January 2006

January

January 4, 2006

Well, I beat Cramer to the punch by already owning NBIX, CEPH, and ALKS before he recommended them last night.  Good for a bit of a move today.  Also, of course, the market is good.

January 5, 2006

Suddenly at the open, everybody is selling my stocks.  I guess that it is just profit taking.  But the day finished strong, except for gold.

January 6, 2006

Good finish for a nice week.

January 10, 2006

Strange day, but profitable.  I like this market.

January 11, 2006

Earlier Alcoa and Phelps Dodge, two companies that should have done well, reported disappointing results.  Today it is DuPont.  I really do not know about DuPont, but managemt at the other two companies leaves much to be desired.  Other companies in their businesses have done well.  Still, these bad managers have managed to have some effect on the market.  Too bad.

January 18, 2006

Bad news from IBM, Yahoo, and Intel.  That took the entire market down, including Google.  I think that if Google announces good earnings, it will move up dramatically, and Yahoo will be toast.  We will see what happens.

Meanwhile, how do you prove to superstitious people that you are not a ghost?  Some poor guy in India was thought to have died in prison.  So when he came back to his village, everybody ran away, thinking him a ghost.

Children screamed "Ghost! Ghost!" and villagers locked their doors when Raju Raghuvanshi returned from jail earlier this month to his village in Mandla district in the central state of Madhya Pradesh.

Raghuvanshi's brothers, who had shaved their heads to mourn his death in line with Hindu tradition, fled when he appeared, the paper reported...

The village council has demanded he prove he is not a ghost, but the paper did not say what kind of proof the elders wanted.

It is amazing that a country like India, which has produced some of the best-educated people on the planet, and which is emerging as an economic powerhouse, still has such pockets of ignorance and superstition.

January 24, 2006

Well, we had Freaky Friday at the end of last week, when just about everything went down in some kind of panic.  But here, on the following Tuesday, my portfolio is almost back to where it was at the close of last Thursday.  What does this mean?  Anything?

January 27, 2006

GDP up only 1.1%.  I hope the jerks at the Fed are happy - in fighting non-existent inflation they have slowed the growth we need.  Maybe they will stop now.

A good month, over all, if somewhat strange.