Mild Monday

So far, so mild. Good sleeping weather here, 65 degrees and blue skies. Even with an early (for me) bedtime, I missed the first three hours of the market. Egpyt? Bah. No biggie, says the market. Global selloff to start the week? The Dow, S&P and Nasdaq didn't blink. All three are fractionally up.

AAPL has made a run in the past hour or so from 334 to 339, a pleasant surprise. I got out last week, so I'm just waiting for a re-entry point. It appears 334-335 is new support.

As for VXX, I got out with a tiny loss in the mid-31 area. It's so typical of me to have such a modest position and yet all I could think of for most of the weekend was Egypt and VXX. The market often thinks one or two steps ahead. Unless that situation erupts into a shutdown of the Suez Canal, the street gatherings and protests are built into the US market already.

I was expecting a red day, but AAPL, BIDU, FAS, GLD, IBM, TBT are green. NFLX is finally selling off, down 1.8% (214). F is down 1.2% (16.06). GOOG and AMZN down slightly. LULU also. TVIX, which was up more than 20% on Friday, is down 2.4%, so net-net, it's still up big the past two days. I'm staying out of that, VXX and most everything else. The only issues I'll touch are AAPL and maybe GLD and VXX.

#6 International Business Machines

IBM en fuego? Who woulda thunk it a year ago?


Forget Yahoo and Excite and all those other hot new techs from the late 1990s. IBM still rules.

SBUX, GOOG, IBM in play

Starbucks shut down for the day, Google is at a one-year low and IBM rocked like an old-school classic.

Jeff Macke is bullish on SBUX. I don't know if it's worth holding long term with competition from McDonald's and Dunkin Donuts.

Erick Schonfield questions the paranoia of GOOG sellers. The stock fell to an intra-day low of 446 before settling at 464, down 5%.

In this bear market, IBM's fantastical, cloud nineish forecast stands out. I may have a crush on Big Blue. I listed it today at No. 6 on my Top 25.