Friday Lunchtime Market Update from Northern California

Sitting in my mobile office (anyplace with nice seating and wifi – today it’s Starbucks north of San Francisco) I have been doing some work and keeping an occasional eye on the market.

So far today, the market is blah, with that lukewarm tea flavor (the kind you spit out). There are individual cases of strength (Rock Ten (RKT) – which I have kept my eye on since I noticed they were a big political contributor to Newt – amateur theory that politically involved companies will do well) but overall nothing too exciting.

The dividend plays aren’t moving up everyday anymore – perhaps Verizon (VZ) and friends are out of gas. Without revenue growth over 10%, that will typically happen and I think the dividend players have been squeezed pretty good. Microsoft (MSFT), the one big cap tech that didn’t join the fun in 2011, has been showing strength – maybe investors will find a whole new slew of low cash flow/price companies with decent growth and dividends to replace last year’s crop. Kind of like an expanded “dogs of the Dow” search.

Summary

So far, it appears that the first trading day of the year was too exuberant as the markets have gone back to their general malaise, waiting for either a Euro blow up or some other large news item to move it.

With that the case, other than individual stocks moving due to chart patterns and company-specific news, I don’t see much moving without some event trigger, and the jobs report this AM apparently wasn’t it…

I’ll add more if necessary after the market closes.

At the time of this writing, I or my clients own the following investments mentioned in this column: none

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