I can now tell you what the big event was this morning. Ellen agreed to come to our house this morning at 5:45 so Devin and I could fight the traffic up to LA so we could have breakfast with The 42 President of the United States, William J Clinton.

Bush was not at our event

That's right just Devin and I had breakfast with President Clinton at the Beverly Wilshire in Beverly Hills. Oh yeah, Bob McCann, CEO of UBS Wealth Strategies was there as well. But that was it. Well, there were some secret service guys there too, but that was it. Just Bill, Bob, Devin, the Secret Service Guys and that's all. Well, there were some service people waiting on the table and keeping the food on the buffet fresh, but that was all, just Bill, Bob, Devin, the Secret Service guys and the buffet helpers. Oh yeah there were a couple of other people at our table, 4 to be exact. So you had Bill, Bob, Devin, the Secret Service guys and the buffet helpers, the four people at our table and that was it. Well actually there were about 50 other tables like ours, but that was all just Bill, Bob, Devin, the Secret Service guys and the buffet helpers, the four people at our table and the other 296 people in the room, but that was all.

Antonio Ramón Villaraigosa, Mayor of Los Angeles who spent 45 minutes, telling us that LA needs jobs and an infrastructure for mass transit.  Whoa!  Newsflash.  Despite Bob McCann's best efforts AV kept bring it back to LA needs jobs and an infrastructure to support mass transit.  Even when Bob tired to drag him off topic to the beltway and what Washington needs to do, AV would (with in one or two sentences) bring it back to jobs and an infrastructure for mass transit.  We lost two folk from our table and I saw a few more leave during the mayor's sector.  Painful.  Everyone was looking at the literature on their table and counting ice cubes in the water pitchers. (Footnote, the mayor had an escort entourage, so I don't think he knows really how bad the traffic is.)

Then out came a surprisingly feeble WJ Clinton.  Bob's intro was great and they got right at it.  Clinton has a bit of a tremor in his right hand and I was surprised he was not mic'd so you could not see the palsyish shaking on the jumbotron.  Perhaps it was a schedule thing because I know how long it takes to get properly mic'd up.  Once President Clinton started speaking, he was great.  Very charming and to my surprise, extremely bright.  While you could tell Bob's questions were not a surprise to him, when he went off script, he was witty, provocative, almost republican in his comments, and fun to watch.

At one point when talking about his hobbies he pulled out his PADI Card and asked to meet the PADI Guy.  (Just kidding, but Izzy Englander and Bill Gross, both at my table, told me Clinton was a PADI Diver.  OK kidding again.)  I did see Pat Boone-really-he was wearing an orange suit, orange pants, orange tan, and white boots, kid you not.

It was a great morning and a life memory. My thanks to Tim Tunney for getting us into the event. Ironically, at the moment I am not a client of UBS, but I must have potential, as everyone up at the Beverly was extremely friendly and helpful. President Clinton was witty but very spot on when he said, "You (pointing to the audience) need to be careful. You campaign and vote for people who say they will keep congress from raising taxes or one might say they will not pass a budget without a tax increase, and then when they get to the Beltway, they do what they say they were going to do, you are the one who voted for them. Please people, read about your candidate and understand what they say they are going to try and do, because most of them will." It was a good moment.  

Fool Me Once Shame On Me

Fool me 11 times and I am just a dope. Ok, here is the story morning glory. Once again, when Merkel and Sarkozy indicated they had a deal and our President went on the TV and said he liked the details of the deal, it left everybody scratching their head because as far as all the bankers and the broadcasters knew, THERE WAS NO DETAILS, because there was no solid deal. This is about the 11th time in nine months that comments out of the Eurozone (Think Twighlight Zone-dodododo dodododo-that was the theme song, really, try it I'll wait. . . . . got it, cool huh?) have fooled us all into believing that there is a deal that is going to fix all this crapula (Latin for confusion) in Greece or is it Italy or is it France or is it Denmark? Oh yeah is all of them.

Today was just the correction from the spike that should not have happened in the first place, last week. Are we still in a confirmed market uptrend? Yeah. Its conviction got slapped a bit today because of the news out of Germany and because the Empire State Manufacturing reports was yucky.

Other news today, C Citigroup beat and was rewarded about a point for its effort. WFC did beat and got spanked. Speaking of getting spanked, we told you about a put we tried to catch last week on AA Alcoa as they reported soft and have a strong history of dropping when they report weak. They were down 6% today and had we caught the Put we were looking at, it would have rocketed today, a quick 34% return. Shoulda, Coulda Woulda.

Post Mortems

Speaking of Shoulda, Coulda Wouldas, we did have some time this weekend and this evening to execute a few post mortems on stocks we bought or sold 90 days ago. We would be talking about the weeks of July 11 and July 18. This exercise is really worth your time. It is VERY enlightening.

Here is what we did. We went into Schwab history for the weeks in question. For the week of July 11 we had 9 trades and July 18, we had 38 trades. (That sounds like a lot, but remember we were in Option mode at the time so a lot of those were option contract trading. Pure equity trades were 10 for the week of the 18th and 4 for the week of the 11th.)

Once we had the list of equities, we went to Schwab streetsmart platform (you could use any charting site you want as long as you can overly the S&P 500 chart over your 6 month daily chart also showing daily volume). Once you have the overlay on your stock chart, print it off and get a pencil ready.

We then totaled all of the sales and purchases to see how out net was both dollar wise and % wise. Then we took our pencil and from the Schwab history page we wrote in all the purchases, sales, and dividends. (This is tedious Butch, you would love it.)

Then, take a step back and look at the chart. Then start writing what you think went right and wrong. Make the notes because you will keep these pages and you will profit from your mistakes.

Here are a few of my comments from the forensics on a few stocks:

HON Honeywell. Did the homework correctly and thoroughly after getting a few prompts from Cramer. (e-mails from thestreet.com) Market was sideways (I could see this now because of the S&P 500 overlay.) The chart looking back today-not pretty. No base formed. Got in at the wrong time. (I could see this now looking at the chart and the daily volume up and daily volume down.) Should have built my stops at 52.13. The last few days (from Oct 6) look interesting a possible new buy point of $44.50. (BTW, I had a large loss dollar wise and a 25% loss because I did not stop out. Broke one of my own rules.)

CMG Chipolte Mexican Grill. Did great homework on this after JH told me about the stock which Cramer was pimping on MM (Mad Money) Great value. Pretty chart. Good Growth. Took a little profit when the correction started (July 22). Liked the up days at the end of August so bought back in. With the market in a confirmed correction sold everything took the profit. (We had a strong position so the dollars were good. The % was 8.2%.)