Patrick's Rants

I’m primarily just waiting for things to happen with my stocks. No major moves, no exciting pops. I did decide to add a little (7% annual) dividend income to my account and bought 2 shares of JNK for the few cents worth of dividends per month (JNK qualifies for commission free trades in my account so 2 shares or 2000 shares makes no difference in trading costs). I’m also hanging on to my shares of VG, YHOO, ANH, and CMRG that I’m holding. I’m selling covered calls on YHOO so I have to wait for the price to come down on the options, the shares to close under $15 at expiration or to be called out. With YHOO, I’m inclined to be called out and then start selling the puts and use the unused cash for my other stocks.

VG has really been slammed, but no real negative stories on it, still has positive numbers and really low P/E. It hasn’t done what I want so I might have to rethink whether to buy it again if and when my sale price gets hit. In the meantime, I’m just holding and waiting. I might also review the calls when the price gets back above $2.40 if I don’t happen to just close the trade.

My current holdings of ANH are too low to trade. I only have 25 shares and commissions would eat any profit so I’m just taking in the quarterly dividends currently around 12% annually. The 25 shares was done on purpose, I bought 225 shares on the last turn and got called out of the covered calls I was selling on 200 shares.

While the Repugnicans want to strip out preventative care funds from the Affordable Care Act to hold the cost of student loans in place (one might guess to nefariously point out that the preventative care funds were a failure) the greediest industry in the world – the industry with the largest after tax profits in the last few years, record profits, the highest profits ever – is standing up behind teachers and science and math. Check out Exxon Mobile’s community initiative. www.exxonmobil.com/letssolvethis

Church sign:

Forbidden Fruit Results in Many Jams

And jam is tasty. Look at Smuckers. Jam is good on toast and bread and buns.

Abstinence Makes the Church Grow Fondlers

I just opened this email that’s been forwarded a few times:

——– Begin forwarded message ——–
Subject: Fw: F Best bar joke in a while. . .
Date: 4/22/12 3:17:12 PM
From: “Pat Barber”
To: pabar26@charter.net

—– Forwarded Message —–
From: Jim Kavanagh
To: cathy collins
Sent: Friday, April 20, 2012 6:08 AM
Subject: FW: F Best bar joke in a while. . .

Best bar joke in a while. . .

A black guy,

An illegal alien,

A Muslim, and

A Communist

Walk into a bar.

The bartender asks,

“What can I get you

Mr. President?”

This is sooo witty!
Hey, I have another one for you, a racist forwards an email to an invalid address and the recipient posts your friends’ email addresses online to get scraped by spambots… and if the material gets too out of line “accidentally” gets forwarded to the Secret Service – tee hee!

VG did not make the quick move that I thought it would so I’m waiting. The waiting is really the hardest part. This is the part where I practice patience. There is the gap on the chart that I’m looking to see filled, but long term the trend is actually slightly down. How low can it go? Theoretically zero. It’s trading at a 1.9 P/E. That is extremely low, but there doesn’t seem to be a ton of confidence in the price – at least right now.

Just watch and wait – and wait.

Correction: the P/E for VG is 1.23 according the TDAmeritrade this morning. I think it was around 1.9 when I purchased it.

I have to ask if this is where we are. The day after election day in 2008, I was shocked at the vile attitudes from people who appear normal. He was called a communist, a nazi, a muslim – everything “except a white man” as the saying goes. In private it was surely worse.

Today I received an email, surely by accident as I have a catch-all email account.

My daughter walked into the living room and said “Dad, cancel my allowance immediately, forget the College tuition, rent my room out, throw all my clothes out of the window; take my TV, iPhone, iPod, and my laptop. Please take any of my jewelry to the Salvation Army or Cash Converters. Then sell my car, take my front door key away from me and throw me out of the house.

Then disown me and never talk to me again.

And don’t forget to write me out of your will and leave my share to any one that wants it.”

Well, she didn’t put it quite like that.. she actually said…

“Dad, meet my new boyfriend – Mohammed. We’re going to work together on
President Obama’s re-election campaign.”

Hmm… racist and anti-muslim in one. Way to go white supremisist!

Next I saw a truck with a number of bumper stickers with Obama’s campaign logo. It was a crew cab dual rear wheel, turbo ram with a camper topper. When I looked closer I could read the sticker. Beside a photo of Obama was the caption

Does this ass make my truck look big?

Clever, but no. It’s your big truck with that bumper sticker that makes you look like a big ass.

Are we not past this hatred and racism?

Paul Ryan, the Eddie Munster of Congress, gets his budget plan chewed on by Ezra Klein over on the Washington Post web site.

Barack Obama called this budget proposal a “Trojan Horse“, but it’s more like Barbarians at the Gate. The plan would be more of the same from the greedy Adams Family running the House, take from the poor and elderly to give tax breaks to the wealthy. Is this really how we want to run our country? Is this how we want to treat the “least of these“?

I learned by seeing his campaign sign in a Ron Paul mobile. Oravits, when your supporters run around trying to end half the government (and never getting anything at all to even come up for vote – Ron Paul) including repealing the civil rights act and going back to the gold standard, then I know what kind of political nut job you are.

Really! Michael P. Dallessandro writes on School Bus Fleet what might be considered the best article on the trials and tribulations of school bus transportation.