What a fun day I had today. 

I swam yesterday for the first time in quite a while so I could not figure out why my arms were aching as I tried to reach for my alarm clock this morning.  I was visualizing myself as I stretched and finally happened to hit the snooze but and imagined I must have looked a lot like the beached whale that mozied on the sand in Malibu.

I was awake and in front of the Salve Lucrum account at 6:28 am.  Once I had accomplished my tasks in the accounts (more later), it was time to help Devin with the dogs and get ready for my big day.

Depositions are really fun.  Of course I can't talk about an ongoing lawsuit, so let's change the facts and the names so you don't guess what the issue is.

Let's say that your home is flooded on a major holiday involving reindeer and Jesus (The holiday, not the flood.).  You have a certain number of neighbors (more than 2 but less than 4) who have decided to sue an insurance company in the hopes of getting some remuneration for some damages, let's say EVERYTHING ON YOUR BOTTOM FLOOR OF YOUR HOME.

At some point in time a crazy neighbor says, "Hey I got an attorney who will help us sue XYZ and it won't cost us anything."  You know that can't be correct so you bow out of the scheme.

Then you find out that a certain government agency (bigger than a city, smaller than a state) might be culpable for some of the damages and the insurance companies might be breaking out their check book because someone might be responsible for poor land management that was a contributing factor to your destruction.

So you join certain neighbors in the lawsuit that won't cost you anything and your first legal bill is $4,800.00.  Then you receive a bill every month for between $1,500 and 5,000.00 a month for the lawsuit that won't cost you anything to read information that you already knew.  (This of course is all fictional and could never happen in real life.)

Then, a year into the lawsuit, you have your first deposition.  It starts out cordially by them watching a video.  Let's pretend it is a video of the utter destruction of the bottom floor of your home with all of your belongings covered in silty dirty coyote dung ladened cactus filled mud. 

Then the nice attorney begins to question each and every receipt for the more than say 500,000 dollars worth of damages you might had incurred.  

You of course are supposed to remember what the bill from Target on December 24th for 11.96 cents was.  And that is how that deposition might go on for 3 hours.

Now they could have asked about big ticket items and focused on the actual construction rebuild, but NO.  Let's go line item by line item and ask about all 300 plus line items and 113 pages of support documentation.  Of course they want to do it this way to be exactly accurate should the case come to trial.

It has nothing to do with the fact that the Insurance  company has a team of lawyers, and the government agency has an attorney, and of course I am the only plaintiff who is not moved to a contingency status so I am paying by the hour while the nice attorney asks about a roll of shipping tape bought on January 4th 2011.

My favorite question was when the nice attorney asked me if we tried to clean and repair our oven, instead of replacing it.  I said we did and asked if he wanted to come over for dinner tonight and have a nice roast cooked in our coyote crap stained cactus filled oven.  He had other plans.

Anywho, that was how I spent about 5+hours today.  Depositions are really fun.

I got home and hugged my wife and my son and we hung for a while and enjoyed some pizza and some TV. 

Brian and Devin, slum lords.

Recently we have been looking for single family single story homes to put in service as rentals.  We have found out that these units are cherished.  First off they are had to find, in southern CA.  (That was to stave off a quick call from a reader in AZ who will quickly tell me there are lots of single story residentials in Mojave Valley, AZ.  That is because land is very cheap and builder can afford to offer bigger lots where single story models makes sense.

The shifting demographics (us old farts getting older) make single stories very attractive.  A week ago we decided we wanted to invest in a few and discovered there were none in this area of Orange County.  (ok there were two but the price range was near a million and that is a ball park we do not want to entertain.)

Saturday, Mike Ameel, Realtor Extraordinaire called us with a hot lead about a 2 bedroom 2 bath cottage style condo that had just come on the market.  I ran over and video taped the place and Devin, God Bless Her, made a quick decision to go for it.  We made an offer, today we got a counter, and tonight, we are the new owners. 

Now Mike has to find some renters and life will be grand.  (SO WHAT ARE YOU DOING READING THIS BLOG MIKE, GET TO WORK.)

Let's see what went on in the market today.

I Missed The Boat or Pier?

With tree weeks left in the year, Mr. Market seemed to be waiting for profound words of wisdom out of Washington DC.  Really?  That is one long wait.  Nothing was said today, but we had some good news out of MCD today as same store sales in the US was up correcting the bad news from last month.

Most of the tech sector was up today EXCEPT AAPL.  You'll note that AAPL came with in pennies of my bite figure of $525.00.  Across the pound, I got one of our Salve Lucrum Family players back into ARM, a UK based Chip designer. 

Long time readers will recall that we and the gent in England did quite well with ARM (The US ADR is ARMH)  We are looking at ARMH again for a possible re-entry her in the states.

The market and metals rose today because of good news out of China.  If you go back into the blogs of July and August we explained that China was letting up on the breaks (Loosening capital requirements of their central banks-the equivalent of the US lowering interest rates) and we might see a soft landing and quick bounce recovery in China.  Three Months of new data support that theory.

Some eyes turned to Italy whose PM announced an early retirement and their debt rates jumped, causing some to say it's the next Greece.  (Haven't we been talking about PIGS for three years?  Portutgal, Italy, Greece, and Spain?)

All that ends well ends well and we were up a few points today.

Price Performance

at 4:55PM EST 12/10/2012

DJIA:          13,169.88         +14.75

S&P 500:        1,418.55          +0.48

NASDAQ:         2,986.96          +8.92

To my disappointment, I could not catch the 20.25 on PIR as it opened below $20.00  I was not going to chase it down as I was only look for a quick 5% drop.  I will check it out tomorrow, but will only pull the trigger at 20.25-20.50.

Makin Money Spodee ode.  I stopped out of my limit order on URI with a 3.94% gain after 4 trading days.  That was the trade I won the spiketrade contest with last week.  As an added bonus I made real money as it was a sizable position.

What else will I be watching tomorrow?

ESRX, which we hold a small position on looks like it could slip a bit back to its 20 day moving average of 52.24 from today's close of 54.54.  We will watching the opening and ifg we can short some at 54.50 we might.

Despite the green flag we see another equity in trouble and that would be OMX, Office Max.  Fundamentals and technical are looking like this stock is still oversold at 9.50 and change.  If we can catch a 9.75-10.00 tomorrow we might short the stock.  

Lastly, we need to do some homework on UNXL Uni-Pixel, Inc. delivers performance engineered films to the display, touch screen, and flexible electronics market segments. It offers finger print resistant and hard coat protective cover films for various touch enabled devices. The company sells its films under the Diamond Guard brand, as well as under private labels to original equipment manufacturers. It is also involved in developing indium tin oxide less touch films and flexible electronic films for roll to roll printing of flexible thin-film conductor patterns. Uni-Pixel, Inc. was founded in 1998 and is headquartered in The Woodlands, Texas.

This stock has doubled in the last two days but could just beginning the runway.  This is not a day trade or a swing trade.  This is a good old fashioned growth stock we have crunch some numbers on.  DO YOUR HOMEWORK.

Since 11/25/2012

I am not a professional investment advisor. Anybody reading my blog and investing accordingly must be out of their minds. I have made more money than I have lost. There are many more qualified people than I to actually tell you how to invest your money.

BAGAKOAA=Boys And Girls And Kids Of All Ages

Salve Lucrum=Latin for Hurrah for Profit.

2012 Year Ending

Dow 13,073

S&P 500 1,358

Tool Box

Salvay And Lewcrum Explain

Buying Call Options

Market Direction