I don't exercise much when I'm sick and I extend the same philosophy when the world, or economy, or whatever word we use for mass consciousess is sick too. So instead of trying to push through this mass mess and work hard while everyone panics instead we have decided to trim way down and use the semi-free time to visit with friends and family we have not seen in a whle. At the same time this is an excellent time to do the work necessary to plants the seeds that will flower once again after this latest long, harsh winter has turned to spring.

By the way if you are not looking to buy stocks at the moment you have no business ever being in the stock market. Most of us don't. It's like going to college-- pretty much a waste of time and money for a huge majority of humans outside of the socializing aspect to it.

Here's how my year of investing, which by the way unlike poker I do consider gambling has been going so far:

I took a bath percentage wise but had a very small "heart" position with Whole Foods WFMI.

I loaded the boat with GE at 18 an at 16 so I'm down on that one.

My favorite financial is JPM and I've been buying and selling it for years. Sold at 54 and 52 to fund this year of living dangerously but held onto a large stake as it dropped all the way to 18 earlier this month. Reloaded very near the bottom after it posted a $900 million a QUARTER Profit and still got hammered. It's bounced up to 27 or 28 today and I sold a bit to pay for this next few months of limited paying work.

Had to buy Bank of America (BAC) when it hit $5 a few days ago. Not sure how anyone could pass that up. Yeah, they'll probably cut the dividend but the scrutiny they'll get with the Merril Lynch CEO debacle is a god thing for the stock owners. And they may not cut it and then I'm getting a 20% dividend--

There's a few more but I'll let these stand so we can look back in a year or two and see if I'm boom or bust. I still have one account all cash because I think we have one more major slump coming in a few months down the road when we realize no president is a panacea and we are all responsible for the mess of our lives and our minds. When that comes and all hpe is lost then I'm buying across the board index funds and then back to work.

POKER: I have three more months left in my five year curse but I'm going to go ahead an play a bit more any way. The NUKE aka my nuclear family along with my Dad will be attending the Grand Sierra Resort tournaments starting Feb 26th in Reno. They seem to be doing some good things like adding money, increasing stack sizes, giving some rakeback and offering $30 rooms.

Charles Wiliams has returned to manage the for Reno Hilton poker room in between running madd hot in tournament poker and if he ever gets off the tournament circuit and back to his office at The Grand Sierra then he'll send me structures etc and I can pass this info along to you.

If anyone wants to know anything other inside info shoot me an email. And I highly reccommend you play against me in the next three months so I can take a few beats and work on my emotional control while donating to a worthy cause (you). Stay away from playing my wife Krisha though as she crushes the Reno Hilton having won both No Limit Hold Em and Ohaha tournaments over the years.

She took down Miami John heds up for $25K and a WPT seat with a 3 to 1 chip deficit and that's not easy thing to do.

My son demands my attention--

Thanks for reading.