Ridiculous vs. ridiculouser

Why do the best weeks in the market often feel so bad? Because it's so hard to keep up with fast-rising averages.
Some of the more speculative stuff in my portfolio, like Sandisk, had great weeks, but the better-quality stuff, especially the high-dividend paying preferreds, lag the market badly.
There are entire eras that it paid to be dumb and blindly chase growth -- 1995 through March 2000, for example. True, you pay for it in the end. The Nasdaq is at a ridiculous 41 times earnings, but as we remember from that era, it can get a lot more ridiculouser.

Not too optimistic

Pains me to say it, but I can see the A's having a losing season this year. With three players who can't hit in the lineup, they're at a big disadvantage -- and after magnificent first halfs both Haren and Gaudin are showing signs of returning to Earth. Haren's orbit is considerably higher, though.

Be careful what you post

Here's an anecdote from the AP:

Steven Jungman, director of recruiting for Houston-based ChaseSource LP, told of a young woman his firm helped land a job with a company working on a sensitive project.


"This was a project that had to be kept secret, that if the competition found out about it or the media wrote about it before it was rolled out, it would be very bad for business," he said. "It even had a secret nickname.


"Every day, twice a day, the company did a ... search for that title, just to make sure nothing was getting out about it," Jungman said. "One morning, an interesting link came up, to someone's My Space page. It went, 'My name is so-and so, I'm working on such-and-such for so-and-so.' And right next to that were photos that would make Anna Nicole Smith blush, and Paris Hilton go, 'Whoa!'"

I'm working on a project right now. I'm not going to say what its name is.

The ATM shuts down

The market is weak today after Home Depot and Sears reported poor earnings. Sears is having problems with sales of big-ticket appliances, Home Depot is geared to construction.
On a macro note, the housing slump is finally getting down to the consumer level as the ATM of refinancings has been shut down. That's not all bad -- the weakness implies lower interest rates, which will the seeds for a recovery.
On a micro note, it will be interesting to see Lowe's report -- the two stocks usually trade in lockstep, but HD has been the stronger lately. A paired trade, long LOW and short HD, might work here.

A distant memory tickled by Mick LaSalle's blog entry asking for a first political memory. The day after the 1960 election, riding the school bus as a first grader, kids singing:

Whistle while you work
Nixon is a jerk
Eisenhower's lost his power
And Kennedy's going to work

Nobody ever criticized Eisenhower directly that I can remember -- he was a national hero. We certainly haven't a president immune from criticism since then, and other than Washington, there might not be any others. Even Grant, who was more of a hero (in the North) than Eisenhower or any other general would become, got criticized plenty when he became president. There was a decency about Ike that transcended politics.

Who's laughing?

Long have liked that Ira Gershwin lyric:

They all laughed at Rockefeller Center, now they're fighting to get in.

Just read Daniel Okrent's book about the creation of my fave Manhattan spot, Rockefeller Center. The book explains why it works so well -- much better than knockoffs like the Rockefeller-developed Embarcadero Center in SF.
Start with great architecture, interior art, stores and a lot to watch, including other visitors. But there's another reason: it's convenient to go through Rockefeller Center to get from Fifth Avenue over to the subway or anyplace else on the westside. So it's not just a destination, it's an enjoyable way to get from place to place.
In SF, the Westfield Centre occupies a comparable key location. To get from Union Square to Moscone Center, for example, it would be natural to go through a promenade at Westfield. Except that the shopping center isn't friendly to thru traffic -- they make it as hard as a Piggly-Wiggly to get through it. Another opportunity lost.

Apple: A Time of Confusion

One report says iPhone missed its sales targets and sold less than 700,000 units. Another is much more bullish, saying that all but two Apple stores are sold out and around 1 million units have been activated.
The stock, meanwhile, is exploding, hitting 130 today after lingering in the low 120s during the intro period.
When a stock faces a time of confusion, there's a chance it will either go a lot higher -- or a lot lower -- when the truth is revealed.

Plea-ing a COP

Stocks are strong again this morning. It looks at if last Thursday's Fed meeting was the kickoff to the rally. When they weakened their anti-inflation language, that was all the bulls needed -- as long as interest rates don't rise, the market should go up.
So what looks good? Conoco Phillips (COP) is incredibly cheap, as Robert Marcin points out on thestreet.com. It's selling for only a bit over seven times full-year earnings. Yes, they're going to get kicked out of Venezuela and their drilling programs are something of a disaster. But they can buy oil cheaper than they can drill it -- as with their Lukoil stake -- so they're not in terminal decline.

Time to sell Apple?

This would seem like the ideal day to sell Apple. The monthslng iPhone runup is over, AT&T had some problems hooking up customers, the stock is priced for protection, according to Barron's.
Yet the Barron's report barely knocked it down today. It might be wise to take a profit, but it's very hard psychologically to sell such a big winner.

Hitler, Einstein and monogamy

Let's say Einstein was the greatest person of the 20th century and Hitler was the worst -- at least in terms of what they did for mankind.
Now let's look at the way they treated women. Hitler, not surprisingly, could be dick-tatorial toward Eva Braun but he was faithful to her and toward the end of his life started to appreciate her for her devotion to him and doing her main job (getting him to relax a bit), according to a recent biography of her.
Hitler could be a thorough bad guy even in the personal arena -- he had somebody murdered for talking too much about his apparent affair with his own niece Geli, who committed suicide in the '20s, probably because she realized she was losing Uncle Adolf to Eva. (Interestingly, the guy who carried out the murder was Hitler's former chauffeur, who'd had an affair with Geli too that Hitler knew about but didn't stop.)
But Hitler also had middle-class values, and he wasn't highly sexed. It added up in the end with Eva getting 36 hours as the one and only Frau Hitler before being quite satisfied to end her life in an operatic flourish, standing by her man.
Einstein didn't have middle-class values, having been described as an "unkempt philanderer." He left his first wife Mileva for his cousin Elsa, ruining his relationship with his two sons, and went sneaking around on Elsa too, with several women.
What can we conclude? Monogamy in men is not necessarily a test of moral character. It has more to do with cultural morays and the strength of sex drive.