Growing up, me and my friend, Jerry, we’d cut home from school through this little tar-shot service alley between the local Kwik Lube and an old sign shop; just a thirty-yard drag through a scatter of broken beer bottles and rusted siding nails, at the end of which was a junkyard and this fucked up old Doberman hellhound named June. This was junior high, long before social media and smartphones, before the world shared in this new collective woe of modern liberalism, PETA slacktivism, Sarah McLachlan and tear-jerk stray commercials. We were fucking bored. We’d walk home kicking up loose patches of asphalt and skipping lug nuts, maybe find the tube of a spent compact fluorescent and smash it on the side of a dumpster. Jerry would collect a pocketful of debris, bottle caps, stripped out automotive screws, chunks of windshield panes, and by the time we reached the junkyard, he’d have enough to really harass June, chucking the shit like throwing stars against her gnawed, grease-colored coat. He did this every day for like two years; dirt clods, pebbles, pressed soda cans, ball bearings, one time he took the spoke of an old racing wheel and managed to lodge it between her incisors. Sometimes he’d just run by, kick the fence, flip her off, call her a fucking bitch and whatever else came next.
One day we’re walking by after like ditching the yawn of some midday study hall and there’s a hole in the fence. At the end of the alley, June’s dragging chain and foaming at the mouth, pawing at the gravel of broken glass and cigarette butts like a stuck bull before a cape pass. Jerry’s face collapsed like a bad Jenga move.
Point being: never engage in antics that will come back to bite you in the ass – which brings me to General Electric (GE).
In terms of places not to put your money, I’m putting them at the very top of my 2018 dog shit list – this once powerhouse in everything from natural resources to toaster ovens has absolutely shit the bed of late, hiring one jackoff CEO after another, loading up on oil and gas assets up top and selling off it’s appliance division at the bottom, then dumping GE Capital and NBC for a focus on “industrial activites.” This is a company known for its refrigerators. GE: stop fucking with the game plan; put your resources back into the kitchen and stop losing people money. In the end, it is you who will pay.
In today’s look, the Dow opened up just under 25k after a rather rabid session of cold sweat and pearl-clutching when the market shot up yesterday after the release of the fed minutes. Everything went high-speed rock n’roll until right around closing bell when the market sold off, finishing up another day in a very volatile market.
This morning things are looking better, the Dow shooting up 200 points right off the bell. United Tech (UTX) kicking ass, up nearly four points. Caterpillar (CAT) and Apple (AAPL) clawing up about a percent apiece.
S&P winners Quanta (PWR) and FMC Tech (FTI) up six percent each. A little rich for me, but if you want to get on board with engineering, never a terrible idea.
Oil is on the rise, up half a point, better than a kick in the face. Who knows where this market is going.
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