The town was beautiful, cramped, felt decidedly British, and was overly touristy. The moment I saw a Black Dog outpost from Martha's Vineyard, I got out of there as fast as I could -- which took a while.
The much better part of the day had occurred around 11am during the weird transition from breakfast time to lunch time when it's hard to choose which one to look for. I was starting to think about an early lunch and was not having much luck.
Suddenly I pulled up at a stoplight and it happened. I spied a place I've been meaning to try for a while. Five Guys Burgers.
The coolest thing was that once I swung the car around to turn in this song started.
Even if you can't stand Guns 'n' Roses, there is something about Welcome To The Jungle that gets the adrenaline going. What an intro.
So I pulled into the parking lot with the music cranked as the place was opening for the day. It was me along with a few firefighters, some fly boys from the nearby Dahlgren Naval Support Facility in their shiny new cars, some naval officers wearing leather bomber jackets (which looked like vinyl), and a guy and his girlfriend both wearing Operation Desert Storm T-shirts with huge cross-hairs over a map of Iraq.
This many people showing up as the doors open is always a good sign. Some of them could hear the music blasting in my car as I pulled up and they smiled and nodded their heads. It was like we were all descending on the place to absolutely annihilate some burgers. I knew it was going to be good.
It was definitely not the best looking or most photogenic burger I'd ever seen (notice it was in King George also -- who's country is this?!), but it tasted great and fresh, and was delicious in every way. I'd definitely go back. And now I have a soundtrack for it whenever I do, haha.
Incidentally, Dahlgren Naval Support Facility is huge and spooky looking, as if they're is a serious amount of voodoo going on in there. And it's NOT marked on the map.
Onto the markets . . .
The futures didn't like the numbers announced this morning -- I think it was an ADP revision, but I never care about numbers, just the reaction. Asia and Europe are mixed, very mixed.
There is chatter that the Fed may announce an early tapering of QE3. But with bad numbers coming out seemingly on a regular basis now, it's only a matter of time before the crowd begins chanting that the Fed is going to keep stimulating, and possibly stimulate more.
Not sure if this happens today, however. The S&P looks like it wants to thrust higher into the 1607 area. But looks are deceiving. With the charts looking so good, I'm watching carefully for a fake out. Below 1593.56 today could do it.
For me, I'd like to try to buy that break looking for a fake out of the fake out. The far more important level is 1586.50. A break there could target first 1563.03 then 1536.03, two levels that oddly mirror each other.
Apple floated $17 billion worth of bonds yesterday. That's $17 billion of debt. I don't care that interest rates are at record lows. It's about appeasing investors. Appease them through strength: great products, great management, great stock performance. Sitting on record piles of cash yet raising debt to pay dividends is odd behavior for a confident company, even if money is virtually free.
Nor I do not want to hear from the David Fabers of the world that this borrowing is accretive to earnings. It's debt.
It's a jungle out there. Tim Cook will need to show that Apple has more arrows in its quiver than accounting gimmicks.
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