Thursday, May 7, 2009

More Or Less Safe to Own Stocks/Andy's Wedding: Headknocker Needs to Start Training for Softball Game/Unilever

LB is in his professorial mode this morning.  This is the VIX chart from 1990 to the present.  This is the volatility index for the S & P 500.  For purposes of more detailed analysis, it is best to use a bar chart showing daily prices, but today I am just going to show the big picture with a 19 year chart. Clear your mind.  Forget everything that has happened. You know nothing about the course of events other than what is revealed in this chart.  Now, make stock allocation decisions based on the movement of this index.  Ask yourself this question as you trace the interactive chart at Yahoo with a cursor: More or Less safe to own stocks?  What is happening with the S & P  500 between 1992 to 1997: Going up or down? What the heck happened around 1997 and 1998: good or bad for stocks?  Then, was the market moving up or down between October 2003 and October 2007?  Now move to the period in August 2007, has something happened in the real world?  Good or bad?  More safe or less safe? 

Andy is getting hitched this Saturday so Headknocker will be mostly indisposed until next week. Andy HALL SINGING LIVE: YOUTUBE VIDEO LINKS RB: The Past Finds a Way to Live in the Present: G.W., the 1864 Battle of Franklin and the Infamous Stringduster Song Three Days in JulyThe wedding and reception will be on Saturday, scheduled no doubt to avoid disrupting the operation here at HQ but that is not why things are starting to ground to a halt.  There is a softball game on Friday.  Headknocker has to start his training for it today, possibly by walking around the block and actually using those SPRI bought a year ago for stretching exercises, maybe you need to take them out of the box before using them, I suppose.  RB just said that the only reason LB was invited to the game was that a bunch of musicians need  guidance on rules, LB's forte, as in 3 strikes your out.  RB does not understand why you can not just stay at the plate until you hit the ball.   RB hopes that LB does not freak out on Friday at the game since it has been sometime since it was surrounded by a bevy of RBs including many of the female persuasion.   YouTube - Stringdusters European Odyssey (part 1) May 2008 
In this video, Andy  sings his song "Well, Well" as part of the background after about 2 minutes and thirty seconds. 

LB just wants Tyler to be on his team and not to have to do too much of that running stuff.   LB used to be a jock of sorts, many moons ago.  The picture in this post linked below shows the kind of kid, when the selection was being made for the teams, both sides would say I want that guy.  RB just gets scared looking at that picture.     TBT vs. PST: Hedging Corporate Bond Positions

Unilever, the European version of P & G and a recently added position, reported earnings this morning.   Yahoo! Finance 
Normally, there would be an extended discussion of this report and others like Cisco, since LB who is in control of the keyboard 99.9999999% of the time is more than a trifle wordy.  Today, it will be kept short by simply saying the stock is rising in Amsterdam.  My buys are discussed in these posts:

Since no decisions are likely to be made today, LB decided that it was safe to humor RB by allowing it to post the only known picture as the profile picture that has more than a trace of it shining through the multiple layers of LB.  This was taken more than just a few years ago.


  

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