We were stopped out of our Whim this morning. Total SA (TOT) opened up with the overall market but then quickly headed south. I had placed a tight stop on Sunday night. Nothing against TOT at all-- I just wanted to grab a profit on this Whim. We earned a 4% return, annualized it was 55%. A few of these a year could put a little excitement in our conservative portfolio. Hope it keeps up.
Speaking of which, tomorrow I'm going to try and buy UDN, the dollar short ETF. I have some work to do in the AM so we'll see how our new darling is doing about noon.
So what caused the market swoon today? Some possibilities I've seen mentioned: Greece bond downgrade, Ireland's finance woes (right before St Patrick's Day no less), Saudi discontent, possible US military engagement in Libya, rising oil prices, rising food prices, buzz about ending quantitative easing, the largest monthly federal deficit in history. Say what-- repeat that last one. OK, the Washington Times reports the government has chalked up the largest monthly federal deficit in history.
Even at a time when the word "trillion" is freely bandied about, coming up $223 billion short in just a short 28 day month is simply game over. Facing a problem of this magnitude, Congress can't even agree on cutting a paltry $62 billion from next year's annual budget. Remember the scene in the movie Titanic with a string quartet playing beautiful music as the ship goes down. In a way, that scene was sort of uplifting. What our leaders are doing, fiddling away as the ship of state sinks, hits all the wrong notes. Not to worry, we're simply going to have to raise the debt limit ceiling soon to make this growing debt all tidy and legal.
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