BAGAKOAA; November 5, 2009 Well it at 10 again.

BAGAKOAA;

November 5, 2009 Well it at 10 again.

Yesterday the Fed said they would keep rates low.  Yet there was quite a bit of good economic news today.  Retail sales as reported by the commerce department was positive.  Though anecdotal, I was at the Spectrum Mall in Irvine California over the weekend and guess what?  It was busy and even more surprising, people were leaving store with bags full of merchandise.  I agree people are spending.  The Monster (as in Monster.com) job indicator went up a tick meaning there was some hiring going on.  The Bank of England agreed with the US Fed and left interest rates alone, as did the European Central Bank.  For nine weeks, the initial jobless claim numbers were down 20,000 people last week.  All good news.  Productivity numbers were healthy, but since it is a ratio of production for hours worked, it is not a great factor and improves only if production goes up or employment goes down.  There are two significant reports coming out tomorrow worth watching.  The household survey on employment gets released tomorrow and is expected to creep upwards to 10-10.1 %.  Anything below 10% would be good news anything above 10.1 could whack the heck out of the market.  Make sure your stops are in place.  And to close the week out, the consumer credit report comes out tomorrow.  The consumer credit number has been collapsing since July.  This means people are charging less on their credit cards.  I am guessing we will see a small increase in consumer credit.  Last night after a wonderful dinner at Hannah’s, (with one of our readers) I managed to get home and make a few changes to my portfolio.  I also had a few changes today, due to stops.  In summary, I was stopped out of BKE after an 8% loss.  (Retail got hammered pretty good today), I took some profit on GLD as it had run up 21%, I also took some profit on IBM as it was just north of 20%, I got out of my volatility play with VXX, it was up 3% and as the economic news gets better the VXX will come back down, I also got back in to Gamestop and got jack back in it as well as Kristin.  There are major titles coming out on the 17^th and it should be a great 4^th quarter for the company.  And I have one more for you later tonight.  A little more homework first.  Look for the post “Who’s your daddy?”

Salve Lucrum