The Circus Is In Town

I just got back from physical therapy where Heir Kristi aka Hitler's Little Helper aka Manson's Love Child, just informed me that I am a whimp aka a weenie. Ok she did not say that in so many words, but on one of her pinky cranks, I let out a little squeal and flapped my left arm.

She looked at me and laughed and said, "You are not very stoic." Me? Not very stoic? Please. On my way home I saw this good looking girl walking in the neighborhood and stopped and asked, "Do you think I am stoic?" She laughed so hard the iPhone ear buds fell out of her head.

Then Devin got in the car, still laughing, and I told her what the Fingernator had said and Devin said, "Wow, she has you nailed."

Ok I am over it.

Since last Friday, it has been very hectic. We got the keys to the house on Saturday morning and it has been interesting discovering all the nooks and crannies of this property.

Devin gave up trying to figure out the lights in the different buildings. They are master control panels, then area panels and presets as well as exterior low voltage systems that must have been set up by the Imagineers at Disneyland.

It's A Small, Small, World

We have inherited a guy named Antonio who has been on and off the property for about 16 years. He knows many of the systems and will be an enormous help. Yesterday while the house was tented for termites  

and we were enjoying a fairly rare rain, I spent some time with him.

I told him that years ago, my father owned the home across the street. He pointed to the house and asked, "That house?".to which I responded affirmatively. He told me he worked at that house for about 9 months in 1995.

I asked if he worked for a blond lady and he said yes. I asked if her name was Jeannie. He said, "Si". I informed him that he had worked for my father's ex-wife.

Jeannie had gotten the home and other nice parting gifts when my father and her divorced in 1989ish. Antonio worked for her and politely described her as a bit Loco, confirming we were talking about the same woman.

La Caille Meets Disneyland

That could be one way to describe Chateau Cronin, our new home. Since Saturday, as I said, we have been exploring the property and we find something around every corner and every bush.  

We discovered this rusted bunch of chain wrapped around an axle and figured out it was the device you drag behind the tractor to smooth out the track around the horse shoe and Bocci ball pits.

Saturday, I had then pleasure of shopping for a pool table to replace the one the previous owners had in the pool house. I chose a nine foot Olhausen St. Regis with a burgundy top. It will be interesting to see if I can sink anything on a nine foot table.

Devin was busy taking window treatments down to either be washed or disposed of. It had been a long time since many have been cleaned and as a result they have seen their best years.

Fortunately we have no time pressure other than those imposed by my lovely wife. She is anxious to get on the property full time, but I am happy to wait for certain aspects of the transition to be complete.

Friday will be a very busy day as we have the bee guy coming to remove a colony of aggressive bees from one of the bird houses. The roof guy will come to repair the one or two tiles discovered during the home inspection and the 13 or so tiles broken during the fumigation. The Audio Visual company comes out to take an inventory of what we have in all the buildings and to show us what works and how it works. Our contractor comes out to start on estimates for several projects, including the rebuild of the barn. We also have a garage door gate company coming to get all the codes to the property changed and functional. The Home security people will come out for a walk through on Friday and another visit next week.  

I will be drinking Friday, and thinkin about my harvest as today I discovered my first grape leaf of the year.

An Interesting Segway.

Mary Kate was quite tickled to have a mention in the blog. She dropped me a cute note and with her permission, I have chosen to share most of it with you.

"OMG.......NOT AGAIN! WHO'S THE WO...MAN? YA baby!  So here's my funny story. So, my lovely sure-footed Hannah (Her college aged daughter and occasional reader) tears (why do we have so many words spelled the same with different meanings? Is it to make our language so difficult that it saves our boarders from the .00001% of other cultures who would only be willing to live here if they could adequately learn our language-THAT WAS MK NOT BRIAN).....cuz we know the other .0099 percent could care less! But I digress.....

Ok, so backs to tear the produced tears.  Hannah falls skiing in Schweitzer (don't get me started on German words in America-MK AGAIN) on Monday. She seems to have torn her MCL or ACL (not to be confused with her AOL or IBM-AGAIN) so I have to get her home so I can help her get it evaluated. We worked diligently to find flights from Spokane, the nearest airport to where she was, back to the OC. So late last night she arrives and I go to claim her (I say claim her because this time she's like baggage and I have to claim her from the dude who wants to make sure they get their wheelchair back). I load my lumpy baggage into my car and as I am walking around the back of my car toward the driver's door I LITERALLY miss getting killed by a police officer on a Segway. Let me say that again, a Segway. He doesn't even notice me yet I was so close to death that I am sure his gonna be in trouble with his wife when he gets home for the lipstick I left on his collar.  Well he just moseys on down the road as I see my eulogy pass before my eyes "MK escaped near death a month ago from multiple, bi-lateral emboli but couldn't outwit the grim reaper on a Segway". About that moment I see a foot cop to my left who saw the whole thing. We both bust out laughing hysterically.

Now I hear Hannah (my talking luggage in the back) in tears not over her tear (ha) but rather her mother's second near death experience in two months with a Segway. Let me say that again, a Segway. 

So, here's where you come in......blog dude. I want you to finish that eulogy. You know a Segway into my laughable demise by the Segway. 

But seriously, wouldn't that have just been the bee's knees? Of course it would not have.....bees have no knees. It would have sucked. 

Hannah's home and seeing the same doctor on Thursday as Devin had. Oh what fun it is to ride the Segway of my life these days. 

BACK TO OUR ROOTS

It is hard to believe this blog started way back in the 90s as a way for me to keep a handful of folk up to date on my silly stock trades and occasional economic, political, and investment opinions and strategies.

Since the great flood of 2010, it has morphed into almost daily rants about the crazy life at Croninland. Well, it is time to talk stocks for few moments.

Schwab's end of day wrap pretty much said it all. "Finally, A Pullback".

Remember boys and girls, 70% or more of stocks price has to do with the market direction. It is important to know why the market moves in one direction or another and how it impacts the overall prices.

Today we had a perfect storm of sound bites and news that gave Mr. Market indigestion. He woke up to less that stellar home starts after a few months of good news from that sector.

With little good news to buld from there the market waited for the transcripts from the Funny Old Men Club (FOMC) to see if economic strategy had changed much since last month. The news was not good for the market. (Probably good for the economy, but the two are not as correlated one might think.)

Apparently there were "many" participants at the last FOMC meeting who felt that the continued quantatative easing at this pace might be detrimental to future costs and risks in the future. Guys, come on, it's only 85 Billion a month.

Makes you kinda wonder where these "many" participants were 1.3 Trillion dollars ago. But I digress.

The point is, if they tap the breaks on the QE, that the cost of money, well, there might actually be a cost of money. And in theory that might impact the bottom lines of companies.

All of that triggered the sell off you saw today. It was not massive, but there was conviction. It will go down as a distribution day for sure, but will not trigger a yellow flag.

Has The Luster Gone?

A few of you have asked about gold of late. In the last 30 days we have seen the shiny stuff fall from about $1,690 to $1,560. Why is that?

Go back about 8 months ago and we did a series of posts about the three legs of the commodity stool. Currency, supply and demand, and speculation.

The dollar, which most commodity dealers tie to has slightly strengthened. That will make most commodities drop. Industrial demand for the shiny is down because of sluggish economies globally, but China seems to be coming back quickly.

Because of the global sluggish economy and the impact on labor based economies (China, India, Mexico, etc.) consumer demand (especially China and India-huge buyers of gold) has softened. Also watch key players like Soros who just dumped 700,000 shares of GLD indicating big money players are taking profit of late.

Then there is speculation. The stock market is rip roaring. There are a lot of folk who had taken money out of the market in 07-08 and not gotten back in. Some bought the shiny stuff, but some feel like they are missing out on the action in the equity market.

On top of that geopolitical issues are not as tense as possibly in the past or we have become comfortable with the crazies in the world. Regardless, speculation on metals does seem to be as popular a game as it was a few months ago.

Does that mean it's time to dump the shiny stuff. We would be very wary of any time (Like a few days) below 1,560. Also watch the Gold and Silver Index XAU for any time below 149.

WE ARE LONG GLD (a 3% loss at the moment).

Our ESRX are doing well as the company had a great earnings report. If the market was not so rude to us today we would have seen a double on the call options. We are up about 29% and look for more of a gain in the next two days.

Since 12/31/2012

I am not a professional investment adviser. Anybody reading my blog and investing accordingly must be out of their minds. I have made more money than I have lost. Except for a nasty VXX trade is 2012.   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.

Brian's estimate :

2013 Year Ending

Dow 14,361

S&P 500

1,610

2012 Year Ending

Dow 13,073

Actual 13,104

S&P 500 1,358

Actual 1,426

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