologies segment were higher, driven by an increase in demand for diesel products and continued improvement in the global automotive industry.  Offsetting the gains in these segments were lower sales in our Display Technologies segment due to a decrease in volume and price declines.")

Or we could go item by item through their financials (recommend you check them out here)

Or we could kill you with the analysts report from Morningstar (sorry subscription material, can't share it, but Schwab has Ned Davis, Argus, and Credit Suisse reports which is supportive of the analysts report.)

Instead we will tell you what we did. We bought some long term out of the money call options for February 2012 at a strike price of 18.00 for 29 cents a contract. Now we have been burned before on LT out of the money calls, but we feel at this level, unless people STOP buying flat panel TVs and smart phones, GLW is a prime candidate for a core holding in our portfolio and we do not have the cash to make that commitment. This move ties up some share where we can enjoy any upward movement and take possession next year when cash should be more available. Target prices are in the 20-22 range so we have nice margin of safety and we are in on the cheap. This looks like a Buffet stock if we ever saw one. In fact it is one of the best stocks we have run through the number cruncher. (MSFT, BTN, SMTC are close behind.) So that is our pick for the day.

Salve Lucrum