Weekend Market Linkfest

This TomCar rocks!

I have added a few new cool blogs to my blogroll. John Mahoney – founder of Instant Information pens a tech blog with a lot of smart insight and he loves Apple as well which never hurts. I met him this week and his new Company is way ahead of the curve in organizing financial information.

On Widgets and badges – a favorite area of mine – I Added Tim Post whose blog Flying Seeds is new, but deep.

Eddy has a great post on breaking down the argument – this company can’t get any bigger .

New Highs are coming from some different, mundane sections – Mcdonalds, Walgreen’s and Smith and Wesson ( one that I own – and blogged about buying back in June at $7 ).

I love old Smith and Wesson and have sold a little but holding until the trend breaks. I love McDonald’s but am buying some Chipotle’s instead this week. I hate that I don’t own Walgreen’s. They are the best at selling me my drugs!

In the I need to puke department, Ford STEALS (LOL) Boeing’s CEO and Internet gaming execs are the FBI’s new Biiitches. I would love to rant, but Bill Cara does it perfectly here:

Boeing had paid Alan Mulally a base salary of $825,000 plus $736,000 bonus. Moving over to captain a sinking ship does have its rewards though as Ford Motor Co has agreed to pay him $2 million base annual salary plus 4 million stock options and 600,000 restricted stock units plus $7.5 million signing bonus plus $11 million to replace the Boeing future compensation package he walked away from. I wonder how many points his agent got.

The one thing that Mulally didn’t get was something acceptable to replace his Lexus. Maybe Ford would like to give him a Taurus to show him how bad things really are.

Now why would an individual investor care about Ford or General Motors now that those two leading American corporations have become dependencies of (i) the NYC banks (who worry about a Ford-GM credit failure bigger than all of Central and South America combined, in the unlikely event the latter should ever happen at once), and (ii) Washington (where Job One is to fool the American people into believing that working two jobs at McDonalds is better than one at a factory like Ford or GM?

Speaking of McDonalds, Value Line reported on the company this week, exposing the truth about what’s wrong with the U.S. economy.

Instead of creating wealth, entrepreneurs and capitalists like Alan Mulally and the good folks at McDonalds have decided to get theirs. Sell assets for royalties, and use the cash flow to increase dividends and buy-back shares because that, ladies and gentlemen, is going to increase the stock price (for now) and incidentally their personal bonuses (for as long as they hopefully have the gig).

From your pocket to theirs. Why?

If you are interested in holding shares of an auto manufacturer, why not just look to (Cara 100) Toyota Motor, which doesn’t need the likes of people like Alan Mulally or Bob Rubin and his colleagues at Goldman Sachs? Toyota simply manufactures cars (like the Lexus) that intelligent people want, and they make good money doing it, and have credible financial statements to boot.

So Washington doesn’t want you to bet on sports (they had another internet gaming executive arrested this week); they’d rather you gamble on Ford and GM shares in an equity market they tell you is transparent and fair, and not controlled by Washington and Humungous Bank & Broker. Not!

As always – right on Bill.

Michael Parekh applies the capitulation and doom and gloom headline contrarian call to the Middle East . I have been hanging with some smart Israeli entrepreneurs who unfortunately share the same gloom. The trader in me says any major stock market weakness this fall will be focused on this conflict AND housing BUT will be a great buy!

Finally, I have added the TomCar (pictured at the top of the post) to my new favorite products. Although already a small phenomenon, I expect the TomCar to EXPLODE in popularity here in the United States (at least the Southwest). I spent a little time driving one this week and we did our best to destroy one :) (sorry Ram). The car was developed in the Israel, by the father of a friend of mine (Ram) – over 15 years ago. They have set up small manufacturing and a headquarters here in Phoenix – lucky me. It is fund investment we are considering. If you have the opportunity to drive one – take it.