Colin Lea's  Instablog

That said, as much as I plan to take a break the analyst in me will be keeping tabs on the following companies, the observations of which may appear in a subsequent article:
 

• Southwest Airlines (LUV)
• McDonald's (MCD)
• Hertz Global Holdings (HTZ)
• Starbucks Corporation (SBUX)
• Walt Disney Corporation (DIS)
• Brinker International (EAT)
• Marriott International (MAR)
• Blackstone Group (BX)
• Wyndham Worldwide Corporation (WYN)

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The U.S. Federal Reserve was founded 99 years ago, as a bulwark to the banking system and an antidote to its frequent runs and panics. Strictly speaking, it was America's third attempt at a central bank. The first, organized by Congress in 1791, was allowed to expire after 20 years, leaving the young republic with only a patchwork system of weaker state banks. During the War of 1812, Congress realized its error (in the absence of a central bank, inflation had run rampant), and in 1816, it chartered a second bank, again for 20 years. The Second Bank of the United States was, in the main, a success. Its notes were circulated as currency, and it astutely managed their supply so as to keep the economy humming. Alas, President Andrew Jackson, a fierce opponent of both paper money and national banks, campaigned in 1832 against renewal of the charter, and indirectly against the bank's brilliant but impetuous head, Nicholas Biddle. Resentment against financiers was running high, and the election became a referendum on the genteel Philadelphia banker versus the rough-hewn war hero-and a referendum on the bank itself. Jackson won, and the Second Bank was, per his promise, destroyed. The U.S. economy promptly plunged into a severe depression. Biddle died not long after, in semi-disgrace, but the battle between bankers and populists never went away.

None of the invective heaped, of late, on Ben Bernanke would have come as a surprise to Biddle, and one doubts whether the Fed would fare much better with the electorate today than the Second Bank did in the 19th century. Bernanke himself certainly would not win a popularity contest. In 2010, four years after his appointment by President George W. Bush as Fed chief, he was approved for a second term by a Senate vote of 70 to 30-the slimmest margin for a Fed chief ever. (In 2000, Alan Greenspan won a fourth term by a vote of 89 to 4.) Bernanke's troubles with politicians were a direct result of his sagging poll numbers, and since his reappointment these numbers have only gotten worse. In a Bloomberg poll last September, only 29 percent of respondents expressed a favorable opinion of Bernanke; 35 percent had an unfavorable view. In October, just 40 percent of those surveyed by Gallup said they had confidence in Bernanke's ideas for creating jobs; even congressional leaders inspired greater faith.

Over the past four and a half years, Bernanke, 58, has presided over the most sustained period of crisis of any civilian official in recent history, with the fate of millions of unemployed and underemployed Americans hanging in the balance. Only recently has the economy begun to show signs that the recovery is gaining steam. Since August 2007, Bernanke has deployed the Fed as the lender of last resort to the banking system and worked overtime to furnish an "elastic currency"-that is, to keep enough money in circulation for the economy to function. These were the very tasks that the founders of the Fed envisioned. Bernanke has performed them by tripling the size of the Fed's balance sheet-to an eye-popping $2.9 trillion-and by inventing a welter of new programs to lend to banks and other private-sector institutions. For most of the Fed's history, popular opinion-being generally opposed to depressions-has favored such efforts, but today the public's disgust with government, and with banks, has cast a shadow of suspicion upon Bernanke. Ron Paul touched a chord when he asked, in November 2010, how the Fed could create $600 billion "with the stroke of a pen." So did Michele Bachmann, grilling Bernanke at a congressional hearing a few months after the crash, when she queried, "Do you believe there are any limits on the authority that the Federal Reserve has taken since March 2008?"

Alaska Air Group (ALK) 2 for 1 stock split changes holding to 322 shares, with an adjusted cost basis of $31.05 per share (to enable the Seeking Alpha Portfolio Manager to correctly value the adjusted holding).

I am also setting an automatic stop loss of $34.15 per share, and a manual target sell of $37.26 per share. This is in line with my intent outlined in my previous article on the Sun Tzu Portfolio.