Smell Bad Make Money (originally appeared in www.szelhamos.com March 26, 2007)

Pretty amazing. Early in the going this morning, the market was down about 12 points. I was closely watching UnitedHealth Care and Dell, and was ready to trade out of both, apparently none the worse for my UNH greediness on Friday, since UNH was now above where I had initially intended to sell.

At the time, the market was on an uptick, so I took a little breather. Straying away is not good. I don't know how day traders do it. Actually, I do know. They don't do it very well and it is incredibly stressful. Or so I think. Maybe they wear those astronaut diapers.

And so, about 20 minutes later I returned, only to find an additional 95 point drop. What happened? Where did this stink come from? I certainly smelled better thanks to a wonderful Proctor and Gamble product that is not allowed in carry-on bags, as per TSA directives. Personally, I think that if an individual fits the terrorist profile, if they are found in possession of any anti-deoderant, gel or otherwise, the working hypothesis must be that it is to be used for evil purposes and not for odor control.

Now the blame was being put on bad housing numbers. How is anyone surprised? That's all that's been in the news lately. High home inventories, sub-prime debacle, falling home prices. Once again, where is the news here? Of course, just a couple of days ago all of the homebuilders were up big. Does any of this make sense?

Not to me.

What does make sense is that, at best, this is a zero sum game. Never mind up and down volume statistics, never mind the direction of the indices at any moment in time. Someone either wins or loses. And even winners may be losers. All it takes is defining your terms. A winner can feel like a loser if he sells too early and could have gotten a higher price. That is also called "greed". I think it's one of those deadly sins.

But, I suppose that losers can consider themselves winners if they got out of a stock just in time, before it really tipped down. I don't think "whew" is a deadly sin.

So the housing market is in the dumper. How exactly does that cause a $9 turnaround in Google? Google is constructing an empire, but not made of framing timber and drywall. There must be a connection somewhere, although I think I can find a connection to Kevin Bacon much faster than to homebuilding.

As far as Google goes, it turns out that some analyst has questioned their first quarter

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