Happy holiday!
I hope everyone is having fun on one of our very rare days off. Asian markets were on fire this morning with the Hang Seng up 372 points (1.666%) and the Shaghai up 1.9% over the 2,800 mark but Japan failed to take out 10,000 (up 1%) and finished the day at 9,965 while the BSE only rose a quarter-point, to 18,814. Europe was very uninspiring with a half-point gain on the FTSE, 0.3% on the DAX and the CAC actually lost 0.1% – not a very inspiring performance, especially with the dollar down at 74.50, half a point below Friday morning’s highs.
I’ve taken the opportunity this weekend to get caught up on our Income Portfolio (cruising into the end of the year already with our mission accomplished) and our $25,000 Portfolio (cashed out with more than a double at $53,942) – so we are ready to go for it in the second half. As an added bonus, Stock World Weekly, which just launched it’s official web site two weeks ago – started off with a hell of a bang as 12 Dow put play featured in that June 19th launch issue made a very quick $6,720 for SWW readers.
Now that we’re ahead in our current virtual portfolios, much like last year when we decided to “go for it” with our $10,000 Portfolio, we are really just playing for bigger and better Christmas presents – which always makes things fun.
We planned on being bearish after the holiday but we may flatline into options expiration on the 15th – something that becomes more likely if we survive the next two days. We went more bearish into the weekend and we’ll have to scramble to find bullish bets if we break higher but I’m still not feeling it – here’s a little food for thought ahead of tomorrow’s action.
Barry had a front-page article in the Washington Post this weekend in which he points out, among other things, that America needs to grow up and recognize that: You cannot take over a country with a handful of under-equipped soldiers, tax cuts do not pay for themselves and there is no such thing as a “temporary” entitlement program. “Government is not the problem,” Barry says, “bad government is the problem. There is an enormous…
