Greece debt and the European Union

March 22, 2010 / Jeff McAllister

So, the futures looked ugly… Greece debt is moving to the forefront of the EU’s radar. All of the European markets are down about 1%…

Sure looked like it was going to be an ugly day. And then there was the discussion of the passage of the Health Care Bill.

Certainly the big pharma’s stand to gain from this – more folks being prescribed meds… Hospitals stand to gain as well. So who stands to lose? That is a good question. Insurance companies seem the obvious choice, but they have a way of turning stones into stone soup, so I wouldn’t jump on that band wagon too fast… I think that the losers are not going to be the corporations at all (which may help to explain Wall Street’s enthusiasm today), no, I suspect that the losers in all of this will be the Health Care Providers themselves… Much like deregulation and massive cost cutting killed the careers of many industry’s before – I suspect this will unleash a whole new round of downward pressure on the salaries and benefits of those in the field of Health Care… Very sad as they are the ones who quite literally hold your life in their hands…

So, Western Digital (WDC) and Seagate had a big moves up today! Seem that Brean Murray, Carret issued an opinion saying that both makers of hard drives and solid state drives were on their way to very strong March sales! Great! Like both of those companies long-term – especially anyone who can make SSD cheaper. It’s the way of mass data storage in the future. Lightning fast – no moving parts… Just a tad bit expensive now!

As for the over all market – well I’m still a bit nervous about where we are now, so I’ve taken a few bullish positions off and will be playing April’s expiration series just a bit more conservative.

Jeff McAllister

OptionsANIMAL Instructor