A little bit of everything

I caught the first episode of Bravo’s Flipping Out this season with Jeff Lewis. He looked more humbled and now that the housing market has turned I can’t wait to see how he handles the new market out there. During the show he said he felt like he was depressed because he is no longer flipping 6 houses at a time and that he had to look for extra work back in the remodeling business. There were times he seemed very irritating instead of entertaining. I guess an example is when he asks his assistant to transfer mints from one tin to another tin, and then to discard the 2nd tin can. By the time he finished his request, it could have already been done. The other thing that would drive me nuts is when he talks about being able to tell whether his coffee is 150 vs 140 degrees from Starbucks. Shaddup! I still had fun overall watching the show. I think there will definitely be more drama that will definitely make him flip out when he tries to sell the last house he fixed up. I don’t think the values will be where he will want them to be. He has a great track record of doing quality flips so I really think it will be insightful to see how he handles the new market and adapts to it.

Today, my wife and I watched all 3 movies that came in our Netflix queue. It has been awhile since we have been able to do that. All the movies were 1 name titles: Untraceable, Jumper, and Bella. They were all pretty good but not great. The only big name actress I recognized was Diane Lane. She was in the first 2 movies.

The stock market was in a crazy mood today. This Friday we have quadruple witching expirations. Oil has been down a few days but gas at the pump didn’t respond appropriately. So type of news caused it to reverse course and move back up. I think 140 a barrel will be here soon, and the predictions they make of $150 by July don’t seem so far fetch.

There have been a few blogs that talk about an oil bubble and that it will burst. We hear Opec and Kuwait announcing “Yes, oil is too expensive and should be selling for less than $100 a barrel”. Then you hear them snickering as they sell us more of their overpriced oil. Very interesting. Bush is trying to convince Congress that we need to start drilling just as McCain is suggesting. This is just more Bush-it political spins that will not solve the problem at hand. Bush is an idiot!

I am still playing the UpDown.com simulation game. I sold all my reverse ETFs today and I am up about $150,000 in fake money. I think I sold too early but I wanted to lock in the gains. This stock market seems to move in either direction on any type of news. It is very unpredictable. When I looked at the technical graphs for the QQQQ is was bullish 2 weeks ago, then bearish last week, and now turned bullish this week. Personally, I think the fundamentals are still all pointing down. The housing market is still controlling this market indirectly, and I do believe there is some major bad news in the next 6-12 months that will sink the economy into a deeper recession.