Thursday Tidbits

The market continues to trade strangely with equities up a lot again yesterday and the shocking decline in gold continuing, actually yesterday was far worse for gold than Tuesday. We may not be in a bear market (I think we are) but this type of huge-move-day-after-day trading is consistent with bear market activity.

By now you know that Steve Jobs is stepping down as CEO of Apple (AAPL). By virtue of our position in iShares US Technology ETF (IYW) and AAPL's weight in that ETF we practically have a normal sized position in AAPL. The stock got hit for 5% upon the news and while there will probably be some uncertainty for a while the devotion of customers willing to wait in a line outside a store at night to buy new Apple products is unlikely to go away which might create a buying opportunity.

In the immediate wake of the Jobs news someone named Timothy Connolly tweeted "BREAKING: Jobs resigns. Black turtlenecks limit down." I thought that was hysterical.

Yesterday on the first hour of Closing Bell they had someone from Raymond James on who said (paraphrasing) unfortunately we've liked financials for a couple of years...we aren't wrong, just early as they like to say. This was followed by a nervous laugh. If they've been generally bullish on financials then they've been horribly wrong, I wonder if any of their clients think it is funny.

A new ETF company (you can read about the lineage here) has filed for several China ETFs including one to be called the China Urbanization ETF and the China Five Year Plan ETF. I would have to think the Urbanization fund would look a lot like the EG Shares China Infrastructure ETF (CHXX) but I think this is one of the investable concepts in China and the Five Year Plan fund would seem to have a lot of overlap as well but we'll see when/if they ever start trading.

If they do ever start trading then no doubt a lot of fun will made at their expense but assuming reasonable liquidity, funds like this are a democratizing force. More people are able (comfort-wise) to research a theme and invest at the theme level than can research a theme to then have to invest in an individual stock from that theme.

The first picture is obviously a bear in the woods. Specifically she and her two cubs were chased away from the aforementioned male grizzly who we watched run for about half a mile down a hill, swim across a river and then run just a little more to get to buffalo carcass I've mentioned previously. We have pictures of this run including one where he is in mid flight diving into the water which I will post soon.

The second picture is from inside the Old Faithful Inn. When we walked in we knew immediately we'd seen it before on some show (maybe the Ken Burns series?). The picture does not do it justice. If the Inn is unfamiliar to you it would be worth Googling.