Give Me A Ticket

 

Monday I had the pleasure of participating in the Santa Margarita Eagles Football Team Golf Tournament. It was held at Arroyo Trabuco Country Club and it was warm, but not as scorching as last year. I tried something new this year and played sober. I did not seem to help.

 

We had a few questionable scoring calls, but I explained the rules of Catholic Golf where you could cheat and got to confession (or reconciliation as it is now known) and you are absolved of all your questionable strokes. It did not matter as we came in close to last place. It was a four player scramble and the winning team scored a 51. They lied, cheated, and had lustful thoughts and I know they are going to be interrogated by St. Peter someday.

 

The event concluded with a nice meal and a dinner show that included a small fight between two men with one being segregated from the crowd and the other one wondering through the meeting room with blood running down his face and shirt. Please remember drinking began at noon and it was now six hours later.

 

Coach Welch whom many of you know took the team to the state finals last year, gave one of his memorable speeches and announced the news that our Senior Quarterback, Johnny Stanton has received a free ride for four years at the University of Nebraska. We are lucky Coach stayed for another year and he will have a lot of last year's players to hopefully chase a repeat. Go Eagle's

 

The funny moment of the evening for the group that hung with me at dinner happened when I was reminded by Mike Ameel, Realtor Extraordinaire, to use the tickets I bought for the raffles.

  

Again, I was sober. I got up and looked at all the items and place by tickets in the different buckets. (Yes Dave I tried to win dinner at Hanna's.) I got back to the table and saw Mike and Rob and Mike D, (all readers of the blog) sitting there with their tickets. I asked why they hadn't put their tickets in the buckets. They had, they were holding their half of the tickets. Ok I'll give you a second. Yes I had put both halves into the various buckets.

 

Needless to say I made a fast getaway before they started pulling the ticket and the whole room discovered my stupid error. BTW, sorry Mike D as I had bought you a bunch of tickets as well so your stubs were in there too.

 

I got home before 9:00 and spent a little while with Devin and Jack. The sun had sucked the life out of me so I was not in the frame of mind to blog.

 

Tuesday I did not have such a good excuse. Meetings, documents, e-mails, paperwork etc. Just a plain old busy day. When I got home, Jack and Devin were out by the pool and we ordered some food in from our local Italian place San G's. It was a fairly relaxing evening and I was in bed by 9:30.

 

Today it was more of the same at work. Paperwork e-mails, and fun stuff like that. My desk looks like a car wreck happened on it. I know where everything is though, except for the thing I am looking for.

 

Tonight we had a phenom dinner at Hanna's. I have been awaiting the Rubicon wine Dinner for quite a while. Rubicon, now (and once again) Inglenook aka Neibaum aka Neibaum Coppola, aka Allied Vineyards aka United Vineyards aka Inglenook has an amazing history in wine making going back to the 1850s with a guy who made fortune running furs out of Alaska. The 1500 or so acres has been traded many times, but has always had the near perfect soil known as Rutherford Dust and in the hands of great winemasters produces some incredible wines. My favorites are the Rubicon Estate and the Rubicon Cask. Now that Francis Ford Coppola has secured the old name Inglenook, look for even bigger and better things.

 

The meal was amazing and imagine having pork belly, halibut, and filet all matched with the extraordinary wines of Inglenook.  Vincent, our representative from Inglenook did an amazing job of explaining each wine and the history of the vineyard.  Dave spent most of the night beaming with pride for realizing he was bring a life memory to most who attended the evening.  

 

I think he was also proud to have his parents there who recently celebrated 61 years of marriage.  Also in the crowd was fellow blog reader Lionel and his wife.  It was a very special evening indeed. 

 

Cleaning Out The Fridge

 

I was really hungry one morning about 30+ years ago and looked in our fridge and we had some eggs, some green peppers, onions, and immediately thought omelet. Then I got a little creative and remembered a recipe from Romeo Salta's cookbook, The Pleasure of Italian Cooking. (The cookbook is long out of print and can be found on eBay for about $100.00. It is the popular plates served in his iconic New York restaurant. He is gone, the place is gone, but the recipes live on and on.)

 

Anyway I remembered an egg dish (remembered because I did not get the book until my dad passed away, but remember reading it when I lived with dad at his house in Lake Forest.) where you took a medley of vegetables sautéed them with more than enough butter and dropped eggs in pockets, sprinkle some cheese across the top and let the pan get happy. I first made this for Devin when we were dating and then made it for her parents. It was a hit and we usually make it a couple of times a year.

 

Brian's Anti-Omelet

 

Start out with the veggies. I usually use too much garlic and or shallots, chopped as teeny tiny as you can. I even press the garlic with the side of my knife to get all the juices going. Then take a red pepper, green pepper, gold pepper etc and chop up into a small dice. I also use whatever mushrooms I have laying around (Not the ones from the backyard).

Now if you want to do the true recipe, you need some fresh ripe tomatoes say 4-6 for serving 4 people. Star the top of the tomato with your knife, drop the tomatoes in boiling water for about 2 minutes. Let the tomatoes cool then skin them and seed them. Then chop them up as well. (If you are hung over like I usually am when I do this, a 28 ounce can of chopped tomatoes is almost as good.) You will need salt, pepper, and I use some crushed red pepper to zing things up a touch. I have also used a Serrano pepper chopped up in the veggies, but that does make it a bit warm for most people.

 

Ok you got all your veggies and say 6 eggs. (Are your eggs OK? A quick way to find out is put one in a glass, fill the glass with water, if the egg floats, take the family out to breakfast. Air in an egg is not a good thing.) Get a big frying pan that hopefully has a lid. Move all the bottles of beer, booze and wine off the counter top so you have room to work. Melt a stick of butter or a half a stick of butter and a couple of table spooks of EVOO (Extra Virgin Olive Oil) in a pan. Put in your garlic and or shallots and let them get soft and translucent. Add your onions and pepper and let them get soft. Onions should be almost clear. Add your tomatoes and mushrooms. Season with salt and pepper and crushed red pepper and let that cornucopia of flavor simmer and reduces some of the veggies juices down a little.

 

Then make little pockets in this mess and drop one egg into each pocket. The pockets should be at least an inch apart so they don't run together. Once the eggs are in, cover a couple of minutes and you should see the whites start to cook. Have some medium or sharp quality shredded cheddar cheese ready (I have used mozzarella with good results). Sprinkle the cheese across the top and cover until the cheese has thoroughly melted. The yolks should be setting up right about the same time as the cheese is melted. If not leave it on the heat, but turn down the flame so you don't scorch your veggies. (I have done that and it does not help a hangover at all.)

 

Get a big slotted spoon and find the eggs and place one or two (or four if you are really hung over) and serve with your favorite breakfast bread. I like English muffins or crumpets. Mangia mangia. Enjoy.

 

After the lousy job numbers last Friday, apparently many were expecting the Fed Meeting notes to reflect something different from what Uncle Ben had said at the time of the actual meeting. Of course I am speaking of the expectation of QE III. The notes did not hint anything other than the Fed stands willing to do what is necessary.

 

I have donated enough money to politicians to know what that actually means. (I have to be careful as I have a few who read this blog). "Stands ready to do what is necessary" actually means, everything we have tried has not worked so we will keep throwing money at the situation until we figure out something will work assuming we can get Congress to agree with the amount of money we want to continue throwing at the problem and there is no way in hell that will ever happens so we will continue not doing what we were doing that did not work.

 

The US trade deficit figures did not please or disappoint, kind of like what my wife thinks of me on most days. Adding to the disappointing news out of the Fed, wholesale inventories went up while mortgage apps head down.

 

Looking Under Rocks

 

One of our readers Doyle a blog reader and still sharp witted octogenarian sent me a stock to kick the tires on as well as a clever bond idea you might want to consider. First the stock. Like anyone else these days, Doyle is chasing returns and with the wishy washy market, that makes us pay attention to dividend yields. He ran across CTL. I kicked the tires and was quite impressed. Here was my reply to Doyle:

 

 

"Doyle;

 

Here is a quick snapshot of what I found, CenturyLink, Inc. operates as an integrated telecommunications company in the United States. The company provides local and long-distance, network access, private line, public access, broadband, data, managed hosting, colocation, wireless, and video services to consumers and businesses. It offers video entertainment services under the CenturyLink Prism TV and DIRECTV brands. CenturyLink also provides data, voice, and managed services to enterprise, government, and wholesale customers in local, national, and select international markets through its fiber optic network and data centers. In addition, it provides network services, cloud infrastructure, and hosted information technology solutions for enterprises. CenturyLink sells its products through direct sales representatives, inbound call centers, local retail stores, telemarketing, and third parties. It has strategic partnership with DIRECTV and Verizon Wireless. The company was founded in 1968 and is headquartered in Monroe, Louisiana.

 

 

Unfortunately much of what I shared with Doyle was copyrighted material from Morningstar Premium, but here are some of the highlights.

 

CenturyLink CTL again showed solid improvement in customer and revenue trends during the first quarter, building on a good start to the Qwest integration. The rate at which CenturyLink is shedding phone customers again slowed during the first quarter. CenturyLink also added (a lot of) new Internet access customers. The operating margin, (dropped a small fraction because of various investments).

Thesis 02/10/12

 

CenturyLink has reshaped its business profile with the acquisitions of Embarq, Qwest, and Savvis. Revenue is now much more heavily weighted toward enterprise and wholesale services, markets that should provide greater revenue stability over the long run than the traditional residential business.

 

We expect the firm's EBITDA margin will dip about 2 percentage points through 2015 versus our expectation for full-year 2011 pro forma results.

Nice Pick Doyle.  I am liking it at $40.00 or less.

 

 

Debt is little high, but it is an infrastructure company so that is not unusual.  The dividends are juicy.  I am tight on cash at the moment but will be putting this on my watch list for first week of August.  If you get in, please use a stop at about $36.80 as there is a support level just below that and if it breaks that support it could drop to the 32-33% level.

 

I hope to be joining you in that one."

 

 

Then today, he reminded me of an oldie but a goodie. He got me into an attractive bond a few years ago. It was a GM smart note earning 6%. It was at a time when you did not want to touch the automotives with a ten foot pole. The bonds were selling for 82 cents on the dollar so the yield was approaching 8%+. I took the risk and have been rewarded nicely as the bonds now sell for 94 cents on the dollar. He reminded me they could be called away this September.

 

Now what that means is you can buy something now for 94 cents that can be taken away from you in three months for 100 cents. The catch is you have to pay the accumulative interest to the person you are buying the bond from. So in essence you will probably have to pay about 98 cents net for the 100 cents you will see in September. Now that is a two percent gain in three months. No anywhere else you can get that? If they don't call the bonds which would stupid on their part, you get 6% a year on GM based smart notes. These are no longer owned by GM so please do your homework.

 

In an effort to provide full disclosure, I have quite a few of these Smart Notes in the Salve Lucrum Portfolio thanks to Doyle. It is my third best performing holding in my portfolio. The other two are bonds as well. (A San Rafael County Muni and a Zion's Bank Note each generating about 6%. We bought both at a nice discount.)

 

Again, thanks Doyle and keep on watching that market for me.

 

Have a great day and be ready for the China GDP report.  If you read the trade deficit report today it will be hard for them to say their GDP is improving.  Be careful on Friday.

 

Salve Lucrum

 

 

BAGAKOAA;

FinVIZ

  

  

  

  

IBD 

                           Survey Of One

  

  

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