Phil Grossfield's Blog

My Schedule…and A Little Extra:  I saw a pre-screening of The Dark Knight Rises last night.  I went to the 7:00p showing whereas all the other regular people in the world not as fortunate as me with a great connection had to wait until the premiere screening at midnight.  Thank goodness for connections.  Who knew if you attend the midnight premiere you could literally put your life in danger…some people actually died.  Such was the fate of Jessica Ghawi…she was shot dead at the midnight screening in Aurora, Colorado when a gunman burst into the movie theater and methodically began shooting people.  He killed at least 12 people and injured at least 50.  Jessica was an up-and-coming sports broadcaster and blogger who nearly escaped another shooting at a mall just 6 weeks earlier…can you believe that?!  But she wasn’t lucky enough this time…just 6 weeks later she is dead at the age of 24 at the hands of a lunatic gunman.  SOAPBOX TIME.  I realize there are crazy people out there and that violence is part of our history on this earth.  However, some cultures are more violent than others…what we bring into our lives affects us…all of us.  We live in a violent culture.  This movie is VIOLENT…VERY VIOLENT.  There was non-stop killing and by a variety of methods including drowning, hanging, neck-twisting, stabbing, suffocating, beating, bombing and of course shooting.  Now I realize I’m a hypocrite…I walked out of the movie with a satisfied feeling…I liked it.  I like science fiction and mythology and more often than not there is a fair amount of violent scenes.  The Lord of The Rings trilogy is my favorite movie of all time and it was nothing less than violent.  My point is that I’m part of the problem and it makes me feel a bit empty and sad.  I feel guilty for even seeing the movie now.  I feel sad that people got hurt and murdered…sad that their family’s will forever be affected…sad that some poor creature was so miserable that he felt compelled to open-fire on a crowd of innocent people out to enjoy the night…and sad that our society in many ways glorifies such behavior.  I feel sad for Jessica.  Read Jessica’s blog post about her near-death incident just 6 weeks ago.

My Market Watch:  Rates are better than yesterday and the 30-year bond is performing well and stocks are down this morning.  When traders feel the economy is weak they would rather put their money into bonds than stocks.  That makes sense, right?  Why would you want to invest in the stock market if you felt the economy was not performing very well.  Remember, this analysis by traders is day to day…hour to hour.  Right now, today, this hour, they are investing in bonds and pulling money from stocks to do so, at least in theory.  When traders invest in bonds, rates get better.  There you have it.  Let me know if you have any comments….   Disclaimer

My Schedule: Working from home this morning and in the field this afternoon….

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