a slow start

L: 66% S:59% G: 125% N: 8% ~ $D 0% $G 0% $V 0% $P 0%

The Raven has a small trading long this morning, however remains very cautious given the amount of company numbers reporting this week. Interesting to see Ms. Whitney aka BankSlayer has stuck a BUY rating on GS, he's not seen the note, but he's sure that GS numbers will be pretty good, he's however looked at the stock and can't get comfortable with sticking a value on it.

The Economist this week seems to be on a similar track to the Raven with regard to public sector pensions, it tosses a 30% of salary figure into the ring. They also mention the rise in quangos and the real functionality they bring to the party, ie. shouldering responsibility for decisions rather than politicians. They also bring up the SDR issue and China's attempts to encourage Yuan usuage for trade; again just nonsensical noise.

The Raven has been looking at EMC again over the weekend. Its in an interesting sector and it really does have the potential for some massive growth, however he's no tech trader and its not entirely clear how much "cloud computing" solutions could come to be seen as competition for EMC type products in the long term, althought this may just indicate his fundamental lack of understanding of the whole sector.

He's increased his shorts in the UK pubs, shorting some more PUB and Enterprise, their assets still look overvalued, they still have tough operating environments and the balance sheet doesn't look too sexy in either case.

XTA/AAL looks interesting from all the chatter of the weekend. The Raven fails to see what a new chairman really brings to the table for AAL, he's heard rumours today of XTA bumping in a cash term to the deal as a sweetner, however he's not entirely sure how much sense that would really make. On the other hand AAL does look absolutely cheap even on a risk adjusted basis, he's less convinced and still working on XTA.

Northgate is another short - but more on that later...