-- Posted Thursday, 1 July 2010 | Digg This Article
| | Source: GoldSeek.com
It was the Battle of the Fleas yesterday in the final hour, with the Industrial Average’s maidenly virtue at stake. Earlier in the day, the broad averages had traced out the EKG of a motorcycle victim lying brain-dead on a gurney. Then, when the NYSE’s clock struck three, stocks broke lower, impelled perhaps by an anxiety attack over payroll data due out Friday. Selling commenced in earnest, with an initial pitch that threatened to put the Indoos into a 250-point kamikaze dive. Would the blue chip index be sullied and degraded by a symbolically evocative loss of 100 points or more? Or instead, would Wall Street’s one true White Knight – i.e., panicky bears covering short positions — ride to the rescue, as nearly always occurs?
Lo, with just ten minutes to go, the selling decelerated and reversed with the DJIA off 115 points. More nail-biting action. Two minutes left, and the Dow is now down 92 points, the matter still unsettled. Bulls and bears traded a flurry of puny blows, all of them aimed below the belt. A jab glanced off a buttock…a thumb sought purchase in a groin…a knee found its target in a thigh. Alas, bulls needn’t have worried. The Dow finished down 96.28 points on the day, achieving the same obscurity in the record book as a long fly ball blown back onto the warning track by a stiff gust of wind.
***
Tesla Shares Fly
A sibling called yesterday wanting our blessing for the purchase of Tesla (NASDAQ Symbol: TSLA) shares, the hottest IPO to come along in quite a while. The last time he called about a stock, it was just before eBay’s now-legendary IPO. An inveterate garage-sale junkie, he pleaded his case at the time, explaining that eBay was an idea that would succeed spectacularly. We half-agreed but advised him not to mix it up with all of the crazies who would be diving in and out of the stock in its first few weeks. But EBAY took off and never looked back, stranding our sibling’s cautious bid.
So, is Tesla a buy from the get-go? Maybe. Although we are never quite comfortable forecasting a stock that has no price history, Tesla’s “story” is pretty enticing: a hot-looking design, fast as hell and easy on air quality. It’s a bit pricey at just over $100,000, but the company will soon be introducing a sedan for $40k+ that will put it within the range of a much larger population of buyers. Our sibling works at an airport, and what got him excited about Tesla in the first place was the sight, each and every day, of two or three of the sports cars being loaded onto a freight plane bound for Asia.
Tesla shares were priced at 17 for Tuesday’s IPO, but they opened at $19 and rose quickly from there. Yesterday, on Day Two, they shot up to $30.42 before receding to $23.30 nearly as quickly. Not for the faint-of-heart, for sure. But as a gambler’s risk, we would surmise that there are more-reckless ways to deply one’s capital than buying Tesla stock around $20.
-- Posted Thursday, 1 July 2010 | Digg This Article | Source: GoldSeek.com
