TGIF and taxes

Ugh ... it's time to do my taxes. I do my own with a spreadsheet that I wrote long ago and have slowly embellished. The spreadsheet simply mimics the actual tax forms and worksheets that I need, so when I'm done, I can just copy the entries onto the actual forms with perfect arithmetic. But I still have to compile all the data, which is a lot of work. I think I'll start today with the brokerage statements, that have to be combined for aggregate numbers for things like interest and dividends, etc.

More ...

The Brazilian president made some stupid statements about "white people" with "blue eyes" causing the crisis. I suppose he's speaking to the folks back home. And he seems to have never taken a look at Stan O'Neal of Merrill Lynch debacle fame.

Markets

Another up day. The few living bulls are very wary and the more numerous bears are complacent, either lurking in the woods (in cash) for victims to maul or suffering as their existing shorts are bleeding while they wait for (certain) redemption. It makes me wonder about this market. I've written before about the 1974 analogy. Today Blabberg described it rather well from the charts - that is, if you were up at 3:30 AM ET to watch it. The guy did a pretty good job. He was British, by the way. That figures. Few American faces can articulate a complex thought.

The 1974 analogy implies a fast rally back to around S&P 1500 in 18 months. That would completely kill the bears with losses or permanent underperformance. Aw shucks, can it really happen ? Of course, analogies are just ... analogies.

Word of the Day

"Invious" - adjective [$1000] and "inviousness" - noun [$1000]; obsolete
Invious means impassible; inaccessible; without paths or roads; trackless.
Inviousness means the state or condition of being invious.
Example from geography (original usage): some places in the Rockies, or the Scottish highlands, or Siberia.
Sentence: The bears (and Krondrativans) claim that Tolstoyan historiography applies: that the economic crisis is invious and man cannot find a short cut out of lengthy purgatory. The bulls deny this, thinking that massive monetary expansion to replace vanished credit, plus plenty of stimulus to generate demand, is the short cut to economic paradise, viz., moderate growth. Time will tell.

Le Mot du Jour

"Internaute" - noun, MF.
Internaute means net surfer, Internet user.
La Phrase: Augmenter les nombres des internautes tue lentement des journals.
Sentence: Increasing the numbers of internet users is slowly killing newspapers.