I had scheduled roofers to come today and remove the snow and ice dams from the roof of the house. They called me in the afternoon and told me there were too many emergencies and they had to reschedule for tomorrow morning. Serious roof damage is gong on up here after the never ending snow storms!
Old School Artwork I saw a post over at Ptak Science Books that was too amazing! Check out these old school engineering manual schematics for steam ship boilers. These were hand drawn in 1880!: Close up: That is amazing detail. Great stuff.
Superbowl Marker Issues I cannot tell if this is photo-shopped or what, but it is funny: see more funny videos Oops!
Bull Market or Honey Badger Market? In light of the all powerful market run to all time highs, I dub it "The Honey Badger Market" (bad language and ugly scenes, you are warned!):
I thought the Superbowl was a reasonable game, a pretty fun one. The young Green Bay Packers looked like veterans with how calm they were as the Steelers came back hard in the game. Impressive win and they should be very good for a long time.
Great to see the Volkswagen Darth Vader kid commercial is the big winner so far!
Work Night It is Monday night and that means I work my moonlighting job as a stock picker. I am off to The PPT and 12631 by iBankCoin to look for ideas for this week. I will update later if I see anything interesting.
Update 1: Not much coming up on my screens. How can it be hard to find a stock in The Bernank market? Geez.
Update 2: I am working on a couple ideas, but was way distracted by this blog post: A Sign You're Getting Old Well worth a look. I will be 35 NEXT MONTH!!!!!!! Ugh.
Major props to the Green Bay Packers for a huge win tonight. Just too many weapons in the end. Green Bay Packers 31, Pittsburgh Steelers 25 I had forecast GB 31, Pit 28 so what can you do.
A few round selections for the boxing history inclined.
Sugar Ray Leonard vs. Donny Lalonde Round 9 (1988) Scroll to the 4:00 minute mark, sound is a bit off.
Tommy Morrison vs. Razor Ruddock Round 6 (1995) Wild, insane round.
George Foreman vs. Jerry Cooney Round 2 (1990) Dubbed "The Geezers at Ceasers", Foreman blows Cooney away in round 2. Scroll to 5:45 mark.
Joe Louis vs Billy Conn Round 13 (1941) Light heavyweight champ Billy Conn was way ahead on all scorecards but went after Heavyweight champ Joe Louis anyway. Not a great idea. Crappy recap video below.
Gene Tunney vs. Jack Dempsey Round 7 (1927) The famous "Battle of the Long Count". Dempsey was not aware of the new rule requiring fighters to go to a neutral corner! No matter, Tunney was ok and goes on to win the fight.
Sugar Ray Robinson vs. Gene Fullmer Round 5 (1957) This may be the greatest left hook ever thrown. Many new age folks have no idea why anyone that knows anything about boxing always says the original Sugar Ray was the best ever. He was the best fighter I have ever seen. Scroll to the 7:38 mark.
Mickey Ward vs. Arturo Gotti Round 9 (2002) I use to make sandwiches for Mickey Ward at a store I worked at in college, and he regularly sparred with fighters at my gym. I had no idea he would go on to such heights and a film about his life! Round 9 here is just brutal.
End the show with the single greatest round of all time.
Marvin Hagler vs. Thomas Hearns Round 1 (1985) Just epic.
Damn Ice Dams I was home yet again today after waking up at 5am, going downstairs to find a nice water fountain coming in the living room bay window. The culprit, ice dams! I had to wait for the sun to come up to get after it.
There was huge ice buildup over the window and all on the front of the house (it's a Gambrel style). I took out my 8 foot ladder, a hammer, a crowbar and set off to work. I got most of the ice away from over the window, but the huge ice block on the front of the roof was hard to dislodge. After a few attempts I felt a strange warning in the Force. Seconds later I saw a 75 pound block of ice (yes I weighed it on the bathroom scale!) come flying down the front of the house right at me! I was on the second to last top rung of the ladder! I calmly pivoted my upper body and pushed the ice block off to the side and onto the ground. I can say it was amazingly skillful and quick, like a ninja. Glad that's over for now but I cannot even bribe a roofing firm to remove the snow and ice damns from the roof as they are all too busy. Maybe a mind trick will work?
You Win Some and You Lose Some, and Others You Miss I was stopped out of my HSY trade this morning at $49.80. In at $46.79 so I pocketed a cool +6.5%. Just missed my $50 target but it was there. If HSY breaks over $51 I may rebuy but it has been turned away from that top quite a few times.
I am still holding AMRC, a small position. Still think a bounce is ready to go, but I am down a bit on the stock (-3%) so I will not let it go much further.
I was shocked that I still held my OMEX shares at $2.90 and today it rolled to $3.60! Not bad for a 2 year hold, LOL! I actually forgot I still had this position until I started trading again. Nice!
The big regret? TRCR which I showed you all in this post on January 24th. What I saw was a repeating higher double high pattern, it is almost fractal like! Here was the chart that night: After today's 2.8% move up: Now this may not be the next move up, and I may just be imagining things but I had wanted an entry here but just never got to it. A friend of mine went in after reading that post and is happy so far. Hey bud, your welcome!
As for anything else, I am too tired. While destroying ice with a hammer has it's rewards, something feels very out of place where my right clavicle meets my right shoulder. No it's not just soreness, I probably bent something. Wonderful. Also the Bernanke speech from yesterday still has my furious that such a total apechit clown runs the FED and is not run out of town post haste. As such, macro stuff will have to wait for another post. Off to the fun stuff.
Friday Night Entertainment I will endure serious pain to bring you the fun we all so richly deserve!
Funny Videos These two are MUST see video!
A pug dog (not mine sadly) that yells "BATMAN" was around a while ago. Now he has been set to the Batman TV show theme and it is get out funny:
LOVE IT!
This may be the greatest commercial ad of ALL TIME!:
The team that made this ad are brilliant! How the kid captures the perfect moment at the :50 second mark I have no idea. If I was not in love in a weird way with my Infiniti G35X I would visit a VW dealership on this commercial alone. Try the real force kid, hee hee.
Did You Know? It's that time again to grow neurons with Did you know!
-Ice dam war can be fought by stuffing nylons with Magnesium Chloride and pacing them on trouble spots? Just don't use black fishnet garters or you may get complaints from the neighbors. -I missed this from January 28th, but did you know EconomicDisconnect stayed home from school to watch the space shuttle Challenger launch way back in 1986? My mother and I just sat there without saying a word, for a long time. -Io, one of Jupiter's moons, is seriously strange? -Hadrian's Wall is thought to be the last great work of Rome?
Rock Blogging Wow, I am running way late! Must be my busted shoulder. On to the tunes.
Loyal reader Gawains, who is suffering in Texas under cold conditions and like 3 inches of snow (WIMP!!!), would like George Thorogood and the Destroyers hit "I Drink Alone", which works out if no one is around. I mean why not drink alone?:
Love this tune.
Ok, if your name is not Josh Brown you may not be into Hip hop. I am not really, but I do adore Lil Kim. Here is Sugar (Gimme Some) by Trick Daddy and crew:
"Lil Kim's eye candy baby!" Indeud. Call me Kimmy darlin.
Ok, after that I need the 80's! How about Europe and "Carrie"?:
MEGA vocals on that guy.
One of my all time favorite songs, and one I will mat the gas pedal to anytime, is Iron Maiden's masterpiece "Hallowed be thy Name". How about on Piano via by Scott Lavender?:
So sick it hurts. What a great job.
Two left! Two left and I am one armed at this point!
In case you missed it, I was best friends with all the future scientists in the band Man Bites Back in college. While they pursued other endeavors than music, I love this song "Ghetto Starlight":
Kick ASS!
Last call and my right shoulder is happy, but I am sad!
In regards to the never ending Bernanke market assault on new highs no matter the cost, take a crowd WILD ride with Rage Against the Machine and "Bulls on Parade". The crowd at this show was so amped:
I will just open with the snow update. Another 8 inches on tap for Saturday and a large system capable of "substantial snowfall" on the way for Wednesday of next week. I am going to need extra beer. Oh yeah, nice to see Stratfor getting props all over the web today!
From what I have seen of Whitney's report on Muni bond defaults, it was lacking in real hardcore substance. After her 60 Minutes appearance a muni bond route ensued and people are mad that a 5 minute baloney piece was able to roil markets for big dollar withdrawals and stunted offerings. May I ask a simple question?
Is is more plausible that: -The 10-20 normal, everyday people that are over age 60 and actually watch 60 Minutes are in control of a trillion dollars or more of capital to trigger a flight from muni bonds after the show? or -Talk and serious discussion of various over hauls in muni land were well on their way resulting in haircuts and Mrs. Whitney was an easy scapegoat?
I leave it to the reader to decide. In a deep, liquid market like muni bonds I would think one call from a media loving analyst would have next to zero impact on pricing. Unless that market does have structural issues and is built on ponzi debt schemes that is. No worries, I wrote before that muni debt is 100% safe due to The Bernank and I have even said they were a buy at these lower levels.
Ben Bernanke: Is He the Kwisatz Haderach? After the speech given today by FED Head Ben Bernanke to the sharp minded Press Club, one can only wonder, is The Bernank the Kwisatz Haderach?:
Kwisatz Haderach is a term which refers to a prophesied messiah and superbeing in Frank Herbert's fictional Dune universe. The Sisterhood theorize that such a male would possess absolute prescience, seeing all possible futures thus being able to cause select threads of time to be realized through manipulation.
It must be!
The speech today was so brazen and so full of shit that I debated whether to even write about it. At some point things cross over into that Twilight Zone type of thing and today was the day it happened to me.
In summary, and I will paraphrase though I will not be far off from Bernanke's EXACT words: 1.) The stock market is way up 2.) Due to (1) everything is getting really good now 3.) Unemployment will remain high though, whoops! 4.) FED monetary policy shows no inflation anywhere in anything in the world except maybe... 5.) The commodity price rise is a healthy sign of growing world economies, but that has nada to do with FED policy anyways so who cares.
This passes for the US Federal Reserve head policy maker's view on things?
I submit this all with limited commentary. If Ben Bernanke sees no problem with how hot money flows are causing distortions in asset prices then he is simply lying. I have never really believed that The Bernank is stupid, he is most certainly not. The Bernank is simply pounding the drum on what he can, a higher stock market, while downplaying the failures of his work, unemployment and severe inflation in real necessities.
Unless he is the Kwisatz Haderach! Then maybe this all works out due to his vision! On cue, here we go (headline may change later but this I copied at 7:30pm EST): Bernanke speech helps push stocks higher
Maybe I am not a believer. Maybe the miracle of a rising stock market where most real Americans have nothing it it can result in a robust economic system. How can this be! Only one way:
Only instead of rain on Arrakis, we have dollars from the sky finding their way into POMO-MOMO stocks! Genius!
Speaking of an Uptrending Market
My move on The Hershey Company (HSY) is working well. I entered on the Tuesday open at $46.79 and today's move brings HSY to $50 and change (almost +7%)! I had estimated a move to $50 and have moved up my stops to lock in gains. The action in HSY is still favorable, but you know how I roll; conservative and keep wins. If, and a big IF, HSY can break out over $51 on some volume it may run to $55 or more. It has been turned back many times and I respect that trend. Book it!
Winter Wonderland or Fortress of Solitude? The snow is all there is. It's everywhere. It has no where to go. It's piles lie in monuments to the efforts of man to move them. They laugh as they witness our feeble efforts to reshape the world that nature has brought down upon us. The snow uses each unique flake and trillions just like it to form an immovable mass of supreme dejection. Alas, my nemesis snow, I cry out my defeat! Spare me more pain! Please show me mercy so that I may live with some chance of hope.
All there is, seems all that was, is snow.
Ok, there is my feeble attempt at an ode to snow. In short this is getting out of hand. Oh yeah, more snow for Saturday!
Here are some pictures so you will know what I am up against.
If you have seen many of my cooking pictures you will know how my back deck looks without tons of snow. Here it is now: I have been keeping it shoveled off due to weight concerns causing damage.
I had a ladder out so I could work on the roof awnings. Here it is in the snow while I took a break: Easy to leave it someplace!
Here is the driveway to the street, just wide enough to get a car out: Wow.
One from the front yard. You can just make out the orange markers we use to show the plow guy where to plow. It's not helping!: See what I mean?
I turn 35 next month but one of my both greatest gifts and failings is that I am a huge kid at heart still! Faced with monster snow piles in the side yard I did what any kid would do. Break out the snow tube!: The snow is super fluffy so tubing is not that effective. Still, starting down the hill: I will not include the pictures where I got to the bottom and flipped right over due to deep fluffy snow! I really have to move to the equator.
Trading Stuff On Monday I bought Hershey (HSY) due to an oversold condition and other factors. Earnings were this morning and they came in a little light. Not to worry, a mega bull market forgives all ills and the stock was up about 3% today. It was also up about 1% on Tuesday so I am sitting up 4% on this one for a couple days. I rolled up stops to preserve gains, but I am looking for $50 for an exit on this one. We shall see.
