Last week's Sapphire felt smaller and quieter than in last year.  Perhaps the economy is taking its toll.  SAP formally announced Galaxy, its yet another BPM tool.  Its attempt to expand in the SME market through a SaaS based offering has been quite unsuccessful so far, but it will keep trying, I'm sure. 

HP announced a planned acquisition of EDS.  If that goes through HP will be a solid #2 behind IBM in IT services.  I think it's a great idea.  The problem is my limit buy order didn't get filled before HP's quarterly numbers came out today, and I don't feel like chasing it.  I bought some PEG today as a defensive play.  It should benefit quite a lot from the run-up in oil and natural gas prices, and its nuclear power generators.  And as a typical utilities firm it pays a good dividend (~3%). 

One stock I've been looking at (and traded several times) is BE, formerly KPMG Consulting. This looks like either a turnaround story or a dead cat.  I'd be willing to take some risk at $1.5/share.  It just lowered the full year guidance which caused some downgrades from analysts. But it's a multi-billion dollar IT services business.  I find it hard to believe it would go busted.  Worst case perhaps it will be acquired.

Economic data released today sent mixed signals but the US market seemed to see them as a glass half full, and went up across the board. Well, across the board except for oil and gas.

My oil holdings (BP,HAL,EPD,PWE) all went down today, which dragged down my overall portfolio performance (+ .71% vs. S&P +1.48% and Nasdaq +2.81%). Financials (C,WM,FNM) had a good day. New addition OI released a great quarter but predicted a challenging outlook, and stock went down. I scaled into OI before the quarterly report following Cramer, which apparently hasn't quite worked out. I do like OI's potential though, in that it has great pricing power, and glass containers are much more environmentally friendly than plastic. I will hold OI for another quarter before deciding what to do with it.

Ford's small cars sold very well (e.g. Focus) but overall sales went down. No surprise that people aren't buying big trucks at the current gas price. F-S still edged up at this news.

I recently am itching to replace my Motorola L2. I can use google mail and maps on it but the small screen and the slow speed make it, well, not that fun to use. I feel attracted to an iPhone, but I don't really want my phone to stand out in a business meeting. Outside of the SF Bay Area, I have rarely seen business people with an iPhone. Plus, I think I would feel guilty spending more money on a mobile phone than on my Mom's new laptop. To be fair, though, phone prices haven't gone up. I spent about the same amount on my Treo 600 years ago, which was a less capable and slick device than the iPhone. It's just, the laptops are so much cheaper now, and I have a wireless access card. Maybe I should just go with a Samsung Blackjack II, which is a capable smart phone, at a reasonable (much lower than a laptop) price of $99.