Keeping the Crown Randomosity

• In what will soon be the biggest crisis facing President Obama, oil sneaks above $60. Retail gasoline prices rose again overnight and are now up nearly 40 percent from the start of the year, while the price for crude on Tuesday topped $60 a barrel for the first time since early November.
• The nation has no energy policy and no plans to reduce imports of foreign crude.  The world economies are improving, and energy demand will increase.
• Donald Trump says Miss California Carrie Prejean can keep her crown.  Miss California has been under attack since making her statement on marriage at the Miss USA contest.  "It's the same answer the president of the United States gave; it's the same answer many people gave," Trump said. "She gave an honorable answer; she gave an answer from her heart."
• General Motors (GM) shares fall to 76-yr low as executives dump stock.  Hey, now that's insider selling to pay attention to!  Bankruptcy around the corner, and most likely the current shares are worthless.
• Was at the dentist this morning getting a temporary crown.  Fun?  No way, Jose.  Not even close to fun.
• Playing with RSS Player for the iPhone.  Nice podcast player.  Can skip ahead through downloaded podcasts in 30-second increments.  Better than holding down the FF button forever trying to advance, and praying that you don't double-clutch and FF to the end of the podcast and have to start over!
• Financials down again. 
• Volume was light yesterday, FWIW.  Not sure about the numbers today. 
• Waiting for glue to dry before I can eat.  Last crown I had popped off, so being more careful this time.  LOL.

Tuesday Randomosity

• President elect Obama names his energy team. Pictured.   LOL.  Maybe not.  The team includes Nobel-prize-winning physicist Steven Chu as Energy secretary and former Environmental Protection Agency head Carol Browner in a newly created position to coordinate energy and climate policy.
• Maybe Steven Chu will be pro-active on nuclear power.
• The case for bonds.  Investment-grade bonds, anyone?  Anyone?  Buehler?
• Does Toyota want GM to be saved?  An interesting take. 
• I don't want GM to go under.  I can't see how they can continue to operate as they've been, losing billions a month.  But I'd like to see them stay around.  Maybe they could build some natural gas cars.  Just a thought.
• Downloaded slydial for the iPhone.  Can leave a message for any cellphone, rather than dialing and risking talking to an actual person.  Very handy when you want to give a message, but don't feel like having a conversation.  LOL.
• Chrysler has a plan to beat the Chevy Volt, in the battle of electric cars.  I hope the plan includes building nuclear power plants because those cars are going to need a lot of electricity to charge those batteries.
• Is the Santa Claus Rally just a bunch of nonsense?  From Mark Hulbert.

TGIF Randomosity

• $AAPL iPhone shows 327% market share gain in third quarter. The iPhone has about 16% of the smartphone market share.
• So, the Chevy Volt will go 40 miles on a charge?  That's if you remember to plug it in every night.  I have a hard enough time remembering to plug in my iPhone and often wake up to a low battery.  Imagine that with a Chevy Volt!  And it's not like you can plug your car in to its cigarette lighter.  After the charge wears off, the Volt will get about 50 mpg.
• Plus, it's a Chevy.  Wouldn't you feel better buying this kind of technology from Toyota?  Or just get a gas-burning Honda Civic for $16,000?
• Sad news.   That rumored 4.5% interest rate for mortgages would only be for new home purchases.  No refinancing your existing mortgage.  I guess you could buy a new home down the street, maybe even the same model, and let the bank foreclose on your current home.  Just thinking outside the box.
• Oil under $42 a barrel?  Wowzers.  Declining world demand, they say.  But the freeway was sure crowded last night.  Took me a long time to get to Hooters.  Missed most of the first quarter!
• $GM cutting another 2000 workers.  It doesn't matter if they go bankrupt or restructure under a government giveaway package, there will be job losses.  Automakers just can't lose a billion a month and keep on truckin' along.
• If we're in a period of deflation, the next to go down are salaries, right?

Summer Glau Randomosity

• The market roared back late in today's trading session, capturing back about 40% of yesterday's trouncing. Have to love Yahoo's word salad today:  Stocks were in positive ground after General Electric gave a better-than-feared business update and then surged to session highs in the final minutes of trade after General Motors outlined its plan for government aid.
• "Better-than-feared."  If that doesn't describe market psychology at this point, nothing does.  It's a climate of fear.
• And GM's plan?  "You give us money; we build cars."  GM wants loans and plans to repay them starting in 2011.  Huh?  Using what business model?  The business model that burns $1B a month in cash?  How does that work?
• Meanwhile, have to love Summer Glau in Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles.  Summer's one-liners are great.  To explain her strength?  "I've been working out."
• Auto sales plunge to 26-year low.  Remember a few years ago when companies had 0% interest rates and were stealing sales from future years?  Just thinking out loud.
• Oil at 3.5 year low!  Woo!  Gee, that was just $147 a barrel a few months ago... 
• Orange Punch notices By now it’s widely known that President-elect Barack Obama scoffed at Hillary Clinton’s foreign relations credentials before he found them so fetching that he fetched her to be his own secretary of state.  Kind of funny in retrospect. 
• iPhone fever is contagious here at the Fun Factory.  I have one. A coworker bought one soon after. And now, two other coworkers went and bought one for themselves and their wives. 
• Speaking of, downloaded the free (until Friday) Easy Wi-Fi for ATT App that makes getting on the ATT wi-fi hotspots easier than the standard way.  I find myself near ATT hotspots frequently, so this should save some keystrokes.

Well Off the Lows

• Mark Cuban responds, sorta-kinda, to the insider trading thang on his blog. "I wish I could say more, but I will have to leave it to this, and let the judicial process do its job."
• What passes for a "good day" in the stock market these days is when you hear a reporter say that we're "well off the lows of the day."  You know, the stock market drops 250 points, then we rally to be only down 100.  That's a good day.
• Citigroup laying off a total of 20% of their workforce.  That adds another 53,000 to the total from $C.  Which is now trading in the single digits.
• The White House is for helping the auto industry.  Instead of using an additional $25 billion from the $700 bailout package, the Bush administration supports using the already allocated $25 billion to help build more efficient vehicles.
• You know, businesses come and go.  If the US automakers have made poor decisions and find themselves in a situation where they're getting their lunch eaten by the competition, well then shame on them.  Nobody to blame but themselves. 
• iPhone app?  Shazam!  Ever hear a song and wonder what it is or who is singing it?  Let the iPhone be your brain and do the memory recall.  Run Shazam, let it hear the song, and within a few seconds it will tell you what song it is.  How cool is that?  And like everything in this socialist country, it's FREE!

NFL Sunday Randomosity

• $GM may run out of gas before Obama arrives. Darn that George Bush.
• Fidelity cutting 1700 jobs.  Combined with 1,300 cuts that Fidelity announced last week, the second round disclosed Friday will eliminate about 7 percent of the company's work force of about 44,400, said Anne Crowley, a spokeswoman for Boston-based Fidelity.
• The Bonddad writes his blog entry from his iPhone today.  Not easy!
• Rooneys race to sell the Pittsburgh Steelers before the President Obama capital gains tax rate hike. Republican Dan Rooney supported Obama for President. I guess when it comes to the rich paying their fair share, Rooney believes it's a good idea on paper, but he'd rather avoid it.
• Seems like most financial blogs this weekend are leading off with, "Last week was a tough week."  Which is pretty much the same lead off the past few months.
• Art Laffer, via Barry Ritholtz, U.S. automakers are "Never going to make it."  In my blog entry yesterday, I mentioned that I thought any promise by Pelosi, Reid or Obama to the automakers is just a promise to the UAW union.  They need the votes in future elections.  The need the campaign donations from the UAW.  The U.S. automakers have a bad business model, spending way too much money on health care and benefits compared to other automakers.
• Professor Mark Perry  has a chart of total compensation of the Big 3 vs. foreign car companies.  Average total compensation for the Chrysler, GM and Ford is $73.21, while for Toyota, Honda and Nissan, the average total compensatin is $44.20.
• With earnings falling, is it time to buy stocks?  The S&P 500 total earnings is falling like a rock. Just like it did before the market took off in 82, 91, 02 and at other times in the past.
• I was sucking down some beers yesterday watching football, and my buddy said he quit putting money in the 401(k) this month.  He heard somebody on the radio and Fox news say this is going to be a depression for the next few years.  He wants to wait until things get better before going back into the market.  I dunno...  Probably bad timing on that one.
• If you have an iPhone, check out Shazam.  How many times have you had the radio or been somewhere when a song comes on that you can't identify?  Run Shazam, and it will identify the song and artist for you.  And it is FREE!
• Is voice search on the Apple iPhone a killer application?

Picture is of Annaleigh from America's Next Top Model.

Wednesday Randomosity - 2nd Try

• Does Erin Burnett cause bull markets? What is the best hour of the day to be invested?  Adam Warner takes a closer look.  Sounds like a new trade trigger right there!  Can we get pager alerts - er, hello 2008, text messages - on when Erin will be on or when Melissa Lee will be on?
• Picture?  Another Chevy Race Queen.  LOL.
• After-hours gloom?  $AMAT (Applied Materials) profits fell 45%.  1800 jobs to be eliminated.  The company said it would make the job cuts "through a combination of attrition, voluntary separation and other workforce reduction programs."
• Why yes, that is the $QQQQ trading back under $30.    Hey, closing in on those September 2002 levels. What was that, around $21-ish? Wooo. 
• Global warming bringing on an ice age?  “If the new Ice Age happens, it will likely be due to the melting of the polar ice. This will dump large quantities of cold, fresh water into the ocean. It would disrupt the Gulf Stream and cause the cooling of many areas that now have milder climates. Global warming will be the cause.” 
• The warmer, the cooler.
• Obama health care plan estimated to cost $75 billion.  And as with everything government, we can assume that the number is off by some monster multiple. Smells like a $500 billion plan to me with long waits and shortages.  "Unless costs are cut, growing health care costs will increase the costs of Obama's plan dramatically over time and reduce the effectiveness of mandates. This could make the federal costs unsustainably high," the report said.
• Housing continues down.   ``It's clear we are at a unique point in history,'' Stan Humphries, Zillow's vice president of data and analytics, said in a statement. ``We've had seven consecutive quarters of decline, and we expect that to continue until at least the middle of next year. Most markets are still seeing five-year annualized returns, but we will see more markets slip into flat or negative long-term change as the economy continues to suffer.''
• The good news is that if housing continues to fall, we'll all qualify for a government bailout soon.  Or just walk away and toss the keys to the bank.  "You deal with it."  Move back home with the parents or in with the kids.  Get some roomies like back in the college days.  It's all good.  We'll make this work together, a'ight?
• Nowhere to hide, says Barry Ritholtz.  Both domestic and global markets getting trashed.

Gloomy Repetition

• When I was a kid, my brother used to play records over and over again.  It used to drive me nuts.  One song that I'll never forget the lyrics to is Seasons in the Sun by Terry Jacks.  It also happens to be a popular market timing strategy.  Coincidence?
• Along the lines of repetition, comes another down day in the markets.  "Goodbye to you, my trusted friend" indeed.
• Yahoo Finance isn't even trying to come up with excuses anymore.  Just "Sellers continue to drive stocks lower."  Yes they do.
• Hey look, Citigroup ($C) is printing in the single digits.  Noice!  Almost a 10% drop today.  Way to go! 
• Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, in the most explicit sign yet that Treasury was abandoning its initial plan for the rescue funds, said on Wednesday he preferred a second round of capital injections into financial companies to help them weather the worst market crisis in 80 years.
• Best Buy ($BBY):  "Most difficult climate we've ever seen."  Climate change is George Bush's fault.  Oh, $BBY down 8% today.
• The #1 issue facing the country?  Presidential Pooch Watch.  Seeing that Obama is the first "global president," it's not surprising that the Fido frenzy has gone international. Peru has suggested its native Peruvian hairless dog, a bald, toothless breed, which actually looks cuter than it sounds. (You can get better acquainted with the breed here.) The country even has a specific dog in mind. Nicknamed "Ears," the four-month-old has been offered formally to the future first family in a letter sent to the U.S. Embassy. If the Obama girls reject the Peruvian pup, we hope it won't create an international incident.
• Meanwhile in auto land, Congress looking at a $25 billion to help auto companies.  Of course, these companies are burning through $6 billion a month, so that'd last 4 months.  Then what?  The problem with the US auto companies is those union contracts.  Toyota and all, who also build cars in the US, don't have those bad deals.  Anyways:

The cash would come with the same restrictions placed on other participants in the Treasury program, Pelosi said, including limits on executive compensation, a ban on golden parachutes, and other "taxpayer protections to ensure that any companies that benefit from this assistance -- and not the taxpayers -- bear the full burden of repaying any costs that are incurred."

• For the record, gold would make a lousy parachute.
• We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun.  But the wine and the song, like the seasons, all have gone.

My Plan to Bail Out GM

• As John Kerry used to say, "I have a plan. It's a great plan.  It's a stupendous plan. It's a plan I thought of it while making a plan about something altogether different.  Which is also a great plan."
• Though we never found out what Kerry's plan exactly was, keep reading for my plan for a $GM bailout
• The government is working with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to help bring relief to homeowners facing foreclosure. In order to qualify, borrowers would have to be at least three months behind on their home loans, and would need to owe 90% or more than the home is currently worth. Investors who do not occupy their homes would be excluded, as would borrowers who have filed for bankruptcy.  Borrowers would get help in several ways: The interest rate would be reduced so that borrowers would not pay more than 38 percent of their income on housing expenses. Another option is for loans to be extended from 30 years to 40 years, and for some of the principal amount to be deferred interest-free.
• The government is also debating a bailout package for US automakers.  $GM is burning through cash as if it were funding the war in Iraq. 
• Here's the plan.  Why not help homeowners and $GM at the same time?  In order to qualify for refinancing, a homeowner would also have to buy a $GM car.  Look, the government is reducing your house payment, right?  As I noted in the blog entry below, oil prices are waaaaay down and now you have more money to spend because of all the fuel savings.
• What else are you going to do with the money, spend it on lap dances?
• Buy a $GM.

GM, GS and Energy

• The stock market made a nice reversal mid-day, but now seems to be settling back into the big malaise. The talk today is of $GM and $GS.  "Stock tickers that begin with G, Alex."
• Deutsche Bank downgrades $GM shares from hold to sell.  Nice timing, fellas.  The stock is at the lowest price since 1943. 
• If you watch bubblevision, everyone always seems to think that $GS is a buy.  Perhaps because Goldman Sachs contains the letters that spell GOLD.  Well, almost everyone.  Shares are up today despite a cut in estimates.  And the consensus recommendation right now is hold.
• Larry Kudlow writes Mustard Seed, where he points out that while everyone seems to be expecting a big 3-4% 4th-quarter contraction, no one seems to be paying attention to what has happened with energy prices.  $200 billion drop in energy costs for consumers.  It's like a tax cut!  Maybe that's why I've seen restaurants and casinos crowded the last few times I've been out.  Very crowded.
• You figure folks were paying $80 a week to fill up their gas tank in June, and now they're paying $40 a week. That's an extra $40 a week to spend somewhere.  And since the bank foreclosed on their homes, they are back to renting and have smaller monthly expenses and more money to spend.

Dancing with the Veterans

A Holiday for Some

• It's late. The day before Veterans Day.  My broker's splash page says something about "beware of funky hours" for mutual funds and such. 
• Some close early.  Some don't trade.  Some go march in the Veterans Day Parade.
• And beware of folks on the West Coast sleeping in!
• Some contrarians think we've seen the bottom.  Maybe.  But it sure doesn't feel like it.  Feels bad in the pit of my stomach.  Which is a contrarian sign, too.
• I saw lots of bottoms at Hooter's last week.
• Dancing with the Stars closing in on semi-finals.  Where does the time go, Carrie Ann Inaba?
• Nice words from Basil on Veterans Day.
• I wonder how the companies that provide charting software and data feeds are doing in this market?
• From Kevin Stecyk, will the government save $GM?  Kevin writes a good blog, and this is very thought provoking.
• I think Obama, Reid and Pelosi will try.  Those are union jobs in battleground states, and they'll throw money in that direction to make sure those jobs are there in 2010 and 2012.  But long term, if those companies can't compete with other auto companies, then it's good money after bad.  The business model will fail because too much money is going out to wages, benefits, and pensions compared to the competition.

The Mobile Minute

• So it's less than three days until I switch from my ATT 8525 smartphone to an iPhone.  I did the 2-yr contract, but in 18-months they let you trade in and sign a new 2-yr contract.
• I was eyeing some other WinMo phones.  The Xperia X1 is coming soon, but has a price tag of $800.  Guffaw.  It looks nice.  But not that nice.  The HTC Touch Pro is out now, and runs around the price of an iPhone. 
• The iPhone is just so easy, breazy, covergirl.  Easy and affordable apps.  Lots of free ones.  Nice screen.  I think the iPhone is taking over the mobile world very quickly and will be the standard.
• The big drawbacks are the $AAPL monopoly/dictatorship on applications, no cut-and-paste, no bluetooth keyboard, no stereo bluetooth, no MMS.  Some of these things may be resolved down the road.  Some won't.  One can probably upgrade in 18-months if one wants to.

The End of Detroit?

$GM reports a $2.5B third-quarter loss. General Motors Corp. said Friday it lost $2.5 billion in the third quarter and warned that it could run out of cash in 2009 if the U.S. economic slump continues and it doesn't get government aid.

You know, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid were talking to the auto companies yesterday.  (And the Unitied Auto Workers union).  The CEOs of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, along with the president of the United Auto Workers union, met yesterday with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to discuss billions of dollars more in financial help for the companies. You have to wonder if the auto companies are doing whatever they can to get out from under the union contracts that are just killing them

Both $GM and $F stocks getting CRUSHED.

So CNBC asks if the bailout money will be made available to GM.  Uh, how much was in that bailout package?  Can't be enough to cover every company out there going under.  Banks, insurance companies, now autos?  What's next? $GE?

Everyone wants a government hand out.

And Obama is having a press conference, which CNBC is touting.  Now the President-elect has to be specific about his plans.  Can't just say "Hope and change and bring everyone together" like he did for the past two years.