I have been moving money around full time lately. Bank to bank, account to account, carefully keeping $250,000 or less in various accounts at my hedge fund. I feel lucky to have that problem.
I just opened up a bunch of accounts for my companies at Wells Fargo. They have chased my business for months. It was sickening actually. Have they not checked my credit report. I am on Best Buy’s most wanted list! So I have my accounts and fresh cash deposited and brand new credit/debit card in hand for my trip to San Francisco today. Sure enough, the cards are declined for fraud alerts all day. Lovely. No wonder the stagecoach is still on their credit cards!
Quick memo to our government…WHEN YOUR BANK IS PANICKED, WHAT DO YOU EXPECT US TO DO!!!
The stock market has people freaking out at this point as well. I feel bad, but there is not much I can do for people leveraged to shitty pieces of paper. I refuse to get swept up in the apocalyptic behavior. There is freaking gold in the streets and if you can feed and clothe yourself and open a Twitter account, you have a shot going forward.
As for the stock market, despite the 60 plus percent declines in the indexes, it has NEVER been riskier to own stocks. The contrarians will say my comments are a sure sign of the bottom. I won’t argue with them as they just like to argue. I think trading on sentiment is for numbskulls. Find smart people with great track records and ride their coattails within your risk profile (Stocktwits :) ).
I continue to own Amazon, Gold, Silver and Oil. Today I nibbled at Salesforce.com, Adobe, Netflix, RIMM and some BGU (Triple Lindy Index Long). I am short retailers and Best Buy directly. Overall, it’s the least amount of stocks I have ever owned on a net basis. There are many brands and businesses I want to own, but I am not pulling the trigger. Every brand that I loved and have owned is under massive attack. The playbook is dead.
Casino’s, Booze, Cigarettes, The Slave Trade, Guns and Porn are all of a sudden taboo.
I owned International Game Technology and took a large loss last year in the 20’s. It’s 8.
I have traded Federal Express the last year as it was poleaxed, but gave up a few months ago in the 60’s. It’s now under $40 and the government is threatening to unionize.
I was a buyer of American Express at $28 and every few points down and took a loss at $20. It’s $10.
Electronic Arts has become poison. Obviously John Madden has a kid fettish.
Apple is in a death spiral despite having a better balance sheet than any country in the WORLD.
Google pulled free cashews from their cafateria’s and now everybody is quitting to go to Yahoo.
I am tempted to buy Nike right now, but I imagine the ‘Swoosh’ will come under attack from Obama for causing smiles and making Tiger Woods too good.
I sold Rick’s Cabaret at $29 last year. It’s $2 now. No one will even touch breasts in this market!!!!
The only thing I really need and don’t own is a gun and Smith and Wesson’s stock acts like I may be their first customer…EVER!
If I can get a guarantee from our government that my ATM card will work, I can move mountains. Hello….. Obama?