It's a ho hum kind of week

Not much going on in the world for me this week. I worked a lot and played some poker online but nothing much else going on. Online poker has been going much better than lately thankfully and my balance has grown a bit. It was pretty far down for awhile and now I feel a bit more comfortable.

I was happy to see the stock market have some good days this week. I had been looking to sell some stocks in my IRA to raise some cash as I had just about everything invested at this time. Plus I had over 20% of my value in one stock called Cal Maine Foods and I wanted to even out my portfolio a bit. I normally carry 8-10 stocks and don't like to have more than 15% or so in any one stock in case my picks aren't as good as I thought they were. Now the reason I had so much of my stake in CALM was because my investment had done so well for me since I bought it over 2 years ago. Plus they usually pay a good dividend. They have a different dividend policy than most companies in the US. Instead of trying to maintain a set dividend every quarter, they pay 1/3 of their quarterly profit as a dividend every quarter. A bad quarter = no dividend but a very good quarter = a nice fat dividend which I reinvest in more stock.

Wow Australia just got HOSED in this World Cup game against Ghana. Up 1-0 and they just got a guy tossed from the game for a handball. It was a handball at the goal mouth that saved a goal so Ghana was getting a penalty kick but the dude didn't reach out for the ball, in fact he tried to get it on his chest but it was a little to his right and struck his arm and instead. Very harsh to red card the guy (ejection) and force his team to play 10 vs 11 for 65 minutes. Almost as bad as how the USA got hosed yesterday by the Phantom Penalty. Give the guy a yellow card (2 yellows = 1 red) if you must but a red card there is HORRIBLE. And the Socceroos had done so well to get a 1-0 lead early.

Back to the stock market. I have been half and half lately. About half my money in good dividend paying stocks that pay me to wait for the economy to decide if it's going to get better or not. The rest in some more higher growth picks that could make me some great returns but don't pay me much of a dividend. And I made a couple of speculative plays in biotech and solar type stocks that could pay very well. Or I could lose much of my investment (solar not doing well right now) but it's not a big total of my investment dollars. Anyway, if we have another downturn in the market, I now have the cash to pick up some real deals on a couple of stocks I think. I was really regretting not selling some stuff earlier in March or April when my stocks were doing well so I figured not to make the same mistake this time.

In other news, today we are celebrating my daughter's graduation with a party for a number of her friends. I gotta make some food here soon so I better finish this up. I was hoping to go practice some more gunnery today but I don't think I will have time. I'll just play a little online poker, watch a little World Cup and read some of my favorite blogs from Massachusetts like..........Very Josie and Marooned (stuckinMassachusetts). They make me laugh all weekend. Stay lucky you nuts.

Update - Australia ties with Ghana 1-1. Good second half. All credit to the Socceroos for playing 2/3 of the game with 10 on 11. Almost scored twice in the second half and dominated portions of the half. Good saves by both goalies to keep the game even.