Cody on RM: What's On My Mind

Administrator's Note: As a parting shot into the weekend, here is a post from Cody's Trader's Edge Blog on RealMoney this afternoon:


By Cody Willard
RealMoney.com Contributor
06/16/2006 3:29 PM

What's On My Mind

It's a beautiful afternoon here in NYC, and given that I remain mostly in cash, the action is dead out there today, and my parents are in town for the first time in years, I'm going share what's on my mind and then head out into the weekend.

Economic

Has the Fed's incessant jawboning of inflation this week already undermined its efforts at jawboning because it was so incessant as to become transparent?

Is Bernanke as classic a textbook economic thinker as it appears?

Does the Fed think about all of the change the unedited, unfiltered and freeflowing information in our society is having on their policies -- and how that is undermining its ability to control what the public reads?

And much, much, much more importantly, does it ever think about the effect that free-flowing information will have on the economy and society?

Are corporate spreads really indicating health? Or are they simply a trigger waiting to be hit by the rolling dislocations that have struck seemingly every other financial market?

Trading

Doesn't it make you nervous when you realize how ridiculous that last bullet point seems given how healthy and strong the corporate bond market has been?

So, from a trading perspective then, is the healthy corporate bond market really a healthy stock market signal? Or is it one giant complacency indicator?

Technology

How close is Apple to hitting critical mass in the legal digital video download business when we start reading articles that start off like this: "Three hours before a start against Florida, Colorado Rockies pitcher Jason Jennings sits in front of his locker, puts on his headphones and stares at his video iPod."

Isn't how much memory and processor power the new Vista system requires exactly what a believer in the coming Vista, dual-processor upgrade cycle wants?

I mean, seriously, what's with everybody talking as if they know that there aren't one, two, ten or a hundred new killer apps out there that Vista, dual processors, unlimited memory and fiber speeds will unleash?

Given the history of the ongoing technology and information revolutions and the amazing fortunes society and the economy creates, doesn't it make more sense to invest on the flipside of that "knowledge" and practically assume that there will be many new killers apps unleashed in the next year, two years, 10 years and beyond?

Am I the only one who gets butterflies of excitement and potential when he starts picturing that future?

At the time of publication, the firm in which Willard is a partner was net long MSFT and AAPL, although positions can change at any time and without notice.