Weekend Wrap-Up

I’ll be out tomorrow and the US markets will be closed . Tuesday will be a very telling day as will all of next week with earnings season kicking off in earnest and a new President being sworn in.  I hate to put pressure on it but Obama’s speech is make or break and he better do better than the last couple of bland statements as we are seeing some scary poll numbers out there with 62% of the people polled saying the National Economy is "very bad" and 30% saying it’s "fairly bad" leaving Larry Kudlow and Company to account for the other 8% . 54% of the people thought the economy was getting worse but 75% of the people thought Obama will make the economy better and 75% think Obama will create a "significant" amount of jobs in the next 4 years.  This is interesting as 93% of the same people thought that the current recession will last a year or more…  Expectations are not too high as only 9% of the people think that real progress will be made in year one but 72% approve of the cabinet selections to date.  What do all these numbers mean?  They mean America is willing to, is longing to, give Obama a chance - that the divided electorate is getting united behind the concept of change.  This will be the time to take bold initiatives and I sincerely hope Obama does not squander this unique opportunity to take this country in a bold, new direction. I used the above cartoon on Monday morning , when we discussed how difficult it will be to convince people a Budget with a $2Tn deficit was just what this country needs but Wall Street took care of that for us by scaring Congress into releasing the remainder of the TARP money as our Financial sector went plunging back to the Thanksgiving lows , led down by the same people that we bailed out last time (well, the ones that are left anyway).  Notice GS is a little better than last time but BAC is much worse and it really can’t get much worse for C but they sure are trying to disprove that theory!  Also on Monday I reminded members that our buy target on oil was $35 and we hit it again this week and got a couple of very nice entries on USO and PGH, both of whom had wild rides .  I…