quick thoughts

its getting late but its been too long since the last post -- figured its time to get something posted.

GOOG -- that will teach everyone to pay attention to those comscope or whatever they call themselves numbers. I will need to do some more work to determine a price where I might trim some -- whether it is $600 or $700, I am figuring there should be a price where I choose to trim.

CME -- ouch. they miss by a little bit but everyone freaks out and sells it down 10%? don't get it yet but I'm sure after some reading it will become clear. rate per contract fell and that is a key issue (regardless of whether it should be or not).

LH -- DGX had good results so I suspect LH might finally be ready to get moving.

ILMN -- never did the trade prior to the report tonight. realized that about 23% of the stock is sold short -- no way it was going down under those conditions but quite likely it was going up. most of that short position is probably hedge funds or similar investor types who will buy tomorrow regardless of the news -- its a discipline thing. they shorted because they believed ILMN would miss the quarter -- they didn't so now everyone has to cover and that's several days worth of volume. If the short position doesn't meaningfully drop, that's more worrisome because it means the short sellers are concerned about something else that may not be in the stock yet.

anyway, they had strong results -- in line with what Cowen said yesterday that they would report. stock was up $3-5 in after hours trading.

MCF -- the company has put itself up for sale -- question is how much are they worth? I have seen estimates between $55 and $100 or more. The idea is they will sell the stock but the undeveloped portions -- the wildcat parts will remain with a new company called Contango Energy. The name Contango comes from the futures market condition where future prices are consistently higher -- a bit cocky huh? he has created a billion dollar company out of thin air so I'll cut him some slack.

Trouble for MCF is that Peak (CEO) is moving on to the golf course and the board room. That adds some risk because it means he won't be around to handle day to day issues any more. After listening to his latest conference presentation I realized the difference -- he doesn't want to be big but profitable. He doesn't want to be in production because that is a commodity. He only wants to create new reserves out of what is currently nothing. Most every other E&P company that I have read about says some stuff about their "manufacturing" reserves but most of the time is spent on growth in production -- the commodity parts of the business. Growth in production means they care more about being bigger and less about profitability -- key is to focus on value per share not how big the production number is.

I have been trying to find another MCF to replace this one and now I realize I might as well stick with MCF's successor firm.

CLB -- this could be the other main play on the nat gas -- did some reading of their annual report, which lays out their shale play in the US using the Super HERO stuff. interesting article too in the WSJ today about saudi arabia's attempts to get their latest huge field into production -- some of the stuff they talked about are the kind of services that CLB performs.

that's it for tonight -- sleepy.