Boys and Girls;

While my guess last night on the distribution days were accurate, each index added one more day, we did have a recovery today as the ADP report might be a tell for a good jobs report on Friday.  (There is a long history of misses by the ADP).  I have been waiting to get a read on the volume today and it was moderate. (801 million shares on the NYSE and 1.6 billion on the Nasdaq)  So you had decent volume to the upside.

Gold and oil were up today.  Let's take a quick look at any outliers in the portfolio.

AAPL was basically flat today, even down a tad but has come back a bit in after hour trading.  The new iPad 3 4G LTE was released today as was the updated Apple TV.  The new iPad met with mixed results which may have explained the boring day for the stock.  Personally, a good play for the new iPad would be V Verizon since they have the lion share of the 4 G network.  We still like AAPL along with 4,298 (actual number as of Dec 20122) funds.

MSFT did slightly better than the market.  No explanation.

XOM did not move despite the slight up tick in oil.

CELG moved with the market today.  There were sec filings for 4 key execs who received about 16,000 shares and warrants on the stock each.  I'll do the math for you, its about 1.1 million each.  Probably a performance bonus plan.

UNFI had a nice day up 3%.  We added some yesterday after their good report and the weakness to 44.43.  That turned out to be a good call as they closed today at $45.64

GWW did nothing of note today. 

MGRC performed slightly off the market for no apparent reason.  There were 6 execs getting some apparent performance stock bonuses, but nothing material.

On the speculative stocks, I took many of you out of EPAY as we were not impressed with the stock.  It is back on a watch list.  We took the proceeds and either added to or started you with some LQMT, Liquid Metal.  This was the spec stock we mentioned in the blog about two weeks ago.  They are rumored to be a vendor for the back of the new iPhone.  It is a penny stock.  It shot up 82% today and then settled closer to where we bought in.  I think its was worth a spin of the roulette wheel.

Gold may have come up a bit today, but our option just languished.  The VXX came down a bit with today's stability.

Thanks to those of you who liked the distribution days article.  While I am watching those things for you, please keep in mind most of you have 401 Ks or IRAs that would benefit from the same attention to detail.