What its MLK day? I didn’t really know until I tried to get ahold of DFAS and kept getting a message that all offices were closed for the holiday. Actually what the message said was their hours were from 0730 to 1800est M-F, with the exception of Federal holidays. I looked at my watch and it was 1130, on a Mon. . I actually started writing flame mail, but before sending it I decided to Google a calendar to see if today were a federal holiday. That is how I discovered it was MLK day.
Yup, I’m lucky to remember my b-day. I often joked that if it wasn’t for the Navy to remind me I would never know when the holidays were.

I spent the day on the web. I discovered a new web game called Adventure Quest. Well I can’t really say I discovered it, its more like I rediscovered it. A more than a couple years ago I played it briefly, what the hell its free. After a while I lost track of the game, hell I though it had disappeared with a host of other free game on the web. Until I was making my rounds on the net; while looking at How Stuff Work.com looking at the possibility that the Salem witch trials all started as a case of Ergot poisoning when on the side of the article was an ad for AQ. Well after checking out I set up a character and spent rest of the day playing AQ.

After 6hrs of AQ I take some time to practice the Guitar. I’ve played since ’97 but despite knowing more than a handful of chords I wouldn’t say I actually play guitar. I don’t have more than a vague understand why Dmaj is Dmaj, or why other chords are Daug, or Ddim. So I picked up a hand book on music theory. At the moments I’m teaching myself the different major scales. I’ve actually have been practicing these scales since Christmas vacation. In order to keep things lively I started to play Doe, Rei, Me,(Doe a deer…) in the three scales I know so far Cmaj, Dmaj, and Gmaj. This mixes up the scales and makes me have remember what notes I’m playing and whether the note I’m playing is a 3rd, 4th, 5th or so forth.

When my fingers got tired, or my brain, I spent some time scoping my stocks and doing some research. I looked at Select Comfort, and Alcoa. Both stock are dropping like stones in a pond, and I wanted to know if I should hang out or buy in. Selling is out of the question because I’m in the red on both.
My main focus of course was Alcoa. Toward the last of ’07 Alcoa was on top, like a horse on fire the stock price rose above the $30.00. But of late the price has slid to where it has been before then, so I wanted to know, to understand, a little about the body of this company.
Price is nice but it is only a short term indicator. Knowing which way the momentum is going, buy in or sell off, tells me whether there is a possibility buy at a bargain or to sell off stock while they are still in the green. What I don’t learn by watching stock prices is why these migrations are taking place. It could be herd mentality, or there could be a good reason to run away.
So I started by looking at the statistics for Alcoa. As always their EV was too high, over 20% higher than the market cap which normally tells me there is too much debt and not enough cash. Since Alcoa is an old man of industry, I could let this little indiscretion slide if other indicators were favorable. I looked at the PEG rating, Yahoo had it around .96 which is excellent. It told me the Price/Earning ratio when compared to the company’s growth was undervalued, and a P/E of 9.x wasn’t too bad either.
All these are well and good, but, its just ratio and statistics, and statistic only show where the wind is blowing but not why it’s blowing in that direction. Maybe the news entertainment industry may be happy to accept these indicators as reality but I don’t have the luxury of non accountability when it comes to my money. So I had to dig deeper, and look at some important item of the balance sheet.
When comparing 2006/2007 incomes I discovered Revenue is up 13%, margin is up 42%, I don’t really know how that happened. Usually earning is the same or a little less than revenue I’ll have look into this a bit further, and inventory is up 10%, which matches the pace of revenue. I remember listening to 4th qtr talks last week, the CEO and managers are building plants in china to take advantage of projected increases in consumption of aluminum in there. Also Alcoa has made some stride in generating the massive electricity required to produce aluminum in ways that is less dependent of fossil fuels, which are expected to continue to rise in ’08. All in all I like what I saw.
The only hesitation I have is Alcoa is the wisdom of bringing aboard Sam O’Neil newly resigned from Merrill Lynch. I see Sam O’Neill as a risk taker, something that is required if one is looking to make money, but too much risk is what hurt Merrill Lynch. Merrill Lynch lost 1.8bil USD in their 4th qtr 9.8bil in all because of sub prime debacle. Many a player was involved in this ah shit spree of course. Greenspan kept messin’ with the interest rate meaning silly people were fooled into believing there was never going to be a downturn, the banks kept pumping out loans to people who would never have been trusted to borrow the amount of money that they did in a wiser time; Pumping good money after bad since the late 90’s. All this was on Sam’s watch, he was CEO so there couldn’t have been any lack of understanding on his part. Now that he’s been run out on a rail Alcoa recruits him for their board of directors. I have to ask, what exactly do the other board members see in the way Sam runs his shift. Just what skills do they expect him to bring to this party.

After spending all of the day in doors I was getting a little stir crazy, so I had to get out. Go to Barnes & Noble, grab a coffee, scan some books, read Darkness at Sethanon, whatever I just had to get out and be surrounded by people, surrounded by something other than these four walls.
My first mistake of course is the place I chose to surround myself with. I have great difficulty going into a book store and coming away without a purchase. And this was not of those days. I bought two books, Every Thing You Know is Wrong, and Who Knew. Both are bargain bins, which is good especially with the first book.
Usually when people inform me all that I think I know is wrong, it usually turns that they’re wrong. Either because the author took for granted that maybe I don’t put too much faith into the New Entertainment Industry, or because their cockamamie idea are absent of research. Just like my cockamamie ideas but I don’t charge for my two cents.
I almost bought The Onions: Our Dumb World. As I scanned through I couldn’t help but laugh. The format was an almanac of all the countries of the world but in the tongue in cheek attitude that the Onion often uses in their faux newspaper. For the UAE the book showed a picture of the palm tree reef they’ve erected and described under the picture that it was a man made reef the supports a delicate ecosystem of room service. For Saudi Arabia there was a picture of G.W. Bush on his knees before the Saudi king with his lips puckered as if he was getting ready to go down on the king. Under the picture was a caption that said bush and the Saudi king were in the middle of a high level diplomatic meeting. If it wasn’t for being broke and having more books than places to put them I would have bought the book out right. As it was I had to put the book back and be happy with what I got from the bin.
I saw another book in the philosophy section. It was philosophy through Family Guy. Now I’ve seen this type before I have a book that is Philosophy through The Simpsons. In it Homer and Lisa are compared to character traits from Plato’s Ethos, and Bart to Nietzsche. It was fascinating stuff, but what I’ve seen from this book it compares the Family Guy to Post-Modern Philosophy. The author wasn’t to happy about the post-modern doctrine either. He saw it as a disregard of any structure. Do what you feel is right because there is no truth. I agreed in that instance, I could see how person not stable in his beliefs could fall into this way of thinking.
What I didn’t understand is how the philosophy demonstrated in family guy had any similarity to a conservative point of view as the author pointed out. As I understood it, conservative people were those who clung to the way things were. Unwilling to give up the old to try something new, so there whole view point is structured. That is why when most people think of conservatives they think of Christians. Of course there are also groups that hold onto what they see as mos maiorum, The way things been, the unwritten law. Unlike most christians these rules that this group fights for have never been formalized by words, and though from the outside their point of view is similar to Christians their point of view is warped and twisted.