Nautical references...

...comparing the market to the seas are standard issue fare amongst financial publications.

And so, with auspicious timing, the REcapitulator recently spent time in the Florida Keys as well as Miami. He engaged in a variety of activities that, if placed into the Cartesian coordinate system, would definitely fall to the "business AND pleasure" upper right quadrant. Key West in particular is an interesting destination.

Anecdotally, I saw a very large amount of vacationers (it was Memorial Day weekend here in the States) and much frivolity - not one would expect in a full blown "recession".

Indeed:

http://www.google.com/trends?q=recession+

But enough blathering about the superior climate and local tempermant of the beatiful Keys compared to my native Chicago and oblique references to "recession" as a google news volume term...much has happened since my departure.

Commodities (oil especially) are still in full-blown, short squeezing, bubble mode. Governmental cries of "foul play" by vicious "speculators" now echo across the globe in 100 different languages. The Euro has staged an impressive comeback (all eyes on Ireland at the moment) and financial asset markets are "choppy", and it will be "difficult sailing ahead", etc., etc. Even Soros has taken up the charge:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/05/26/cnsoros126.xml


I can only repeat "an investor gets paid for taking risk" so many times. How one can quantify this remains more art than science, but suffice to say, this is a very good environment to be long on U.S. stocks...at least until mid-summer. Short term dollar weakness is a concern, but again, all eyes on Ireland...