Milk was a bad choice
Bye Bye Lehman, buh bye Merrill. We’ll see you in Banker Heaven (Hell? I guess this all depends), your table next to Bear Sterns. My limited scope of finance is most likely preventing me from realizing the catastrophic size of these events so I judge the level of crisis by relevance on the internet. The more front pages, the worse it is. So if Yahoo! has you in featured news events, next to a Buzz article about Paris Hilton buying her 47th chihuahua, disaster is in the air. Lehmans bankruptcy actually marks the biggest ever US bankruptcy. Lets see how Wall Street handles the “financial storm of the century.” Get it together already, Wall Street.
The Dow Jones fell a sweet 250 points this morning. DJIA sentiment followed, tumbling into the extremely bearish zone. A new sentiment meter has been added to the front page of PredictWallStreet that processes millions of real time predictions to show shifts in investor sentiment. Today it is showing popular indices like the NASDAQ and SP500 in the bearish zones. Of course sentiment is reflecting rather pessimistic views, as news of Lehmans and Merrill reverberates through the Street.
PredictWallStreet has also published forecasts on two of my favorite companies, Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO). Clicking on there ticker names on the scrolling forecast on the front page, I see that both are forecasted to close down. And just when Yahoo! was swimming away from that nasty 17.00 price. For the next few days, I think I will be very hesitant to make any sort of UP predictions as Wall Street deals with the repercussions of this weekends problems.
Lately, I’ve found myself drawn to food service and “specialty eateries.” I’m not exactly sure if this is because I am in college and am fond of such exquisite dining or if its because I think fast food is cheap and at a time like this people still gotta eat and they want to do it inexpensively. While Panera Bread Co. (PNRA) isn’t exactly fast food, they’ve been getting a lot of attention for beating third quarter estimates and are currently UP about 5%. I predicted UP for PNRA today. I also like food services because in my eyes it is easier to analyze the supply and demand side of such a company. While Lehman will have an overall effect on the market, they certainly will effect financial institutions more than they would Panera. The extent to which I understand Lehman’s bankruptcy is small, so it’s easier for me to stick to industries I can understand and are less complex. I bought some PNRA for my faux portoflio today.
Ouch. My solar energy stocks have really lost it. A break up talk may be around the corner. I knew it was only a matter of time before our bubble of love would burst and I would being seeing nothing but red. It’s hard to let you go, FSLR and LDK. I love you, I’m just not in love with you.
I think I shorted my first stocks ever today! I hope I clicked the right buttons. I don’t want to tell you what company it was just in case I really messed this one up. Ok fine, you convinced me. I shorted Valero. Im waiting to cover them. This is right, right? In the case this blows up in my face, at least I’ll know what buttons to use.
Stumble It!
