A neat story is the story of the Lady or the Tiger. I remember it as part of the broadway musical called "The Apple Tree" starring (believe it or not) Alan Alda (basically 3 stories of the battle of the sexes). In the story a princess is in love with a man. He beds her, but is caught by the king. The punishment is to go into an arena and choose between two doors. Behind one is a beautiful lady, who the man would get to marry. Behind the other is a tiger who will tear the man to shreds.The twist is that the princess finds out which door has the lady and which door has the tiger. And she tells the man which door to open. But then he is uncertain whether to believe her as she is a very jealous woman. Perhaps she would rather him be killed than be with a beautiful woman. Good stuff, as I recall you never find out the answer. (The Lady or the Tiger?).
I feel like today we get to find out whether the lady or the tiger is behind our stock market door. The fed will announce what they are doing with the fed rate and more importantly give some indication on where it is going. I always feel that it is a little double-edged. If they signal that they are stopping the hikes, that really means that they feel that the economy is slowing which in of itself may have negative implications for stocks. But if they continue to raise, that hurts stocks for the reasons I gave yesterday.
I always find it fascinating to look at the minute by minute charts on fed day. Look for some roller coaster activity around 1:15. I once read an article on how the change gets communicated to the press and outside world as it is such a hot potato. Let me see if I can dig that up... no luck, I'll try more later. I do recall a few years ago it was very low tech. The memo was drafted and then there were like 10 fax machines and it got faxed on all of them simultaneously to various press outlets. Hold the presses! I found a blog that discusses it. Isn't the internet wonderful! This is a pretty cool posting that is amazing. The FOMC decision, which I sure either costs or makes various parties 100s of millions is subject to error and is very low tech, read all about it! (BLOG on FOMC Procedures and Snafu) .
Gadzooks! The day has just finished. The market was like a coiled spring, for you physics majors out there, that means there was a lot of potential energy stored. Let us see if I can get a graph:
My MFI stocks went up by a phenomenal 4.2%! The gap between MFI and IWV narrowed appreciably as IWV "just" went up 2.25%. Actually getting much closer to breaking even, now down just 1.8%. My big movers:
ORCT +16.2% (They had dropped too much... I believe that double comment will be true)
MTEX + 9.4%
CHKE +6.5%
FTO + 6.4%
OVTI +5.9%
HW, PACR, PCU, EZEN all right at 5%.
ANF was only stock in the red, down an inexplicable 0.5%. This was easily my best day of the year.
Back to my Lady and Tiger theme. I guess it was the lady. I have to admit that I read what the Fed said and I didn't really "get" it. It seemed like they said what has been said before, that future rate hikes are possible depending on the data. (FOMC statement). But I am not literate in Greenspeak, or whatever tongue they use. So I'll let Larry Kudlow explain it to me tonight.
Here is where my portfolio stands today (assuming $10,000 per stock):
| Stock | Cost | Current | Gain |
| NCOG | $19.39 | $27.05 | 39.5% |
| TGIS | $10.34 | $12.67 | 23.7% |
| NSS | $45.89 | $54.76 | 19.3% |
| MGLN | $38.34 | $45.55 | 18.8% |
| UST | $39.36 | $45.19 | 17.7% |
| PCU | $78.13 | $88.97 | 17.4% |
| CHKE | $37.55 | $41.49 | 12.1% |
| FTO | $28.76 | $29.82 | 3.8% |
| PACR | $32.53 | $33.31 | 3.3% |
| TRLG | $17.02 | $17.33 | 1.8% |
| PNCL | $6.68 | $6.77 | 1.3% |
| PGI | $7.71 | $7.77 | 0.8% |
| MSTR | $94.36 | $94.88 | 0.5% |
| PTEN | $27.74 | $27.77 | 0.4% |
| EZEN | $2.84 | $2.75 | -3.0% |
| FDG | $34.03 | $31.94 | -3.5% |
| KG | $17.31 | $16.57 | -4.3% |
| RAIL | $58.18 | $55.05 | -5.4% |
| MTEX | $13.11 | $12.14 | -6.8% |
| ELX | $17.85 | $16.21 | -9.2% |
| ANF | $61.13 | $54.92 | -9.9% |
| ORCT | $11.83 | $10.40 | -12.1% |
| IVII | $10.93 | $9.15 | -16.3% |
| PONR | $32.97 | $27.54 | -16.5% |
| DLX | $26.36 | $21.37 | -17.4% |
| PTSC | $1.31 | $1.03 | -21.4% |
| TBL | $34.50 | $27.09 | -21.5% |
| OVTI | $27.79 | $21.43 | -22.9% |
| HW | $37.42 | $25.30 | -32.4% |
| Total Gain/Loss | -$5,308 | ||
| Benchmark Gain/Loss | -$2,279 | ||
| Annual IRR | -9.3% | ||
Now I will just need to decide whether to heed Jubak's adcice on selling into rallies... this was certainly a king-sized rally. Have a good one!
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