Everybody But Lucas

So Lucas is going to give us 242% over the next 12 months.  What’s everybody else got?

	Name	Ticker	5/30/2012	Target	Chg
2	Wilson	WILC	$4.63	$10.00	116%
3	Zondro	ZQK	$2.77	$5.51	99%
4	Icarus	FLOW	$3.00	$5.50	83%

Dog looks to be a real industry for the future.  Too bad I underweight the lot of them.

The next handful is the great-but-not-ludicrous group.  With the exception of Ruby (+51% YTD), all these folks need some market mojo.

	Name	Ticker	5/30/2012	Target	Chg
5	Zero	ZIP	$10.35	$17.29	67%
6	Jodi Ann	JOY	$59.05	$95.81	62%
7	Ruby	RJET	$5.18	$7.63	47%
8	Brinkley	BCO	$23.03	$32.40	41%

Zero, Jodi Ann and Brinkley are down 22%, 21% and 14%, respectively, in 2012.

Then there are a lot of good-but-not-great yawners.

	Name	Ticker	5/30/2012	Target	Chg
9	Nicole L.	COL	$50.38	$65.67	30%
10	Jenny	JNY	$9.70	$12.00	24%
11	Lee	MSTR	$122.08	$150.71	23%
12	Marisa	MOLX	$23.17	$28.41	23%
13	Charlotte	ICE	$122.27	$147.86	21%
14	Justin	SCI	$11.45	$13.75	20%
15	Katie	CATY	$16.42	$19.07	16%
16	Dustin	DST	$51.52	$59.50	15%
17	Marcus	MCS	$13.31	$15.00	13%

Some of the names in this tier are showing positive momentum in the face of a flat-to-down market, most notably Katie and Marcus.  Others are me.

The next bloc is full of names that have run up over the last year and are at or near 52-week highs.

	Name	Ticker	5/30/2012	Target	Chg
18	Lulu	LULU	$72.98	$79.67	9%
19	Mario T.Y.	SUP	$16.66	$18.00	8%
20	Reagan	REGN	$135.75	$144.79	7%
21	Lisa	LNCE	$26.01	$26.50	2%
22	Nicole B.	NI	$25.04	$25.19	1%

All but Mario, who’s well below his 52-week high near $23; I guess Yahoo just dislikes him.

Lastly we come to the nops.  Nobody ever likes utilities.  They own them; they just don’t like it.

	Name	Ticker	5/30/2012	Target	Chg
23	Winston	ED	$60.10	$58.04	-3%
24	Mario T.E.	MGEE	$44.73	$42.00	-6%

There are, of course, 25 FSX components, not 24.  Who’s missing?

	Name	Ticker	5/30/2012	Target	Chg
25	Namilita	NL	$12.27	N/A	N/A

Yahoo doesn’t have a price target for NL, obviously because it represents two cats with drastically different cat-business models.  I put Nami and Lita in last place because Katie’s Dad deserves better than that; it’s bad enough that he’s looking up at Ed Winston.

FSX Stocks That Could Pop…or Nop

Is nop a word?  It is now.

I’ve switched to Yahoo Finance for my portfolio management and data collection because I can’t stand the Romney 2012 CNBC website any longer.  And surprise surprise–Yahoo is better.  There are far fewer ads and the portfolio tool is much more user-friendly.  On the basic quote screen it also gives me a 1 year target price that I assume is some kind of average of analyst price targets, but might also be completely made-up.  So…pretty much the same either way.  For fun I compared the target prices for the current FSX stocks to their 5/30 closing prices to see which of us has the most potential upside.  Guess who it is!

	Name	Ticker	5/30/2012	Target	Chg
1	Lucas	LEI	$1.46	$5.00	242%

Two Birds

…one picture.

Now the world will know that I filled three 30-gallon black trash bags and two kitchen trash bags with trash from the girls’ room, and Marcus and Jodi Ann can see the highboy that I’m storing in my basement for them (busted blinds not included).

They Don’t Know We Know They Know

The market is really on me about revising the stupid book; maybe I can ignore people, but I can’t ignore prices.  I finished the first draft on May 11 and the market has been falling since then–down 2.7% on the S&P through this morning–but the declines have hardly been precipitous.  Similarly, the FSX has given up 2.4% over those 10-plus trading sessions, with 19 of 25 members down, but no one has dropped more than nine percent…except me.  MSTR has fallen from $143 to below $124 this morning, a 13-percent slide that is too steep to attribute to volatility, earnings concerns, or anything other than pure investor animus.  Basically, they hate me and they think I’m a bum.  If I don’t punch this book in the mouth real soon I’m on my way to double-digits.  So what’s the problem?

I have to sweep and scrub the girls’ room this morning; that’s a problem, yes, but not the problem.

The problem is I’m looking for a tactical edge and I can’t find one.  The book knows where (Chapter 1) and when (before July 1st); it doesn’t know how (straight read-through, mark-up for grammar & spelling, mark-up for content?), but there’s no advantage there because I don’t know either.  Many of the momentous invasions in history have succeeded only to the extent that some misdirection or maskirovka allowed the attackers to wrong-foot the defenders, however briefly.  Napoleon gave the Russians way too much time to think about how to deal with him in 1812 (let the land itself beat the French), and he was doomed from the start.  The most successful invasions of modern times–Germany’s invasion of France in 1940 and the Anglo-American invasion of France in 1944–were fully anticipated, but they worked because the attackers made the defenders guess wrong.  In 1940, the French gambled on a repeat of the Schlieffen Plan and concentrated their strength in the North, only to watch the German panzers pass through the impassable Ardennes and bridge the Meuse in the South; in 1944, the Allies convinced Hitler that the cross-Channel invasion would come at Calais rather than the Normandy coast and German defenders couldn’t redeploy fast enough to prevent the Allies gaining critical beachheads.  Neither feint bought months or even weeks, but if enough force can be brought to bear, an advantage measured in hours might be enough to tilt the balance.

I need something.  I need a stunner.  June 1 would be an attractive-sounding starting date, wouldn’t it?  I can’t get underway on a nondescript, ugly Wednesday.  I can’t open an offensive on the second-to-last day of a month, can I?  June 1 is Friday.

Fighting the Wrong War

The most recent public pronouncements around Book War II pushed the start of the opening offensive to July 1, safely clear of both Heroes Con in Charlotte and Mario’s wedding.  Of course I can’t wait that long; I know it, the book knows it, the spiders know it.  I’ve mounted a Book Line to supplant the Book Wall and I’m prepared for the read-through of Chapter 1; fully prepared, except for the insurmountable fear and loathing.  Somehow, this is more daunting than writing the first draft, even though BWII won’t be anything like the six-month grind that BWI was.  Before I just had to do it, but now I have to do it right–if I can.  I have to unbotch all the botched ideas I know are out there waiting to shove my botches down my throat.  But wait!  What about how terrible my children are?  Surely there’s something there.

You don’t see the problem?  The girls’ room is a mess, sure, but it’s hardly the Gordian Knot.

What’s that you say?  The Gordian Knot got stuffed under the bed?

I believe you’re right…unless that’s it, hiding in the closet.

Today will be a mini-war to see what, if anything, I can justify not giving/throwing away.  Then tomorrow I’ll have to find another excuse to leave that first garbage chapter sitting where it is.

More Dangerous Than You Realize

We just discovered that the metal binder clips I use for, um, everything are magnetized.  I found this disturbing.

Me:  You can’t just have magnets lying around.  Magnets is for real.

Jenny:  Yeah.  Magnets create robots.

Me:  Wait…just by themselves?

Jenny:  Yeah.

Me:  Out of nothing?

Jenny:  Um, yeah [beginning to sound like I must not have gone to school at all].

Now I’m worried.  I definitely can’t keep all the binder clips in the same office-supplies drawer anymore.  That’s like a T-1000 waiting to happen.

FSX Friday Update

Last week’s update was as of the Thursday close; some bringing-up-to-speed is necessary.  The selloff continued on Friday to the extent that stocks finished last week down 4-5% on average.  I think profit-taking is the second-laziest reason the financial media gives for a drop in stock prices (the laziest is concern/fear about the concern/fear du jour).  So what was the reason for last week’s decline?  Profit-taking; perfectly sensible, too, heading into a summer during which trading will be thin and headline risk will be paramount.  There was also a noticeable lightening-up of positions in momentum plays like SBUX, AAPL, PCLN and CMG heading into the Facebook IPO.  The coverage of that debacle has been exhaustive and not confined to the financial press; all I’d say is that if you lined up to pay 100x earnings for a company with slowing revenue growth and clear challenges monetizing future user growth, you’re lucky to be down just 15%.  After the first-week drop and all the negative coverage, FB at $32 is still trading at 70x earnings.  Compare that to Google at 18x, Apple at 14x, and poor old Mr. Softy at 10x and tell me you can make a compelling bull case for Facebook—the stock, not the social network.

The broader market rallied reflexively this week by 1-2%, having sold off too aggressively in the five days prior.  The latest boogeyman is Chinese economic contraction, although I don’t know why anyone believes any of the numbers the PRC circulates.  The U.S. economic releases are heavily massaged as it is, but we can at least dig into the assumptions and demand disclosures.  None of this week’s news changes the fundamental direction of the market in the near-term, that near-term direction being directionless.  If I were giving advice, I’d say stay market-neutral through the November elections and the ejection of Greece from the Euro, buy stocks you like if they hit prices you’ve targeted, don’t panic, and don’t chase.

The Family Stock Index extended its pre-J/N Wedding slump on Friday, falling another 150 points on the day and scraping the psychologically-important 12,000 level before closing at 12,052, a loss of 5.8% for the week.  The market took an especially dim view of my Best-Manliness and the impact on Justin, sending both of us down more than 5 percent on Friday alone.  For the week, 24 of the 25 stocks in the FSX declined; only Marcus (MCS +1.7%) managed a gain.  I should have guessed at that point I’d be toasting alone.

But the weekend wasn’t so bad.  I had three potential negative scenarios in mind:

1. I implode;
2. I explode;
3. Brinky doo-doo bombs the ceremony.

None of it happened.  Instead, the ceremony was beautiful and the entire weekend was reasonably well-structured.  I experienced an outpouring of poise and preemption—from Justin, from Nicole, from Chawly, from Katie (of course), from Jenny, and even a little from me.  I didn’t do too well from a comic book standpoint, but Unknown Soldier #268 for $1 is decent.

So maybe I went a little to pieces on the trip home.  It’s a long car ride, okay?

The FSX rallied 3.4% on the week, secret mini-breakdowns notwithstanding, to close at 12,457.

Advancers

• Ruby (RJET) +12%.  SECRET HOUSE SALE?
• Zero (ZIP) +11%.  My sister is pretty, and Zero married her.  Eventually she’s going to look like our Nan and cycle through the same five muu-muus for 30 years, but the Muu-Muu Cliff is still a ways off.
• Reagan (REGN) +10%.  Reagan had a good time over the J/N wedding weekend, and she managed not to say anything crazy and/or offensive.  If she did blow her regular-kid cover, she also silenced the witnesses.  And really, isn’t that the same thing?
• LULU +7.6%.  The cats really went to work on their litter boxes while we were gone.  I don’t know that this is the feat for which Lulu is being bid up this week, but I don’t know what else it could be.  She doesn’t do anything but befoul and befurr our lives—rudely.
• Jenny (JNY) +6.7%.  Jenny’s crush on Josh Hutcherson is cute.

Josh Hutcherson isn’t.

• Marcus (MCS) +6.5%.  Little known fact: Marcus was supposed to join Justin in the now-legendary performance of “I Want It That Way” at the Eure-Machi tie-up in 1999.  The ability to dodge the embarrassment bullets that fly about at weddings is a not-inconsiderable skill, and investors have pushed Marcus to a series of new 52-week highs in appreciation.
• Katie (CATY) +6.4%.  I was trying to figure out who Katie reminded me of when she was dressed up for Sunday’s wedding.  Then I realized she reminded me of the Mii Jenny designed for her on the Wii.  That can’t be good.
• Justin (SCI) +5.0%.  Watching the ceremony—and in particular, watching Nicole watch Justin during the ceremony—I realized for the first time that my little brother is clearly getting the better end of the deal.  The market agrees.

Decliners

• Lee (MSTR) -1.8%.  Where’s my relief rally?  I’d been thinking my two-week slide from $156 to $126 was the market pricing in heightened relapse risk leading up to last weekend, but if that had been the case, I’d have had a nice pop this week.  Turns out the market wasn’t discounting the wedding trip and festivities at all—it was looking past them to the outbreak of Book War II.  I’m not any less mentally fatigued than I was when I finished the first draft two weeks ago, but impatience is steadily overmastering fatigue.  I need my head to clear just a little more; as soon as it does, I attack.  Holding off another five weeks to rest is the right thing to do…I just can’t do it.  I need to plan, but I need more information to plan.  I need a reconnaissance in force, probably next week.
• Lisa (LNCE) -2.0%.  Does Lisa want Dustin to qualify as a golf pro?  Even if she does want him to, can he?  And if Dustin was a golf pro, would life be any different than it is?  Is it possible to play golf more often than all the time?  Investors are lightening up on Lisa as these weighty questions, um, weigh.

Name	Ticker	5/25/2012	Change
Brinkley	BCO	$23.23	+0.79
Charlotte	ICE	$125.49	+1.90
Dustin	DST	$51.79	-0.02
Icarus	FLOW	$3.07	+0.09
Jenny	JNY	$9.76	+0.61
Jodi Ann	JOY	$60.21	-0.43
Justin	SCI	$11.43	+0.54
Katie	CATY	$16.68	+1.01
Lee	MSTR	$126.76	-2.29
Lisa	LNCE	$25.64	-0.51
Lucas	LEI	$1.46	+0.02
Lulu	LULU	$72.06	+5.10
Marcus	MCS	$13.68	+0.83
Mario T.E.	MGEE	$45.36	-0.01
Mario T.Y.	SUP	$16.49	+0.32
Marisa	MOLX	$23.31	+0.23
Namilita	NL	$12.37	+0.09
Nicole B.	NI	$25.04	+0.61
Nicole L.	COL	$50.15	unch
Reagan	REGN	$132.17	+11.94
Ruby	RJET	$5.31	+0.56
Wilson	WILC	$4.40	+0.09
Winston	ED	$59.61	+0.94
Zero	ZIP	$10.22	+1.02
Zondro	ZQK	$2.81	+0.07

Guess Who Opened The Gate?

I’m hoping it’s something he’ll forget how to do, like he forgot how to talk.

Mission Accomplished

Oh, girl.  There was never any way he wasn‘t going to tell his boys you did that.

The reason he got you to do that is so he could tell his boys.  I hope he at least buys you some new shoes so you don’t have to tape up your old ones and walk around looking like a mummy.

Which One is Peeta?

If you have to ask the question, there’s only one answer.

Yourself.  You only love yourself.  Just keep them both around and accessorize based on mood.  Eventually one will get sick of your self-pity and you can let the other one put a baby in you.  That’s how to be a modern heroine, right?