Skip Summer Doldrums With These Stock Ideas

It's hot. Your air conditioner (if you're lucky enough to have one) has been blasting away for weeks. You're starting to count the swimming pool as your daily bath. Your nightly iced tea has slowly morphed into a mojito or six. And yes, the kids are driving you up the wall. Welcome to summer...and there's still a few months to go! Rather than lay around sweating in your underpants and cutting the thick humidity with a baseball bat, consider using the normally down-market summer season as a buying opportunity, particularly of companies who make the products that make summer worth complaining through.

Sometimes, the best way to enjoy summer is to get the hell out of town. Royal Caribbean lets you do that in style! I've got a friend who takes a cruise every year to recharge her batteries, let someone else cook/clean/feed her grapes while wearing a man-thong, and get out of Michigan for a week or so.

If you're going to be hot, you may as well be really hot...and in Vegas. You can gamble a little, eat a lot, and live like Sinatra for a week. Will it be 120 degrees out? Maybe, but it's a dry heat! (Note: Despite what I told my family, MGM did not comp me three nights at the Bellagio for writing this trading idea. I couldn't take it even if offered anyway.)

When it's 95 degrees out, you need somewhere cool to drink. Indoors? Maybe. But why settle for recycled air when you can sit in the elements in a nice, cool pool, floating on a raft and sipping beverages? Pool (as you may have guessed) makes swimming pool supplies, equipment and related leisure products, which makes them the perfect compliment to your skinny-dipping ways.

Kraft makes Kool-Aid. Kool-Aid has the added bonus of a sugar rush/crash cycle right before bed. If you time it right, you can win the kids up around 7:30 and watch them crash right when you're ready for them to

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Why fight the bees and flies as you wait for the charcoal to heat up when you can go to Red Robin and eat a ridiculously good burger in air conditioning? Even if you think your burgers are better (my dad certainly brags up his grill prowess) you cannot beat the unlimited steak fries. Unlimited fries? Yep, unlimited fries.