Update - Book Profits

The market has a different feeling today. The scent of hungry clowns, is in the air. The news seems to be all in the market now. You know, I'm feeling a little piggish, after this monster two month run, so I'm locking in most of my gains. Nobody ever got hurt taking a profit. I want to keep some of my powder dry. No damn way I want to be short here, but financials and consumer cyclical feels a little toppy.

The market is still going to go higher in the longer term, but in the short term, I will use any big pull-backs to get back into the market at better prices. Natural Gas is still rocking higher... HNU is up almost 12% today.

Stock Market Update: I'm out of everything except Natural Gas and Swine Flu.

Folks, this is Johnny Newsmaker signing off. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming… "Reload!" only on Ranting-TV…

From the Morning Desk - Saab Egg Roll!

There is a rumor that China's Geely is making a bid for Saab. I think that it's the key piece of the puzzle that China needs in order to bolster their position as a bona-fide car maker.

There is no doubt that China is a world powerhouse when it comes to manufacturing. But they have not been able to "brand" their products. Geely, for example, doesn't mean shit around the world. Look at the picture on the left, the top picture is a Mercedes and the bottom is a Geely "rip-off". That's the Chinese car industry in a nutshell. Cheap, fake, chinese shit. No self-respecting first-worlder is going to purchase THAT!

Same goes for their clothing. They have no style and no brand. The quality varies and typically are just rip-offs of well-known designers.

But they now understand what they need to do. They need a brand. And the only way they are going to get one is by buying one. If they owned the Saab brand for example, they would not have to go through the trouble of trying to create one themselves (and the Chinese are hopeless when it comes to that). The one thing that they are good at doing, is ripping off other peoples ideas, so this would be a perfectly legal way to do so. Saab is a well-known trusted brand, and as long as it's a reasonably-high quality product it will sell around the world.

You see, intellectual property and branding is the only thing that the US does really well. But soon, China will start to take that too.

Folks, this is Johnny Newsmaker signing off. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming… "History of Saab: European, American, or Chinese?" only on Ranting-TV…