A valentine from Wall Street

Pretty good day in the stock market. A nice Valentine's Day gift as I hit a new all-time high. So far I've gained 6.5% on the year. Hopefully things won't get too overheated. I think my position at this point is slightly more conservative than I'd like. But I liquidated my Yahoo position as I was losing faith in their management. I made money though so can't complain. I was thinking about New Century Financial. They're a subprime lender. They had a meltdown last week and I was considering buying some shares. But I decided that bankruptcy was too dangerous and I know the subprime market could be slippery terrain. So I didn't move in. Which is a shame because New Century is up nearly 15% since Monday. Oh well.

I'm a little concerned about one stock I have. I told you about Lenox. So far I've done well gaining nearly 36%. But it's moved up so quickly it's taken a larger position than I'd like in my current portfolio. I only have about 8% invested in them. But there's a risk monitoring service that I use and it shows that Lenox accounts for about 35% of my portfolio's riskiness. That's pretty high for one stock. For safety I should probably take about half off the table. But I think from this point it could double eventually. Tough call. I'll let you know how it plays out.

The deal to bring Google to my town has been getting wall-to-wall lambasting lately. There must have been four different editorials about it in the Charlotte Observer on Sunday. My opinion is that it is unfair to give incentives to business just to come and not support business already here. And I will agree these local governments are so desperate to gain new businesses that they give the company everything. Still, I wonder if some of the criticism is unwarranted. It's not like the furniture industry is coming back to Lenoir. And the revenues pre-Google weren't exactly supporting the budget if I'm not mistaken. It's a tough call. I'll just sit back and watch the fireworks.

Duke plays Boston College tonight. I think Duke wins. Surely Duke won't lose five straight, right?

Right?