Decateur's Weekly Business Roundup

Hello everyone. Yep, it's the Roundup again. Guess I should get out of bed...

Might as well get to it. The Dow is up 233 points today thanks to the kindly intervention by Big Ben Bernanke and his posse down at the Federal Reserve. My advice this week regarding stocks: BUY! Yes, buy, buy, buy! Take whatever money you can get your hands on and put it in stocks. Blue Chips, OTCs, whatever you can buy, do it! Drain your bank accounts, dig up your chest from your back yard, sell your homes and indenture your children if you have to. This market is hot and not getting on board now is like watching a party train pull out of the station with you sitting back in bitter resentment for not having bought a ticket.

Which brings me to the announcement by Hewlett-Packard that its profits are up 29% for the quarter. This is big news for many reasons. When printer sales are up count on buoyant consumer confidence, because when people are happy they write. They write poems and books and pamphlets announcing weddings, birthdays and barn-buildings. Look for a spike in paper stocks, book publishing equities and corporate stock certificate printing interests.

Regarding grimmer news, this week New York Police Commissioner, Raymond Kelly, declared that "the internet is the new Afghanistan." This came as a shock to me being I'm a regular user of the internet and frequent poster on the more relevant blogs. If this is true, and that the Taliban are out there watching my every move ...just waiting to run a virtual suicide truck bomb into this site, I wonder if the small remittance I receive from the FSRI is worth the risk? Karzai, if you can hear me, you have my vote if you keep my web-activity IED-free.

Lastly, according to the Wall Street Journal, It's been said that Whole Foods has been approved to purchase competitor Wild Oats Market Inc. This will help the organic retailer to improve its market niche and to strengthen its brand against up-and-coming "organic" competition such as Kroger Foods. The downside is that the CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey, has been caught promoting his company by using an internet alias on various stock watcher forums. Apparently, through use an anagram of his wife's name Deborah, he's been posting company-touting blurbs to boost Whole Food reputation and consumer attention to its brand. This is totally unacceptable. To use the internet (and especially the comment section in blogs) as a self-marketing tool is beyond moral consideration. And, as for that, to publish "anonymous" comments that pretend to be random public comments is an even more despicable act.

See ya next week.

Decateur Thoms