A few things, guys

After missing the end of last week, I’m up to my ears here but I figured I’d throw out a few items.

*  We’re pretty underweight equities here in core accounts after getting whipsawed into and out of the false October breakout.  I’m watching this up 200 down 200 bullsh*t and it just makes me feel like even a 5% rally between now and year-end is not worth betting on – sure it could happen, but then it could all be undone overnight on a single headline.  It’s truly a sucky year-end environment and I’m glad to be light these days, even if I’m not exactly lighting up the scoreboard.

*  If we could hermetically seal ourselves off from the Euro news and noise, we’d be at S&P 1330-1350. But we can’t so we’re not.

*  “IPO Week” hype notwithstanding, I’d be shocked if they actually price and sell all of the IPOs they think they can.  According to MarketWatch, this is set to be the biggest week of IPO issuance since November 2007 with eleven deals set to go.  I’d take the under on that.  The namebrand ones shouldn’t have a problem, think Michael Kors and Zynga.  We’ll watch them as a risk appetite gauge.

*  The financial media seems to be highly taken with the fact that McDonalds is breaking new all-time highs and has had yet another huge year versus the flat broader market.  $MCD is up 120% in the last five years while the S&P 500 is down 20% over the same time frame.  The business of poisoning people around the globe with dirt cheap pseudo-food supplied by the factory-farming cartel has never been better.  Really exciting for mankind.

Ok, that’s all for now.  Back to the salt mines.  Be careful out there.