Closed my PEIX puts today. I may have done that a tad bit early, since today its getting sold that they're doing a private placement. A private placement is basically an on the spot secondary offer, which means the company is selling some of its stock to raise some cash.

MUELLER WATER PRODUCTS INC (NYSE:MWA) went IPO today. I got a little action in that, it priced at the lower range of the pricing though.

Closed my position on BKC, this market is just crazy. I also added 10 June 35 PEIX Puts today. I don't buy this 'Ethanol' hype, but oil is a lil bit oversold. Oil has been on the rise since the Hurrican season is about to start, but that just might be an excuse to either short cover or add some hype to oil prices. Voyage (NYSE: VG) also continues to take a nose dive (I'm not sure what companies brought this public, but they obviously didn't do a very good job) and Mastercard (NYSE: MA) went public today. yay!

For those of you that did not know, Marshall's, the discount close store, sells flat screen (i.e. sharp) tv's. I personally wouldn't buy from Marshalls, but since they do you can take their price and go to a Best Buy or Circuit City to have them match. Marshall's only has this on holiday weekends.

Bought some BKU. "Have it your way!" Market is just not healthy. Inflation is probably the single most fear factor in the market. I still think things might get cheaper, which may be hard to believe.

Trading Ideas for the week of May 15th. Chipotle Mexican Grill (NYSE: CMG) is doing a secondary next week, so apparently someone wants to flip. The stock is up nicely just below 200% of its Initial Public Offering price. Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) and S.G.Cowen are the lead managers of this deal. The stock should have some short term upside especially if Burger King is due out next week.

Trading ideas for the week of May 15th. Another restaurant IPO (Initial Public Offering) coming out (pricing date is expected to be around 5/17/06 so that probably means it will be open for trading on 5/18/06.) The IPO is 'Burger King' (NYSE: BKC.) The lead managers are Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS), JP Morgan (NYSE: JPM), Citigroup (NYSE: C), and Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS). The pricing is suppose to be $15-17 and they're offering about 25 MM shares. Diageo is actually spinning Burger King off and I know Diageo from Captain Morgans Rum! Go Parrot Bay Mango (w/ Sprite)!!! Not sure if this is going to be a 'hot' IPO, only b/c they're basically starting off with a 3 B market cap. Whats interesting is all these restaurant IPO's coming out this year (i.e. Morton's, Ruth's Chris, Chipotle, etc.) to name a few. One has to wonder if there's a pullback in the market if the restaurant sector will do well. I'm inclined to think it will seeing how there's probably a ton of institutional holdings in all these restaurant stocks since they were brought public. We shall wait and see.

Ideas for the week of May 8th. My apologies for not posting any financial 411 as of late. I've been pretty inactive seeing how as most of you know I'm changing demographics. This upcoming week is the Fed making their annoucement on what they're going to do with rates. It seems like the market (i.e. upward movement and gains in the broader markets that we've seen) is pricing in a quarter point raise with the expectation no further hikes to come in our near future. Because this is widely anticipated, the markets might see some selling pressure; hence, the 'buy on rumor sell on news'. The gains we've seen are not purely on earnings provided by a lot of companies, because if any of you all have traded on earnings, you would have noticed that companies that have blown out numbers had got a pop (probably because of short coverings) and then quickly gave them back. So to me, this says headfake.

If you all are looking for ideas, I still think the theme is energy. It currently only makes up 6% of the Standard & Poor Index. I know most people love technology, but when we were all seeing the tech boom, i believe Technology made up as much as 42% of the Standard & Poor Index. Notice the Nasdaq is stuck at 2500, when it was 5000 back in the days? The Dow Jones Industrial & Standard & Poor Index have pretty much recovered whereas the Nasdaq has not. Avoid four letter words (i.e. your nasdaq symbols.) :)