Is Apple (AAPL) back on track to $200?

I have bolstered about this since $120 to my colleagues and as of late, particularly my brother and his friends, who have turned bullish long before I have, and now, it is time I spread the great word that myself and 24/7 Wall Street believes to be very true.
$200 is inevitable...thanks to the "portable and easy to use computer- IPhone"?

Some Insight..

It is playing on a team that makes the actual end result (win/loss) less important than the means (steps, interactions, circumstances, responses and situations) taking to get there. Of course, we all want to win, but that is not the point I am going to explain. A rational being has the ability to ask himself, am I playing this game to win, or am I trying to win as a mere act conceding from the urge to play?; and out of my competitiveness and will to be better than I was yesterday, it is inevitable that I want to win? Do I want to win because I am so involved with a team, that I simply want to be able to see and experience my teammates' happiness (that will reflect my happiness) as a result of a win. Or do I want to win because I cannot stand the thought of defeat and the repercussions of relationships that follow a loss.
Maybe I want to "lose" because I feel its time to rebuild or restructure something?
It is not when one relies more on himself and his independence, that the win/loss (end) is more important than the means (journey). This independence, self reliance and dictation is needed to be a leader and individual. Rather, it is when one does not trust others, or feels that he is better off than a "team" effort that a win/loss is taken much more seriously than the overall "game" of life.
This being said, overall, one must rely on his own instincts and intellect to commit to the furthering obtainment of experience, knowledge and execution. However, we must admit, without teams and confrontations with individuals, how do we find out who we truly are? This goes back to my thought that, when involved in a team, with the more people, development and planning involved, and the more tasks spread out, the "path taken" is more important than the "restaurant you eat at" and the "moderate amount you eat", is more important than "what you eat".
When applying this to life, be a unique individual, contribute to a team and trust yourself to be able to trust others. Find u r happiness out of your own free acts, which will add to surrounding happiness and better air for all to breathe. It may take a smile from you, to make me see a smile, or perhaps, smile myself. I may need to show you a frown, because I need a uplifted spirit. It is out of my curiosity that I see "what makes you smile", more important than your "smile". When my smile is all you see, do you wonder why? Do you wonder what it takes to make me happy? How about yourself?
Instead of telling others, "smile", I believe we should ask others, "what will it take to make you happy"
Compare to my example of a "game", when you read if our team won or loss. To most just watching (spectators), the win or loss (or outcome/result) is what matters. On the other hand, if you are the one that is actually playing....you can never lose, so a loss can't be a loss, as long as your involved and are able to make lasting impressions on others, that will leave a lasting impression on yourself, you win.

when you leave one place or overcome an obstacle or reach a milestone, do you treat it as an exit?

...or as an Entrance?

Now I ask myself, what's next.........

Foreclosures Rising

-Fannie Mae officials said they expect "severe weakness" in the housing market the rest of the year and warned of increased mortgage defaults and foreclosures.

Those warnings came a day after similar warnings from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. On Monday he told a group at Columbia University that conditions in mortgage markets "remain quite difficult" amid a steep rise in mortgage delinquencies.

Bernanke said about one-quarter of subprime adjustable-rate mortgages are either in foreclosure or are 90 days or more delinquent. Foreclosure proceedings were initiated on around 1.5 million U.S. homes last year, he said. That's up 53% from 2006.

"And the rate of foreclosure starts looks likely to be yet higher in 2008," he said.

Meanwhile, home prices continue to sag. Through February, U.S. home prices were down 14.8% from their July 2006 peak, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller index of 20 metro areas. Fannie Mae expects national home values to fall 7% to 9% this year.

Article from Investor’s Business Daily

Interesting News

Trading assets can be divided into three levels. From Minyanville, the Level 3 assets (which include real estate, mortgage-backed securities, private equity investments and much more) are the least liquid of the firms' trading assets and therefore are valued using what are called "unobservable inputs." The three magic words that make an asset a Level 3 asset are "no observable inputs." What this means is that not only are they hard to price, but nearly impossible to sell."
Ten companies now have more Level 3 assets than capital. In order they are (as a % of total shareholder equity):
1) Bear Stearns: 313.97% (for example, a bit more than 3x's their equity capital base)
2) Morgan Stanley: 234.88%
3) Merrill Lynch: 225.4%
4) Goldman Sachs: 191.56%
5) Lehman: 171.18%
6) Fannie Mae: 161.48%
7) Northwest Air: 142.02%
8) Citigroup: 125.06%
9) Prudential: 119.36%
10) Hartford: 108.52%

Recap

S&P 500: 1392.57 (-1.82%)
Transports: 5206.58 (-2.97%)
Dow Jones 30: 12810.77(-1.61%)
Nasdaq: 2438.39 (-1.80%)
CRB Index: 420.18 (+0.39%)
1o year yield: (3.850%)
Oil: $123.62/barrel..gain of nearly 10% in 4 trading sessions.

ESM8 (E-mini S&P 500 June 2008): 1395.00 (-25.75 points)

SPY: 139.49 (-1.80%)
QQQQ: 48.00 (-1.90%)
IWM: 71.46 (-1.92%)
AAPL: 182.62 (-2.16%)
POT: 198.05 (-0.33%)
FXE 154.15 (-0.68%)

How much oil is demanded in US per day?

That number lies between 19 and 20 million barrels. Many analysts also say that in order for prices to decline, are a sharp downturn in "global oil demand" or some other sudden flight from commodities among investors. While most signs point toward further increases of oil prices, The Wall Street Journal reports that if oil does head north near $150/barrel, that could mean $4.50 per gallon of gasoline.

While many can worry about the trembling affect of high oil prices, I am glad that my Money has been following smart money into Apple Inc. (AAPL) since $120 per share. News today, Apple is now adopting a more open strategy for selling it's IPhone, by allowing two carriers to offer the device in Italy. This may boost profits, while at the same time, the price of the IPhone could very well be coming down in the near future. (As the investor as I am, when the market tumbles, it tends to bring down some very good stocks with it, when this happens, at times, I see them on sale, and as an even better buy. As long as I know the business they are apart of and truly believe that they are worth what I am willing to pay for, this being said, if Apple Inc's stocks retraces back some, I will recognize this as a buying opportunity because of this companies underlying fundamentals and great news to follow). This leads me to the question, which is going to be cheaper next year, one barrel of oil or an IPhone? Which would you rather pay less than $200 dollars for...

June Oil

(Marketwatch) June crude traded as high as $123.35 a barrel in New York and $123.56 in electronic trading Wednesday -- both fresh record levels for crude futures. A U.S. government report said crude supplies rose a third week, but refinery activity declined. June crude was last up $1.16 at $123+.

'If economic news is good, it means demand is going to rise and if it's bad, it means the Fed could cut interest rates again and send oil higher.'

— Peter Beutel, CameronHanover

For 'June' Gold; Futures closed at $871.20 an ounce, down $6.50 for the session. "The contract saw pressure from strength in the U.S. dollar after having climbed nearly $27 during a three-session winning streak."

Bond prices edged lower. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note (which moves opposite its price) rose to 3.93 percent from 3.92 percent late Tuesday.

-MPM
when fresh news hits the wire, you can be sure to find it here, only if it's important.
Invest with discipline and trade with persistence, shall we take that extra mile?

Risks Associated With Investing In Bonds

Bonds may expose an investor to one or more of the following risks: (1) interest-rate risk, (2) reinvestment risk, (3) call risk, (4) credit risk, (5) inflation risk, (6) exchange rate risk, (7) liquidity risk, (8) volatility risk, and (9) risk risk.
When pricing a bond, it is necessary to estimate the expected cash flows and determine the appropriate yield at which to discount the expected cash flows.

Example of Present Value of an Ordinary Annuity Using Annual Interest

The present value is the future value process in reverse. We have:

PV = [1/(1+r)^n]

If A = $100, r = 0.09, and n = 8, then: PV=A[1-(1/(1-r)^n] ; 100[1-1/(1.09)^8]

=$100[1-(1/(1.99256)/(0.09)]; $100[1-0.501867/0.09]; $100(5.534811); = $553.48.

From CNN Money

The Energy Department predicts average monthly gasoline prices should peak at $3.73 a gallon in June, an increase of about 11 cents from last month's estimate. Regular-grade gasoline is expected to average $3.52 a gallon in 2008, 71 cents above last year's average.

Diesel fuel prices are projected to average $3.94 per gallon this year, up from $2.88 per gallon in 2007

CNN Money

Would you travel that extra mile?

As I write this, oil is ready to surpass the $122 level. Is this the price that must be paid, "oil"?
Chinese Oil consumption is up an astounding 16.5% in Quarter 1, while US GDP grew .6% in Quarter.
While Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Mexico will not be expanding oil production much further, Oil exporters’ internal oil demand will soon cause supplies of oil on the export market to begin falling. Costs to produce new off shore discoveries will continue to escalate. More demand for oil in Mideast hikes prices while their own domestic oil producers increasingly consume their own oil to fuel their fast growing economies, driving up oil prices. I have just laid some basic framework here for oil prices, consumption and supply, but their are many other factors and influences in Oil prices, feel free to add..
Would you travel the extra mile?

Oil Investor's Business

June crude rose $1.87 to $121.84 a barrel after soaring to $122.73. Strikes and political unrest continued in Nigeria, and Iran dismissed talk of nuke inspections. Higher energy price targets from the Energy Information Administration and a renewed "super-spike" forecast from Goldman Sachs also fueled gains. So did a weaker dollar.
-Investor's Business Daily

Invest with discipline, MPM.

Graham Corp (GHM )

Today's Price: $61.05 (+$5.91)
Volume 308,800
Avg. Daily Volume 101,300....+205% Today

UBS May Cut 8,000 Jobs

May 5 (Bloomberg) -- UBS AG may cut as many as 8,000 jobs as it grapples with the biggest credit writedowns of any European bank and a 12 billion-franc ($11.4 billion) first-quarter loss.
Switzerland's biggest bank, which had a 3 billion-franc profit a year earlier, is set to spell out plans for layoffs when it reports detailed results tomorrow. The company will probably say it's eliminating between 2,500 and 3,000 jobs in its investment bank, more than 10 percent of the division, two people familiar with the matter said May 2 (Total 83,000 employees overall). Writedowns at the Zurich-based bank after the U.S. subprime mortgage meltdown have swelled to $38 billion over the past three quarters, a result of building a debt securities business at the peak of the market.
-MPM

Fidelity Magellan Fund

May 5 (Bloomberg) -- Fidelity Magellan Fund bought financial stocks including JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp., leading to the $39.4 billion fund's biggest monthly gain in five years.

Manager Harry Lange upped his stake in banks and brokerage companies in March by 1.9 percentage points, about $750 million, to 10 percent of the fund, data compiled by Bloomberg show. He bought $408 million in JPMorgan and $190 million in Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America.

Financial stocks reversed six months of declines in April that were caused by the subprime-mortgage crisis. The S&P's 500 Financials Index gained 6.5 percent, including reinvested dividends after dropping 28 percent in the prior 12 months. Magellan, once the largest U.S. fund, matched the index and had its biggest monthly gain since April 2003.

"He's calling the bottom in financials,'' said Jim Lowell, chief strategist at Adviser Investment Management Inc. in Watertown, Massachusetts, whose clients buy Fidelity funds. He's aggressively buying for the first time in a decade.''

Sunday Oil Investor's Business

From IBD,
"One of the glories of a capitalist system is that price signals are allowed to work. When the price for a good rises, that means it's in scarce supply. When the price falls, it's relatively abundant. This signals to users and producers they must change their behavior."

For consumers, higher prices mean finding alternate ways to do with less. For producers, they mean finding ways to produce more. The confluence of these two forces usually results in lower prices to meet equilibrium.

"This is what's happening now with oil." As for oil companies, they're drilling more, "world oil output has jumped by 11%, or 8.5 million barrels a day, since 2002, to 83 million barrels a day."

"Fueled by the high prices, new sources of oil are being discovered. They include the 33-billion-barrel bonanza recently found off Brazil's coast and other huge finds in the Caribbean and Asia.

The U.S. itself has 656 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 112 billion barrels of oil on federal lands alone — there for the taking if only Congress would allow it.

As the American Petroleum Institute recently noted, "an estimated 4,577 (U.S.) oil wells were completed in the first quarter of 2008, up 12%" from last year and the highest rate since 1986. U.S. oil companies are going back to tapped-out wells and pumping oil that wasn't economically recoverable at $25 a barrel but is at $100."

-Monday's Edition of Investor's Business Daily, Editorials and Opinions.

MPM

Ideas to think about

Wall Street annually says, Sell in May and Go Away? Research published by Yale Hirsch in the "Trader's Almanac" shows that the market year is broken into two different six-month seasonality periods. From May 1 through October 31 is seasonally unfavorable (Spring to Fall).
However, November 1 through April 30 is seasonally favorable, and the market most often finishes the period higher. (Fall to Spring). Regardless of how the market performs on average, every year is different, and every day is a different day. Does it pay not to become to complacement as of late? Will the selling button be hit, when will the market's next unfavorable season begin?
Looking at a few ETF's, Consumer Discretionary (XLY), Finance (XLF) and Technology (XLK). XLY broke above resistance from its February highs. XLF broke above resistance from the March-April highs. XLK broke above resistance from a five day consolidation. While, these resistance breaks show strength, we should also keep in mind that all three are up substantially since mid April and getting short-term overbought.
QQQQ, SPY and IWM "shook off the post-Fed" decline and rallied to new reaction highs on Friday. Another higher high keeps the short-term uptrend alive! Shall we raise their resistances? For the Bulls, The U.S. Dollar Index surged above 73 last week.

MPM

Weekend Edition of Oil Investor's Business

"if you're really curious about something, you probably can figure out a good way to test it; try to attain accurate beliefs first and then let your emotions flow from that"

Since March 2003, Shell has risen 71% and BP 63.5%, Analysts estimate that underlying operating costs and capital expenditure across the oil industry are increasing 10 to 20 per cent a year. "BP and Shell trade on prospective price/earnings multiples of just over nine and BP’s prospective dividend yield is 4.5 per cent. Also upgrades could be in the pipeline if analysts start to base forecasts on $100 oil."
-Over the same period the price of US light sweet crude has risen from $30 a barrel to a all time high of $119.93 last month.
Do many see an Increase in Camel Demand? Increase in camel prices? Increase in camel feed and ultimately, what will the camel run on? Long term investments in the camel?
Farmers in the Indian state of Rajasthan are rediscovering the humble camel. Market prices for these “ships of the desert”, which crashed with the growing affordability of motorised transport, are rising again as oil prices soar. “It’s excellent for the camel population if the price of oil continues to go up because demand for camels will also go up,” says Ilse Köhler-Rollefson of the League for Pastoral Peoples and Endogenous Livestock Development. “Two years ago, a camel cost little more than a goat, which is nothing. The price has since trebled. A sturdy male with a life expectancy of 60-80 years now fetches up to Rs40,000 ($973), compared to Rs5,000-Rs10,000 three years ago, according to Hanuwant Singh of the Lokhit Pashu-Palak Sansthan, a non-profit welfare organisation for livestock keepers. Entry-level tractors cost around $4,000.
"Animal-lovers hope that the surge in oil prices will enhance the status of camel-breeders, who resent the lack of respect society has accorded their traditional knowledge, and give the Raika a strong incentive to stop selling female camels for slaughter." The Financial Times

What is your take, has the world has exhausted about half of all crude supplies?

MPM
-Learn something new everyday.

Graham Corporation (GHM)

This morning, Graham Corp (Batavia, NY) announced fourth quarter year-over-year orders increased 32%; $35 millon. Total for year 2008 orders were $107 million. From Investor's Business Daily and James R. Lines, Graham's President and Chief Executive Officer, commented, "We had exceptionally strong bookings in the fourth quarter. There was excellent diversity in geography and markets for the large projects booked in the fourth quarter. Significant orders were received from Saudi Arabia, China, Canada and the United States and are for projects ranging from oil refineries, oil sands and petrochemical plants to alternative fuels operations and power generation facilities. We continue to be optimistic about the outlook for the markets and industries that we serve and the long-term strength of our bookings pipeline."Fiscal 2008 revenue is expected to be in the $85 to $86 million range, slightly higher than the upper end of the previously announced $80 to $85 million range. Gross margin is anticipated to be in the high-30% range for fiscal 2008.

From the Press Release; About Graham
With world-renowned engineering expertise in vacuum and heat transfer technology, Graham Corporation is a designer, manufacturer and global supplier of ejectors, pumps, condensers, vacuum systems and heat exchangers. For over 70 years, Graham has built a reputation for top quality, reliable products and high-standards of customer service. The principal markets for Graham's equipment, sold either as components or complete system solutions, are the petrochemical, oil refining and electric power generation industries, including cogeneration and geothermal plants. Graham equipment can also be found in diverse applications, such as metal refining, pulp and paper processing, ship-building, water heating, refrigeration, desalination, food processing, pharmaceuticals, heating, ventilating and air conditioning.
Graham's reach spans the globe. Its equipment is installed in facilities from North and South America to Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. More information regarding Graham can be found at its website: www.,graham-mfg.com

For Friday, Oil settled up $3.80 to $116.32/barrel.

Jobless rates dropped to 5.0%, down 0.1 from 5.1%, (March's 2 1/2 year high).

MPM

Afternoon Buzz

From Marketwatch
"On the New York Mercantile Exchange, crude-oil futures fell $2.13 to $111.33 a barrel.

Advancing sectors on the S&P included financials, up 3.3%, and consumer discretionary, which climbed 3.2%. Declining sectors on the S&P had energy falling 2.6% and materials down 0.6%."
As I depart from school at 2:30 pm on this May 1st for a few days vacation, the Dow Transports are in the green by 178 points, Dow Jones is positive by 186, S&P is green by 21 points (key is it broke through 1405), and the Nasdaq Composite(tech heavy index) is up 60 points. The yield (3.763) on the 10 years Note is green today, following money into "thee stocks". Good day for the Equity Bulls, Good day for the Bears in the Energy market and good day for all to be alive. I need to go to the gas station right now and I by no means am looking forward to that.

If your taking a break from the markets today, here is a good story from the NY Times.

MPM

Gear Maker Graham Corp (GHM)

check it out, Investor's Business Daily likes it.

It's May already? What happens to crude? What will become of the green back?
When will the market break through the blustering resistance of S&P 1405?
MPM