GEe, it's Friday !

I'll update this post after the GE earnings come out at 6:30 AM ET. [ **see update below .. ugh ! **] As a diversified multinational industrial company with large businesses in infrastructure and substantial overseas and export components, I expect a good quarter and outlook. The CEO, Jeff Immelt, seems to be doing a fine job and bought outright about $5 million in stock in March. He was quite bullish at a conference in March, too. GE is a large holding in my Alpha Fund and I have a fine profit already.

Stocks rose on higher volume Thursday ... a good recovery after Wednesday's slide. The endless streams of opinion we hear on Babblevision and Blabberg really should be cut back and substituted with facts. But I did hear early this AM on Blabberg that Bill Gross of PIMCO has shifted his bond asset allocation greatly in favor of mortgage securities and has much less cash and Treasuries.

Spring is finally here. This winter was too long and harsh. Where is global warming ?

The rise in world rice prices is interesting. I never traded rice when I was a commodity speculator so don't know much about the fundamentals. But maybe this ditty applies, "how ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm when they've seen Beijing? " That is adaped from the WW I Irving Berlin song about US farmboys having served in France and seen Paris [sung as "Pa-reee"]. As events proved, they did start to prefer city life and opportunities. I'd guess a farmer spending days in rice paddies might think a job in the city is a better life. And so farm labor and actual farm land in those areas of the world where rice is manually cultivated might be suffering a steady decline. This is just a guess. I'll try to read more about this interesting development and write in the future.

PS: GE missed earnings estimates and lowered guidance, due to the large financial sector exposure. Phooey ! Oh well, I thought they had done a better job controlling that - sounds like they got hit in mid-late March. Not selling. I like it LT. I sold 1/3 over 37 on the recent poparoo. My position now is well-sized, not adding. Bears will certainly press again now. More slogging ahead ... ugh ... this is tiring.

PPS: China takeover rumors for CCJ, a long-term Alpha Fund holding. CCJ is the world's largets uranium mine.

P^3S: Revision - if they knock GE down enough, I will re-buy that 1/3 this morning.

P^4S: Btw, this is why one always waits for good dips to buy. And expects beefers to attack hard again, as I did write recently. There is usually an ebb & flow to news that causes volatilty. However, metaphorically this GE news is a surprise pothole under the car. We must watch the road ahead, not the part under the car or the rear view mirror except as it affects the future.

Word of the Day

"Indulciate" - verb, transitive [$1000] rare. Pronounced with a soft "c" as in "dulcify". A variant spelling/pronouciation is "indulcate" with a hard "c" as in "inculcate". I originally saw this interesting word in a letter from George Washington to a niece quoted in the fine book, "All Cloudless Glory", vol. 2.
Indulciate or indulcate means to sweeten in the sense of make agreeable, less painful. This word has a softer meaning than "inculcate" which means to teach or impress upon by emphasis or frequent repetition, but a stronger meaning than merely "suggest".
Sentence: A. [this is George Washinton's usage to his teenaged niece] "... I nevertheless will endeavor to indulcate upon your mind the delicacy and changes of that period [i. e., young womanhood] to which you have arrived under peculiar circumstances [i. e., no living parents]."
He chose that word to be gentle and fatherly to his niece, yet wanted to elevate his concern beyond making a suggestion or passing thought.
B. [original usage of 1628 from OED] "A friendly warre [war] doth indulciate the insuing cloze [peace]." This should ring true, as harsh and brutal war tactics make friendship after the peace quite rare.
C. [new] I won't try to indulciate for readers the GE earnings report aka "put lipstick on a pig".