I will be skiing in Colorado for the next week so my posts will be less active.  I’ll be watching every day and doing nightly research but I am looking forward to some time away.  Usually, hitting the slopes gives me a chance to clear my mind and reprioritize.  Signals will be updated as usual and other than less commentary, you won’t notice that I am goofing off during the trading day.

Cramer is heading to do one of his campus shows at my alma mater - Indiana University. While Cramer and the CNBC promos keep showcasing IU as the home of chair-throwing, it’s a lot more than that. Forget about this alumnus, but you might want to consider some others like Mark Cuban or John Chambers. Indiana’s Kelley School of Business is consistently ranked as one of the leading academic institutions in the US and since some of the audience for Cramer’s show will likely come from its excellent programs in music, education, journalism, etc., it’s appropriate to mention them as well. I am not offended by the focus on an ex-coach and his antics from 22 years ago, and I don’t pay much attention to Cramer anyway. Hopefully the show will go well and who knows - since Cramer is already a good chair-thrower, maybe he’ll learn something else while he is there.

Supposedly, on Sunday the Iranians initially gave GPS coordinates that said the UK sailors were clearly in Iraqi waters. That is until the UK representatives pointed out that the Iranians were just admitting they lied. Magically, the Iranians then issued a new set of coordinates which said the sailors were captured half a kilometer inside Iranian waters.

However, if you believe the Royal Navy, the GPS equipment, the Iraqi foreign minister, and the captain of the Indian-flagged merchant vessel they had inspected, the UK sailors were 1.7 nautical miles or roughly three kilometers inside Iraqi waters when they were abducted.

In reviewing these conflicting stories, I had a nagging thought and now I am putting this question out to you:

Which is worse - the UK sailors straying off course by half a kilometer or the UK Navy allowing Iranian ships to attack three kilometers into Iraqi waters?

$55 to $84 million - that’s an estimate of Iran’s increased revenues from abducting the UK sailors over the past seven days. I compared each day’s close to last Wednesday’s close (before the abduction) and multiplied the increase in oil prices by the barrels per day (bpd) of Iran’s oil production. The range comes from the difference between its OPEC quota of about 4 million bpd and the actual shipments of about 2.6 million bpd. It isn’t fair or correct to assume that all the price differential over the past week was due to Iran, but I used it for the sake of this post anyway. Additionally, I had to assume that they were selling their production at spot prices rather than previously contracted amounts and that is oversimplifying things as well.

I am sure that the Iranians will have some costs associated with this maneuver but I just wanted to point out how much of an incentive Iran has to play war games with oil as its primary weapon. The past seven days was the proverbial “shot across the bow” in my opinion. I doubt it has much to do with mid-sea boundary disputes or trespassing or even making extra oil profits for Iran. Instead, Prez Imanutjob is sending a message to the Wicked Western World that this is a sample of what we will get by pressuring them. About 40% of the world’s oil is shipped through the Strait of Hormuz and whether we like it or not, we are at Iran’s mercy there. It’s easy for anti-Americans or anti-war activists to claim that the US government loves to go to war for oil. True or not, that’s the perception. Iran is just pushing those buttons and if they go to war with oil, the same crowds will likely find a way to blame the US for it. That’s just the way it goes. Until we do a better job increasing domestic supply, reducing our demand or developing an alternative fuel, this situation will not improve.

Chairman Bernanke’s comments are not being received well by the market and that should worry the bulls. His testimony is fitting into the stagflation category given that he just said he is concerned about slowing growth and continued threats of inflation. Maybe he’ll pull out something to soothe investor fears, but it’s not looking so good.

Apple has said it will start selling the iPhone in June and I hope there are no delays. I am still not convinced the iPhone will be worthy of the increase in AAPL’s shares that it has built into the stock and a delay might actually cause some investors to finally hold Steve Jobs accountable for his style over substance approach with this phone. (Note that I have had an UP signal on AAPL since 3/19/07.) If they meet their deadline and all goes well, I will make note of it at that time. Until then, I remain unimpressed with the fact that not much is known about the phone except for a few flashy moments.

In hiding since January, Apple kept it largely out of the CTIA show and while that’s consistent with their development strategy, this product has been given way too much credit up to this point. When AT&T COO Stephenson flashed the phone on stage, the “ooh-and-ahhh” crowd seemed to get what they wanted. Hearing stories about the FCC Chairman Martin loving the phone was interesting but I am much more intrigued by the fact that Stephenson had not been able to navigate it until yesterday - only the second time he even held an iPhone. Shortly after the showmanlike flash, it was quickly spirited away and I wonder whether they ever plan to allow anyone outside their group to test it.

I respect Apple for their innovation and product quality and their past performance has earned that respect. All I am suggesting is that the hype has gotten out of hand. AT&T’s Stephenson also mentioned that over 1 million people have said they want to be notified when it goes on sale. HMMMM? In January, Jobs set 1% of phone sales by 2008 as his market share goal - an estimate of selling 10 million units. I don’t know whether to be excited by the suggestion of preselling to 1 million interested consumers or whether I should be disappointed. Unless all 1 million of them buy 10 phones each by the end of 2008, this expression of interest means about as much to me as a phone that has never been tested. For the sake of AAPL investors, I hope the phone is delivered on time, works beautifully and sells like crazy. Until then, it just looks like nothing but flash.

Where were the big merger announcements on Monday? Week after week, the market fed on M&A deals and Private Equity mania to get the positive vibes going. In fact, it felt like investors were coming to expect them and when it didn’t happen this week, the bids fell out. I have been trying to ignore financial media for a few days, so maybe I missed someone else wondering where they went. Am I the only one that noticed? - I doubt it. I am not a fan of merger hype so I don’t feel so bad about not getting some action on this front. Besides, it’s only 5 more days until the next opportunity!

One of the things I look for to give me a lot of confidence in my bias for individual stocks is the charts of all the ETFs I follow. I don’t like a divergence between a bullish move I see in stocks and the related ETFs but that is the case this week. The only ETF I changed was TLT- the 20-year bond proxy and that was very interesting. I was expecting to change a bunch of the DOWN signals but none of them looked like they were good enough entry points. Unless I start feeling pressured to change them, I am going to bet on another leg down in the near future. One aspect of this is the possibility that the ETFs are being used to hedge a downside move and I’ll be watching this closely.  Hopefully you are not confused about my posts saying I am bullish and this one saying I am expecting a downside move.  HEDGEfolios reflects my assessment of what I think the market is going to do, not what I personally think it should do.  When my view of the ETF charts is not as bullish as my interpretation of individual stocks, I just remain very skeptical.

Go figure that I finally go bullish and everyone seems to leave me! Oh well - I have been through this before and it’s a lot easier to do it on the up side of the debate. But seriously, it can get a tad annoying to switch my bias and have the market suddenly seem worried over the things I have been harping on for months. When I looked over the charts this weekend, I became even more optimistic than the previous week. It wasn’t so much that I gave a lot of new UP signals (151) vs. new DOWN signals (43) but I was more encouraged by the strength that I saw in existing UPs. Early this morning I posted a list of 224 UPs that looked like they would outperform the market this week and that was about 3 times as many as I saw last week. Given that we have had two pathetic days, I guess it might not be so tough to beat the S&P 500 but I am not willing to call it a down week yet. Lately, Chairman Bernanke has calmed the markets during congressional testimony so tomorrow will give him another chance to put on his best bullish spinjob. Last week, it seemed like investors were willing to ignore bad economic data and that has not been the case over the past two days. I was a bit surprised that the bad housing data and Lennar results would shock investors given that we have heard this story for months, but for some reason, it was cause for new concern. Similarly, the decline in consumer confidence shouldn’t have been unexpected but I guess people are starting to add up a lot of different signals and finally see that the consumer is in danger. By the way, despite my bullish bias, I have not changed my prior warnings about the threats to consumerism in the US. I have not seen signs of significant selling pressure and until that returns, I am going with the ability and desire for this market to want to head higher on anemic volume. I don’t like it, but I am still bullish and feeling more lonely than I thought I would.

Last week’s shortlist of stocks I was watching for good weekly gains was relatively short with only 79 names and I called the post “Bits of Optimism”. This week, the list contains 224 stocks and it reflects “more optimism” on my part. However, today’s open looks like it’s going to be a bit rough - especially on the energy stocks and there are a bunch in here. I cannot emphasize strongly enough that you need to do a lot of homework these days and keep a very close watch on everything in your portfolio.

ABBI,ABX,ABY,ACI,ACTS,ANEN,APC,ARTC,ASF,ASHW,ASTM,ASVI,ATE,AVAN,AVNC,AVR

BAS,BDE,BEXP,BF/B,BHE,BJS,BLDP,BNT,BOOM,BORL,BOW,BRNC,BTE,BTU,CAI

CBK,CC,CCE,CCUR,CDE,CELL,CFR,CGNX,CINF,CLMS,CNE,CNXT,COHR,CPST,CPX

CSGS,CWEI,DIVX,DMLP,DOX,DPTR,DSCM,EEFT,ELRC,EMBT,ENG,FAC,FBN,FCEL

FDG,FNSR,FORR,FOXH,FTWR,GDI,GG,GI,GMET,GSAT,GST,GTOP,GW,HAE,HDL

HERO,HGT,HITK,HNR,HOFF,HOS,HOTT,HVT,HW,HYC,HZO,IAG,IBI,ICO,IIIN

IPII,KEYS,LAWS,LCRD,LG,LINC,LLY,LMNX,LNCE,LRCX,LSCC,LSS,LUFK,MBLX

MBWM,MCBC,MCHX,MDTL,MECA,MEE,MINI,MLI,MOLX,MOSY,MRGE,MTCT,MTE,MTU

MTZ,MU,NBR,NEM,NFX,NJ,NL,NMTI,NPBC,OCR,ODP,OLGC,OPMR,OSCI,OVTI,OXPS

OZRK,PANC,PARL,PCL,PCW,PDC,PDFS,PDS,PGH,PGR,PHTN,PMCS,PNFP,POOL

PTEN,PVX,PWAV,PXD,RACK,RAVN,RDC,REDF,RNST,RNVS,RSCR,RSYS,RTEC,SAP

SBCF,SBR,SCMR,SCSS,SGY,SIFY,SIL,SKM,SLAB,SM,SMHG,SMMX,SNDK,SNTS,SNWL

SPNC,SRX,SSL,STLY,STST,STZ,SU,SUF,SWSI,SXE,SYMC,SYNM,TCK,TEK

THX,TIVO,TNL,TRAD,TTI,TU,TUTR,TWB,UFPI,UPFC,UPL,UPS,VCI,VMSI

VSE,VVUS,WACLY,WFMI,WHQ,WLM,WLSC,WMGI,WMI,WON,WSTL,WTFC,WTI,WTR

XEC,XPRT,ZGEN,ZIGO,ZL