I forgot the markets were closed tomorrow, so I didn’t have a proper “weekend open thread” prepared for today. Sorry.

On the bright side, here are my portfolio results for the last 3 days. It’s been one of those weeks for me:

GNW: -0.15 to $10.00 ( -1.48% , 3.52% overall)– bought at $9.66
GOOG: -15.45 to $794.19 ( -1.91% , -3.83% overall)– bought at $825.84
NNVC: -0.05 to $0.63 ( -7.35% , 34.04% overall)– bought at $0.47
SD: -0.19 to $5.27 ( -3.48% , -3.66% overall)– bought at $5.47
SLW: 0.10 to $31.35 ( 0.32% , -1.23% overall)– bought at $31.74
TSLA: 0.36 to $37.89 ( 0.96% , 5.25% overall)– bought at $36.00

OVERALL: -0.53%

As usual, feel free to discuss whatever you like here.

I have doubled my SandRidge Energy (SD) position again today, at $5.28. It is at the bottom it has already visited twice since November. It should bounce from here. If it drops below $5, I will probably have to eat the loss on it.

My new dollar cost average is $5.47.

I like this format of one post for everything, so I am keeping it.

The S&P 500 futures are flat this morning, probably because the S&P closed at upper resistance. Either something will happen to push it over, or we drop into the 1550’s. With bad news, we might even fall down to the 20 day moving average (1548) or worse. More likely, we will continue drifting just below the all-time high.

The S&P 500 levels to watch today:

UPSIDE: 1575 (top of the Bollinger Bands).
LAST CLOSE: 1562, inside the 1560-1564 (7 data points, including the all-time high) range.
DOWNSIDE: 1551-1557 (10 data points, including the 10 day moving average), 1541-1548 (14 data points, including the 20 day moving average), 1538 (March 6th’s low), 1530 (February’s high), 1522-1525 (2 data points), 1521 (50 day moving average), 1511-1520 (3 data points, including the bottom of the Bollinger Bands), 1509 (January’s high), 1501 (March 1st’s low), 1485 (February’s low), 1474 (2012’s high), and 1433 (200 day moving average).

Bloomberg: German Unemployment Unexpectedly Rises Amid Euro Crisis

More bad news for Europe:

German unemployment unexpectedly rose in March as renewed tensions in financial markets increased concerns the euro region’s recovery will falter.

The number of people out of work increased a seasonally adjusted 13,000 to 2.94 million, the Nuremberg-based Federal Labor Agency said today. Economists had predicted a decline of 2,000, according to the median of 24 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey. The adjusted jobless rate held at 6.9 percent, slightly above a two-decade low of 6.8 percent.

The euro area, the country’s largest export market, remains mired in recession and Cyprus’s botched bailout is weighing on confidence. Sentiment among entrepreneurs fell from a 10-month high in March and manufacturing output unexpectedly dropped. Still, the Bundesbank expects the German economy will return to growth in the current quarter after shrinking 0.6 percent in the final three months of 2012.

Someone at the Bundesbank has been drinking a little too much beer…

Bloomberg: BlackBerry Posts Surprise Quarterly Profit After Cutting Costs

Good news/bad news for BlackBerry shareholders:

BlackBerry (BBRY), the Canadian smartphone maker, reported a surprise profit in the fourth quarter, helped by a cost-cutting program, even as its sales missed analyst projections.

Excluding some costs, profit was 22 cents in the period, the Waterloo, Ontario-based company said in a statement. That compared with an average estimate for a loss of 30 cents a share, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Sales in the fiscal fourth quarter, which ended March 2, fell to $2.68 billion, missing the average estimate of $2.83 billion.

Overall, I would call this good news for BBRY, even though it is down in pre-market trading. The key to any business is profitability, and moving into profit is a huge step for BBRY, which lost money in the previous quarter. For most stocks, I would call a revenue decrease worrisome, but not BBRY. They needed to stop bleeding cash, and they did that. I am adding it to my watchlist today, and looking for a drop below $14 to buy it.

International Business Times: China And Brazil Ditch US Dollar In Trade Deal Before BRICS Summit

Bad news for the dollar:

China and Brazil agreed to trade in each other’s currencies just hours ahead of the BRICS summit in South Africa.

The deal, which extends over a three-year period and amounts to an exchange of about $30 billion in trade per year, marks the latest effort among two of the world’s largest emerging economies to shift the dynamics of international trade that have long favored the U.S. dollar.

With all of the dollars floating around the world, this creates a situation which could inflate the dollar, making it less valuable. While this might be good for U.S. stock markets, it could also create economic inflation if more countries follow this route.

Fox News: Will lawmakers ban Google Glass?

Google will soon start handing out its high-tech new glasses — but did they see the backlash coming?

…But as the Glass roll-out begins, privacy experts and lawmakers have begun wondering whether it’s a cause for concern as well. In West Virginia, a new law — aimed squarely at Project Glass — could make it illegal to drive with the glasses. A San Francisco bar forbade them on patrons. One activist group has even called for an outright ban.

…Aaron Messing, a technology and information privacy attorney with Olender Feldman, says Google Glass could violate the “two-party consent” law in states like California, Washington and Nevada where it is illegal to record a conversation unless everyone agrees. He says more states might impose anti-HUD driving laws.

“Much of the concern centers around the ease of discreet recording, as well as concerns that such recording may become ubiquitous,” he told FoxNews.com. “The proposed West Virginia law only seeks to regulate wearable heads-up displays [while driving].”

It seems a little early to me to be banning this technology until we see how it works. It could be harmless, or it could be worse than texting while driving.

I have jury duty again today, so I won’t be commenting much. But since you guys didn’t play nice yesterday, I am leaving off the news stories today. I should be back tomorrow to babysit you folks!

As for the technicals, the S&P 500’s Bollinger Bands are still contracting. Add to that the fact the S&P couldn’t break through it’s top range yesterday, and things don’t look good. We will probably be range bound until we break that upper resistance at 1563-1564. If we drop today, watch the 1554-1557 range for support. If you are bullish, that is probably a good point to buy. If you are bearish, look for the return to 1563-1564 range to go short.

The S&P 500 levels to watch today:

UPSIDE: 1576 (top of the Bollinger Bands).
LAST CLOSE: 1563, inside the 1563-1564 (5 data points, including the all-time high) range.
DOWNSIDE: 1561 (March 20th’s high), 1554-1557 (7 data points, including the 10 day moving average), 1551-1552 (2 data points), 1545-1548 (10 data points, including the 20 day moving average), 1541-1543 (4 data points), 1538 (March 6th’s low), 1530 (February’s high), 1522-1525 (2 data points), 1511-1520 (4 data points, including the 50 day moving average and the bottom of the Bollinger Bands), 1509 (January’s high), 1501 (March 1st’s low), 1485 (February’s low), 1474 (2012’s high), and 1432 (200 day moving average).

Today, I am putting everything in one post to save time. I have jury duty, so that means I have to go to work early to get some things done, before heading off to my government-sponsored indentured servitude…

Even though futures are up, be careful. The Bollinger Bands are starting to tighten up, which usually (not always) indicates the beginning of a change in direction. Also, yesterday was the second time (third if you count days, although two of the days were consecutive) the S&P 500 challenged the top and failed to close above it. I will call that a double-top formation, which is bearish. I won’t call this a correction, as a flatlined market usually has the same effect as a correction on the technical indicators. We may be trading sideways for a few days, or we may have a correction. Either way, proceed with caution.

The S&P 500 levels to watch today:

UPSIDE: 1552 (March 8th’s high), 1554-1557 (7 data points, including the 10 day moving average), 1561 (March 20th’s high), 1563-1564 (4 data points, including the all-time high), and 1578 (top of the Bollinger Bands).
LAST CLOSE: 1551.
DOWNSIDE: 1545-1548 (9 data points), 1541-1543 (5 data points, including the 20 day moving average), 1538 (March 6th’s low), 1530 (February’s high), 1522-1525 (2 data points), 1511-1520 (3 data points, including the 50 day moving average), 1509 (January’s high), 1506 (the bottom of the Bollinger Bands), 1501 (March 1st’s low), 1485 (February’s low), 1474 (2012’s high), and 1431 (200 day moving average).

On to a few headlines…

Bloomberg: Yahoo CEO Mayer Buying Summly in Mobile Expansion Effort

This is definitely the feel-good story of the day: A 15 year old creates a mobile app and sells it for $30 million.

The Telegraph: Cyprus bail-out: savers will be raided to save euro in future crises, says eurozone chief

If you are wondering what happened to the markets yesterday, this is it:

Savings accounts in Spain, Italy and other European countries will be raided if needed to preserve Europe’s single currency by propping up failing banks, a senior eurozone official has announced.

…The euro fell on global markets after Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch chairman of the eurozone, announced that the heavy losses inflicted on depositors in Cyprus would be the template for future banking crises across Europe.

“If there is a risk in a bank, our first question should be ‘Okay, what are you in the bank going to do about that? What can you do to recapitalise yourself?’,” he said.

“If the bank can’t do it, then we’ll talk to the shareholders and the bondholders, we’ll ask them to contribute in recapitalising the bank, and if necessary the uninsured deposit holders.”

Ditching a three-year-old policy of protecting senior bondholders and large depositors, over €100,000, in banks, Mr Dijsselbloem argued that the lack of market contagion surrounding Cyprus showed that private investors could now be hit to pay for bad banking debts.

…The announcement is highly significant as it signals the mothballing of the euro’s €700bn bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), which Spain and Ireland wants to be used to recapitalise their troubled banks.

While this is bad news for investors, it is good news for taxpayers. Taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to pay for the risk-taking of businesses. Kudos to Mr. Dijsselbloem!

This is the first time I have actually seen zero movement in the portfolio on a day-to-day basis. But the goose egg was good enough to beat the indexes:

GNW: 0.01 to $10.15 ( 0.10% , 5.07% overall)– bought at $9.66
GOOG: -0.67 to $809.64 ( -0.08% , -1.96% overall)– bought at $825.84
NNVC: 0.02 to $0.68 ( 3.03% , 44.68% overall)– bought at $0.47
SD: -0.04 to $5.46 ( -0.73% , -3.36% overall)– bought at $5.65
SLW: 0.02 to $31.25 ( 0.06% , -1.54% overall)– bought at $31.74
TSLA: 0.91 to $37.53 ( 2.48% , 4.25% overall)– bought at $36.00

OVERALL: 0.00%

Sentiment is positive this morning, so we could see the S&P 500 make another run at the all-time high of 1563.

The S&P 500 levels to watch today:

UPSIDE: 1561 (March 20th’s high), 1563 (3 data points, including the all-time high), and 1581 (top of the Bollinger Bands).
LAST CLOSE: 1557 (March 22nd’s high).
DOWNSIDE: 1554-1556 (6 data points, including the 10 day moving average), 1552 (March 8th’s high), 1547-1548 (4 data points), 1545 (4 data points), 1541-1543 (4 data points), 1539 (20 day moving average), 1538 (March 6th’s low), 1530 (February’s high), 1522-1525 (2 data points), 1511-1520 (3 data points, including the 50 day moving average), 1509 (January’s high), 1501 (March 1st’s low), 1496 (the bottom of the Bollinger Bands), 1485 (February’s low), 1474 (2012’s high), and 1430 (200 day moving average).

I have a busy day ahead of me at work today, so today’s notes will be abbreviated. I have jury duty this week (although not today, fortunately), so this week’s blogging may be light.

Bloomberg: Payroll Growth Vaults to Higher Pace at U.S. Companies

Positive news:

Companies from Ford Motor Co (F). to a California tortilla maker are stepping up hiring as the economy improves. The result, say Maury Harris of UBS Securities LLC and Allen Sinai of Decision Economics Inc.: Payroll growth is vaulting to a faster pace of about 200,000 a month, after averaging 167,000 in the second half of last year.

“The new normal is 200,000,” said Sinai, chief executive officer of the New York-based investment-research company. Payrolls may rise 216,000 this month after climbing 236,000 in February, the most since November, he estimates.

Russell Price, a senior economist at Ameriprise Financial Inc. (AMP) in Detroit, predicts employers will take on 2.5 million workers this year, after hiring 2.2 million last year.

“And that may be a little bit on the conservative side,” added Price, the top-ranked payrolls forecaster for the two years ended in January, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Reuters: Cyprus reaches last-minute deal on 10 billion euro bailout

Cyprus clinched a last-ditch deal with international lenders to shut down its second-largest bank and inflict heavy losses on uninsured depositors, including wealthy Russians, in return for a 10 billion euro ($13 billion) bailout.

…Swiftly backed by euro zone finance ministers, the plan will spare the Mediterranean island a financial meltdown by winding down the largely state-owned Popular Bank of Cyprus, also known as Laiki, and shifting deposits below 100,000 euros to the Bank of Cyprus to create a “good bank”.

Deposits above 100,000 euros in both banks, which are not guaranteed under EU law, will be frozen and used to resolve Laiki’s debts and recapitalize Bank of Cyprus through a deposit/equity conversion.

The raid on uninsured Laiki depositors is expected to raise 4.2 billion euros, Eurogroup chairman Jeroen Dijssebloem said.

Laiki will effectively be shuttered, with thousands of job losses. Officials said senior bondholders in Laiki would be wiped out and those in Bank of Cyprus would have to make a contribution.

An EU spokesman said no across-the-board levy or tax would be imposed on deposits in Cypriot banks, although the hit on large account holders in the two biggest banks is likely to be far greater than initially planned. A first attempt at a deal last week collapsed when the Cypriot parliament rejected a proposed levy on all deposits.

Wall Street Journal: Spain Brings the Pain to Bank Investors

The Spanish government will impose heavy losses on investors at nationalized banks and hire external advisers to help it manage these banks’ assets, its latest efforts to overhaul a financial sector battered by the collapse of a decadelong housing boom.

…The restructuring terms announced by the FROB will impose losses of up to 61% at Spain’s largest nationalized banks. At Bankia SA, the largest of the institutions and the only one that is publicly traded, shareholders will be nearly wiped out and junior bondholders will lose around 30% of their original investment.

In keeping with EU requirements that investors bear losses before companies receive state aid, the nominal value of Bankia’s shares will be reduced to €0.01 from €2 and the nominal value of its preferred shares and subordinated debt will be reduced to €4.841 billion ($6.29 billion) from €6.911 billion, the bailout fund said.

To recapitalize Bankia, the €4.841 billion worth of preferred shares and subordinated debt will be converted into ordinary shares, while the FROB will inject €10.7 billion. This recapitalization will result in a massive dilution for Bankia’s shareholders, who will be left with less than 1% of the bank.

The market isn’t moving much today, so let’s have a weekend open thread!

For this weekend, I offer my newest favorite artist, Sandro Botticelli! For those of you not familiar with him, here is the brief intro from Wikipedia:

[Boticelli] was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. He belonged to the Florentine school under the patronage of Lorenzo de’ Medici, a movement that Giorgio Vasari would characterize less than a hundred years later as a “golden age”, a thought, suitably enough, he expressed at the head of his Vita of Botticelli. Botticelli’s posthumous reputation suffered until the late 19th century; since then his work has been seen to represent the linear grace of Early Renaissance painting. Among his best known works are The Birth of Venus and Primavera.

Arguably, his most famous and iconic painting is Birth of Venus:

A couple of weeks ago, I visited Savannah’s Telfair Museum, where they had an exhibit of Renaissance paintings from the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy. It was at Telfair I saw the following Boticelli work, Madonna della Loggia:

It is not often a painting moves me, but the one above did. While it is easy to just look at it as a picture of Mary and the baby Jesus, when you look at it from 2-3 feet away, there is just so much more there (the picture above doesn’t do it justice).

I was looking at it with my 15 year old daughter, and I said to her, “There is something in Mary’s expression. It is like the sad smile of a mother who is carrying a deep hurt that she doesn’t want to reveal.” My daughter replied, “Maybe she wanted a girl?”

PORTFOLIO UPDATE: My portfolio finished up +0.32%. A nice way to end the week. Enjoy your weekend folks!

If the S&P 500 can get a good push today past the 1547-1548 resistance, then it should be able to return to the 1554-1556 range. On the other hand, if it drops, the 1541-1543 range is the next support. A serious drop should carry it to the 20 day moving average at 1537. With futures up early, I would lean towards a small upside move, although it probably won’t reach the all-time high.

The S&P 500 levels to watch today:

UPSIDE: 1547-1548 (4 data points), 1552 (March 8th’s high), 1554-1556 (6 data points, including the 10 day moving average), 1561 (March 20th’s high), 1563 (3 data points, including the all-time high), and 1580 (top of the Bollinger Bands).
LAST CLOSE: 1545 (3 data points).
DOWNSIDE: 1541-1543 (4 data points), 1538 (March 6th’s low), 1537 (20 day moving average), 1530 (February’s high), 1522-1525 (2 data points), 1511-1520 (3 data points, including the 50 day moving average), 1509 (January’s high), 1501 (March 1st’s low), 1494 (the bottom of the Bollinger Bands), 1485 (February’s low), 1474 (2012’s high), and 1428 (200 day moving average).