"My name is not Gordon"

For those of us that lived and laughed through the yuppy 80´s there was a glimpse of US desperation today.

We can all remember the classic film Wall Street, where Michael Douglas "Lunch is for wimps", "It´s all about bucks, the rest is conversation" showed us what capitalism was all about "I bought that building for a million dollars, at that time it was all the money in the world, now it´s just a day´s pay".

As he was campaigning against nuclear testing and trying to focus on this important issue, he was asked by some reporters about the condemnation by certain world leaders of the greed ethic. "Are you saying Gordon that greed is not good?" to which he replied, "I'm not saying that, and my name is not Gordon, it was a character I played 20 years ago"

For those of you who remember, greed was not good for Gordon Gecko, the righteous won over, he ended up in jail......with only the pleasure of giving Charlie Sheen a tap on the chin as compensation.

A trip to the butchers

After all this upheavel and volatility in the stockmarket I finally succumbed and thought that there must be some bargains out there. Yesterday I dipped my toes into the market after some sharp declines, bought those cheap retail shares which against all odds managed to drop further.

So as a reasonably mature investor I called up the broker and enquired after a little more, that´s when it hit me. I was going to pump-up on Lojas Americanas or maybe Renner and F. the broker said "You like GVT, it´s just reduced 10% today". "Wow", said I, give me a bit of that, so there I was buying a few kilos of GVT and, why not, a few kilos of LAME4 too as it´s on offer today.

The realisation that buying shares today was a bit like a trip to the butchers, wanted some meat, bought what was on offer to make the most of the special discount and......like meat, have to keep it in the freezer until it´s time to use/sell.

Shouldn´t be too long now, everyone is saying that the Brazil market is a best buy, except for Morgan Stanley....and what do they know after recent performances?!?!

Better off asking your butcher for financial advice.....incidentally GVT is back up a few percent already!!

International talk like a pirate day

Today is the day you were waiting for...September 19th. The day when everybody can don a blackbeard (or not) and talk like a pirate. If you´d like to check the official day´s website. http://www.talklikeapirate.com/piratehome.html

Obviously they are celebrating this in style in Los Angeles, if you happen to be there and want somewhere to grab a Jolly Roger and walk the plank there are a number of restaurants with special pirate celebrations. http://theguide.latimes.com/profiles/15/lists/171438

My favourite pirate is the one in the middle!?!

122 years of Hovis

This is the new Hovis bread commercial showing 122 years producing brown bread through time. Brings a tear to the eye and shows a nice bit of English History including 2 world wars, 1 world cup, the swinging sixties and the millenium celebrations.

AIG and ManU

So AIG will keep supporting Manchester United, the worries are over...... lets hope the players manage the same consistency and with $85B perhaps they could bring Robinho accross the city!

They need a bit of support up front still it seems.

Amusing to see the street interviews with "average" Americans being told that they are now sponsoring an English football team, most of them seemed fairly ok, just one young lady who said that if they had David Beckham back she would like it even more.....must be appreciative of the beautiful game.

Credit Crisis, an alternative view

Very disappointing to see all those poor souls leaving Lehman Brothers yesterday with their stuff clutched in a cardboard box, but it raised a very serious question which doesn´t seem to have been addressed as yet.

Where do these cardboard boxes all come from?

I used to think that the IT department in a company were the first to know when a person or persons were about to be "liberated to pursue other interests". They are always ready to shut down access passwords etc., but now I realise that I am wrong.

The time taken to close a password and user information is seconds (unless you happen to work in my office, but that´s another story) however the time needed to get quotes for boxes, choose suppliers and get the things delivered.....well that´s another story. So now I know..they must be the first ones in the picture.

On the cardboard box note, it seems that paper companies could be a reasonable bet for anyone who still has a few dollars/euros/yuan to gamble with...oh sorry, invest. With conservative estimates running at 500,000 redundancies by the end of the year there will be a mini boom for the plant/bottle/stapler holders.
I noticed that Klabin the biggest Brazillian paper for packaging company is investing over a billion dollars in their new expansion, from 1.6million tonnes per year to a 2million tonne capacity, creating 250 new direct jobs...seems like someone got their 5 year plan right at least.