This time last week I was trapped in a hotel room north of Baltimore waiting for snowstorm to subside. Nothing in the area was open. not even the local Starbucks. We were trapped eating really bad hotel food but fortunately we had the three tools needed to survive a snow storm. Books, Sports Center and a hotel bar whose manager was trapped onsite by the storm. The next morning we were greeted by record low temperatures that really helped reinforce why we moved to Florida in the first place.

I was there for course for my daughter’s wedding and it was everything we could have hoped it would be up to and including an appearance by the Oriole Bird at the end of the recessional parade. My new son in law has a couple of business and finance degrees to his name and many of his old classmates were in attendance and I was amused by their bar room chatter to say the least. Most of them have gravitated to Wall Street in one manner or another and it is remarkable to hear them repeat text book chatter. They all own the same stocks, have the same trades on the books and the same view of the market and the world and hold it forth as original thought. I stayed out of it for the most part although I did take a minute on my way to the bar to tell one young man who was describing his new hedge fund that there was no such thing as market neutral. I don’ think he believed me- but he will in time. Fortunately the son in law has spent enough time with me that I have made real progress on erasing what the professors taught him!

The funny part about all this is that although the cost of weddings today is downright ridiculous much of the pain was relieved by the fact that a good deal of the pain was eased by the fact that we had one of our illiquid little bank stocks that none of the rising masters of the universe would touch was taken over last week at a huge premium to our cost and two others are up sharply this week after the Deal.Com identified them as potential takeover candidates. They don’t teach a class in B- school called Illiquid cheap banks and thankfully they never will.

It has been a rough week for markets as the S&P 500 has fallen by about 2.7 % and oil continues to plunge falling by another 5% in the last 5 sessions. The macro picture becomes more dangerous every day it seems and I deep study of the data is telling me that there is virtually no way the Fed raises rates in June. If they do it is caving into political pressures not any reflection of economic reality in my opinion. Just this morning former Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman addressed the allegedly wonderful jobs report that sparked interest rate fears saying “"If 5.5 percent were really capturing the conditions, you wouldn't see wage growth just barely ticking up.” We may have added jobs but they were not good jobs. The Fed said in the beige book release that “Payrolls remained stable or expanded across the Districts, and contacts noted employment gains in a broad range of sectors. Wage pressures remained moderate and were limited largely to workers in skilled occupations. Most District contacts cited only flat to slightly increasing prices. Better, not great.

Fortunately the lack of cheap stocks is keeping cash levels high in the non-community bank bucket of money. There is nothing cheap to buy so we are just sitting on the sidelines waiting for an inventory creation event. The hard part is staying buys while we wait. Mr. Womack had his farm, Hett Green was busy moving around the city to avoid tax collectors and Andy Beal has poker and race cars to keep him occupied until prices collapse. Fortunately I have spring training and the fast approach baseball season to keep me busy.

I like what I see from my Orioles so far. The pitching looks fantastic and we have five guys on the team with 30 plus home run power and a few others with the potential for 20. This should be a long ball, good pitching, great defense Earl Weaver type of team and I see us in the division hint once again. When I adjust the Baseball Prospectus numbers adding 5 wins for Buck Showalter, three wins for Adderall , and 3 each for Manny and Waiters playing all year I have us winning 92 games and the AL East title. Washington looks fantastic once again and I think they easily win 100 games this year. My surprise teams for 2015 are the Miami Marlins (I am sorry going to that stadium this year) in the NL and the Chicago White Sox in the AL. Both make it to at least the wild card game if not deeper into the playoffs.

Cheers

Tim

Trying to keep up with fast moving macro developments will quickly have you riding the https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otdHbA4GlSI