Barron's Buzz: December 28th, 2008

H-P Cover Story: You're Getting Sleepy Now...

Quick thoughts on this week’s Barron’s…

Cover story on Mark Hurd and the profitability of Hewlett Packard…Yawn.  As they say on the Dealbreaker message boards, “too printery, didn’t read”.

House of Cards story about credit card companies and their exposure to…to…zzzzzzz, oops, fell asleep again!  Not much new in Sandra Ward’s article, but worth a read if you have a chronic condition that disables your ability to connect the dots for yourself.

Abelson and Racanelli both agree that 2008 sucked, but Santoli puts forth an interesting hypothesis that there are so many factors now favoring this market rallying (historic yield ratios, seasonality etc.), that it would be really scary if it couldn’t.  This was my fave article of the week: Where Dragons Lurk

Activist 13D Spotlight column (subscription required) was devoted to Nelson Peltz this week and his efforts with Dr. Pepper Snapple Group (also covered last week by Barron’s).  I’ll vote him a seat if he puts Wendy the Snapple Lady on his slate of directors.  She’s sold more sugar water than anyone they’ve got now…

Last but not least, don’t forget to take Andrew Bary’s 2009 prediction quiz and submit your answers for a possible prize next January.  Winner gets a year sub and either lunch with Bary or $100 bucks…if Abelson is right, that hundred bucks will probably come in handy a year from now.

Have a nice (half) week in the markets…