Bookkeeping: Closing PPG Industries (PPG) Short

It's 3:30 PM so it is time to wake up - both the Siesta Fund and the 29 Minute Fund are now back operational as we await the gifts from the stock market gods, i.e. our traditional post 3:30 PM ramp to the close. It doesn't happen every day but anything with a 80% win rate is great for mere mortals who don't work at Goldman Sachs. (anything below 97% win ratio is scoffed at in that firm)

As I look at the S&P 500 chart, I simply cannot be bearish - at least unless we break back down below the double top. And with that one could only be Bear-lite. No sustained growling can take place until a breakdown below S&P 980 - which at this point seems improbable. The gap at S&P 906? Laughable. Helicopter... (sic) B52 ... (natch) Kerosene Ben is on the job.

As I look quite a few of my shorts I simply cannot be bearish either - so I suppose I must start liquidating with the knowledge that one day (in a galaxy far far away) when the market is given license to fall, I will not be so profitable. But it's a small price to pay to be included on the asset inflation at all costs bandwagon.

I am exiting PPG Industries (PPG) with about a 6.5% loss; this is about 3% of our portfolio. Those gaps in the $40s will have to be revisited in another era I suppose. It's been range bound the past 6 weeks as the market sings songs of joy, so in a relative sense its a "win", but having almost any short exposure now is simply asking for Bernanke to beat you over the head with a stack of $100 bills.

I see so many stocks with so many gaps, but nary an inclination to fill them. Perhaps when the Fed tightens, circa 2012. Wait, that's an election year... make it 2013. I read this week that UK stocks now trade at something akin to 70x earnings. Europe as a whole is about 50x. You have now entered the "valuations are meaningless" zone.

It is time to party... like it's 1999.

Prince - 1999
by djarnaldo

No position