Chocolate and other things of consequence.

Valrhona is a chocolate provider. I like the Grand Cru from Madegascar. It's a 66% cocoa (bittersweet). It's a lovely chocolate. It's important for you to be exposed to different stuff!

I buy a large bag each year each year to make wonderful chocolate desserts. I also get a big box of high quality milk chocolate too. Together it is about 22 lbs of chocolate.

I sold my last bit of DUG today. I did some Chinese takeout: FSIN, SSRX and WX. Small positions. No stop loss. I do not plan to trade these, but hold them.

My UPW is about .60 from being profitable after falling as much as 22%. Yes, I hung on--but it was in accordance with my plan. This was a hedging position for certain puts that I had. Now those utility puts are gone (at a nice gain). My loss, then was already more than funded .

My son goes to the doc tomorrow. I'm afraid he may be dissappointed---he's thinking that he'll be out of his sling. We'll see. Then we hit the road. Hopefully the market will do nothing too screwy. But I've not much exposure.

Hartford. For those of you who were reading back in April of 2007, I pulled HIG out as the poster child for an insurance company that would be caught up in the systemic risk issues. Yes, wallowing around in minutia of 10-K's has served me well. BUT....I was very early to that trade. It was so obvious that the insurance companies had exposures and Wall Street discounts, right? Just on paper. It took more than 16 months for that fact to inculcate itself into the bee of the brain of Wall Street.

So....if it takes so long for the downside to be realized, then one may reasonably expect that the obverse happens. I'm happy to do as Gary K says, probe. I'm familiar with a great many companies. I bought a few that I'm familiar with today. And, if I want particular exposure to a sector or broad market index, the ETF's are a great way (for me) to do that.

If you do not have a plan for deploying capital, perhaps spending a little time crafting one would make sense. And consider probing. It's time to invoke Musashi:

• Learn to see everything accurately.
• Become aware of what is not obvious.
• Be careful even in small matters.
• Do not do anything useless.

I'll add a Leisa corollary to that: Thinking without doing is not worth much.

Cigna was clobbered today. Down 22%. Wall Street finally understood that there was no organic growth to be had and that insurers are not recession proof. Again, a long digestion before this thing was blown out of the back end of Wall Street's expectations. I need to remember that the digestion period is quite long at times! Best to wait patiently like a spider. I'm getting better at that.

I'm unlikely to get a post out tomorrow. But to get in the spirit of things, I offer a couple of photos sent by a blog friend.