NEW YORK (CNN/Money) -
Awesome! People, get on board! Ride the love train! Love train! Hey, it's great to be back here at Street Life! So, let's get down to business, shall we? (My pleasure!)
Stocks rocketed to new highs on Monday, as traders hoped and prayed that the worst of the corporate accounting scandals are behind us. Gains were huge and widespread, breadth was very positive, and the dollar was strong. Hey, why is it there are so many phrases for stock market debacles? Crash. Wipeout. Meltdown. Rout (66?) And so few phrases for an incredible up day, like this? How about: Explosion! Love-in! (Woodstock?) Moon launch!
REALLY excellent that we closed out near the highs for the day! More buying tomorrow? The Dow climbed 447.49 to 8,711.88 up 5.4 percent, while the NAZ was up 73.13 to 1,335.25, up 5.7 percent. How sweet it is, baby! Hey, watch me, Fat Bastard (My favorite character of the bunch. He's even more of a nightmare than "Trainspotting") I mean Andy Serwer on CNN and Headline News. Read "Loose Change" to find out the latest on Tom Waits! Here's wazzup:
DOGYARD One for the record books! Interesting that this market advance came out on the day the Wall Street Journal does a story about Yale professor Robert Schiller where he espouses the benefits of market timing. Um, hey professor! Did you pile in on Wednesday of last week and buy? Please. No one EVER calls these things and if they do, they call ONE. (See Granville, Joe. Or Glassman, Jim))
I like Schiller as much as anyone, his book "Irrational Exuberance" was dead on, but lately he's been held out as someone who's always right. Sorry Charlie, (or should I say Boola, Boola, Bobby) it ain't going to happen. Although I do agree with Schiller and Barton Biggs (he was screaming "buy stocks" last week!) on an important point. To wit: This is a secular bear market that won't be over anytime soon. It could/will take years. Rallies -- or cyclical bull markets(!) -- can take place within these secular bears, Barton points to 1974-5 in his latest weekly, and you can make good money, but ultimately, the market may go nowhere for years!
So why did we go up today? (The Dow climbed over 15 percent -- or over 1,100 points -- from its July 24 intra-day low.) Well, the dollar was strong, but really it is just psychology at work. A stocks-go-up-and-you-don't-want-to-miss-it kinda thing. This even with Qwest announcing more bad numbers, even with Wal-Mart's numbers slightly sub-par, and even with Palm crashing on news it's looking to do a reverse stock split...
Listened to a lot of Karen Carpenter this weekend, singing the immortal Paul Williams ("Rainy Days and Mondays" -- how inappropriate!)
(THESE ARE) A FEW OF MY FAVORITE STOCKS: NCR, Motorola, J.P. Morgan, AIG, Fleet, H-P, Sprint PCS, Cisco, Atmel, Brocade, Nextel -- all of these guys were up more than 10 percent today. Some much more! Hope "Tuesday's just as bad!"
"HAIR SPRAY" Went to see the new Broadway show over the weekend. It just rocked! LUV John Waters and I gotta tell ya (as Tracy Turnblad would say!), this was better than the movie. Harvey Fierstein rules! Loved the PINK design. Kind of reminds of the hottest new store in Manhattan, "Dylan's Candy Bar." This is the new EXTREME candy store near Bloomingdale's that has more candy than you can imagine. (Dylan is Ralph Lauren's daughter!) Got to check it out.
So with the market crazy and the world held hostage by some guy named Al Kada, the new gestalt of course is escapism. Ultra-pink, confection, nostalgia. Hear, hear, I say! (Pass that bottle to me!) Watch, by the way, the whole idea is for Dylan's go national! "Good Morning, Baltimore!"
Loose change
SAW THAT DUANE READE, New York's largest drug store chain, took a beating the other day. I go to these stores all the time. SUCH a pain in the petunia. Apparently the company's numbers are not so great. One reason why: Major shrinkage! What's that? Theft. Often of the employee variety. Which doesn't surprise. You know they aren't paying the people who work there squat!
PLAYED TOM WAITS FOR THE KIDS while I washed the dishes. Kids looked at me as to say that the only person crazier than this mangy-sounding lunatic is your Dad for paying money to listen to him. And our inheritance at that. As Tom says: "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy."
ANNOUNCEMENT: "JUSTIN LEONARD will be interviewed tonight on CNN's "Connie Chung Tonight" around 8 PM Eastern time to discuss his story in Fortune's current issue, 'The Adelphia Story.'" (...and Devin Leonard will discuss his disappointing finish at last weekend's British Open, right?)...
HEY, BOB FARRELL, pick up your suit at CNN! It's been sitting there for weeks! Zegna, too...
QUARTERBACKS OF THE FUTURE who never went anywhere: Ryan Leaf, Tod (don't call me Bonin) Marinovich, and Heath Schuler...Hokey pokey, I say!
Andrew Serwer is editor-at-large of Fortune magazine.
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