Pfizer (PFE) bottomed out at $20 early this week. It does not have the same lawsuit exposure as Merck (MRK) and it just won a patent case vs. Indian drug manufacturer Ranbaxy. After hours this evening it is over $25. Go back and look at how many times PFE has rallied up 25% in one week. I bet you can count it on one hand in your lifetime. Buy, Buy, Buy!!

The best way to make use of any financial publication--be it Barrons, WSJ, IBD, The Financial Times, is to save any interesting article which focuses on a company you want to invest in for ONE MONTH. If you plunge in the day of the article, you will almost always pay a schmuck tax for all the hype. If the story is still valid one month from now, you will see it in the charts. If not, Mr. Market will have exposed it for the fraud that it is.!

Technically, the S&P Retail Index (RLX) is forming a head and shoulders top amidst the Holiday Shopping Season. This is not good. Mr. Market is signalling perhaps, that the consumer is tapped out. That the home refinancing boom is over. That discretionary spending is dead. And Mr. Market does not discriminate among economic class lines. Tiffany (TIF) took a dive last week, as did Federated (FD) as did Radio Shack as did Target (TGT)

We should be Thankful that our September 1st entry was right on! Oil prices are down 17% per barrel. Unleaded gasoline in the northeast is around $2.25/gal, lower than pre-Katrina levels. The holiday rush is robust, the economy is alive and well. I have to say, "I told you so"

Last weeks rally was a feeble attempt at end of quarter mutual fund mark ups. The action was much weaker than expected. This is not how a bull market should behave. October is the cruelest month. Because we were wrong about the strong rally last week, it logically follows that October will be an especially cruel month on the downside. So, anyone with big profits should take a lot off the table before I say, I told you so.

On Monday morning the stock market will correctly assess what the media has failed to do. After all, the media must over hype everything to keep people watching. But in reality Rita was not Katrina, and the market will have a rally next week that will be "one for the ages" The confluence of events--end of the quarter mark-up by the funds and falling oil prices will be the rocket fuel the market needs. Watch. Insurance, tech, even retail and the homebuilders will rally. Oil will fall like a lead balloon.

Anyone with half a brain should sell their oil stocks. Remember these prices OXY $83, XOM $61, COP $69. And see what they are trading at a year from now. People have quadrupled their money on this run. Now the greed comes in because of the natural disaster. Put mother nature is telling you to sell not buy.

A tragic occurance in New Orleans, and Mississippi, skyrocketing oil prices. What will happen to the economy? My guess is that by this time next year the gas prices will be a lot lower less than $2.50/gallon. The alternative if I am wrong, is ugly. Everyone will stay in and watch movies. The economy will get clobbered. Interest rates will plummet, and Bush will lose the Republican majority in the House and Senate.

This was Friday's Headline Aug 5, 2005--Touted as the Chinese Google, the search-engine operator opened at more than double the $27 IPO price, then surged for a 354% run to 122.54. Baidu.com was helped by talk that Google, (GOOG) which owns 2.6%, wants to buy it. The 1st-day gain ranks the 18th highest in history and No. 1 for a foreign firm's U.S. IPO. Some other Chinese net firms had solid gains.......Back in 2003 I wrote the following--The next big mania in stocks—China. In the next few years, hundreds if not thousands of new IPO’s will come to the market as Chinese ADR’s. At first, the supply of available companies will be small, causing the stocks to shoot straight up. Mutual funds that invest in China will become the hot funds. Chinese stocks will have internet like valuations as analysts try to justify the run-up using “new era” analysis.Then sometime in late 2006 Time Magazine will declare some Chinese entrepreneur as its Person of the Year. Months later the bubble will burst when the greedy discover that the “emperor has no clothes”; that the valuations were based upon fuzzy Chinese accounting; that there really weren’t any earnings. Sound familiar? The more things change, the more they stay the same.... It looks like we have at least another six months of the Chinese stock mania before it all starts tumbling.

Cover the remaining PLT today, it has rallied to $37, making the panic low at $31 likely to be the low for some time. So the last part of the trade produces 7 plus points profit while the first part closer to 12. Not bad.

Plantronics (NYSE:PLT) has imploded today, down almost 14%. Good things happen to those who wait. Cover half of the position today at about a $12 profit. High downside volume days with news are the best days to cover. You feel just like Eddie Murphy and Dan Akroyd at the end of the movie "Trading Places" when they were able to pick and choose which decimated commodities traders to buy from.

As a follow up to the Plantronics short at $44. PLT broke today below its 200 day Moving Average to close at $38.42. Hold even with a $5.50 plus profit, I feel the best is yet to come to the downside with this one.