Weekly Wrap

What a week. Let's avoid the market for a second and talk about something with a happy ending. Have you heard about the self-proclaimed procrastinator, Melvin Milligan? Seems Melvin was watching his TV news on Thursday of last week when he saw that the Jersey Lottery officials were still looking for the ticket holder of the June 9, 2000, $46 million winner. "Hmmm," Melvin thought, "Now where did I put my old lottery ticket?" Melvin, a 40-year old computer technician, got up and looked in his drawer. Sure enough, there it was, the ticket with the winning numbers! Since he only had a few days before the deadline to get it in, he did what every sane American would do. he dropped it in the mail. He put a $46 million winning ticket in a mailbox!!

Luckily for Melvin, his ticket arrived on the day of the deadline. (Lottery officials said they still would have validated it had it arrived a day late as it was mailed before deadline. Of course they say this.) He was declared the winner and opted to take the money as a $1.8 million annuity, about $1.3 million annually for the next 26 years after a 28 percent federal tax deduction. There are no state taxes on lottery winnings. Way to go Mel!

I don't think you'd call Ray Bourque's happy ending procrastination, but rather twenty-two years worth of hard work. Bourque, a member of the Colorado Avalanche won his first Stanley Cup this past week and promptly brought it home to the Boston area. He played the first twenty years of his career for the Boston Bruins. Way to go Ray! Can you send some of that patience, perseverance and luck the Housley way?

A controversial ending also took place this week, that of the Oklahoma City Bomber, Timothy McVeigh. McVeigh was put to death in Terre Haute, Indiana in a much talked, written and debated about execution. It was the first federal inmate execution in forty years. What a way to go, Tim.

After writing about that, I can now say that this week's market is a light topic.

The Nasdaq had its worst week of 2001. Yep, this is a very light topic, as in a loss of more than 8% for the week. Why the heck can't I lose 8% in a week? The Dow was down 3% and the S&P off 4%. Geez, I'd be satisfied if my butt could keep up with the Dow. So, whom should we blame for the losses?

Nortel (NT) ended the week on a bad note. On Friday they brought the whole house down with their announcement of job cuts and a prediction of a huge second-quarter loss. They expect to incur a $19.2 billion loss due to customers cut back on telecommunications equipment. This was also caused by a restructuring of the company, which looks like it is continuing. They will be slashing 10,000 jobs, coming on the heels of their April job cuts of 20,000. Scary.

The Nortel news made its way to Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien and it caused him to come out of his French Villa. If you've never heard Jean Chretien speak, just once, please listen to him. And to think we Americans would poke fun of Clinton's southern accent. Anyway, Jean said the Canadian economy is just fine, and this Nortel announcement of losses and cut backs is an isolated problem. Again, you listen, and be the judge.

Not to be stood up, George W. Bush had to come out of his White House. His announcement was in support of his good friend Jack W. Welch. (W. added for affect, it's really John F.) Poor Jack postponed his retirement so he could see through the $42 billion stock merger of his company, General Electric (GE), and Honeywell. Seems that the European Union officials don't like the deal, even though it has passed both the U.S. and Canadian regulations. The boys in Brussels want more than GE is willing to give up. They want GE to sell its GE Capital Aviation Services (GECAS), which leases planes to carriers globally. You see, if they don't, and they merge with Honeywell, they will corner the market on aviation products. Since GE is one of the world's largest owners and buyers of jet aircraft, the EU thinks that they would then bully all aircraft manufacturers to buy components only from them, GE-Honeywell. So why would Europe care? Aha, it threatens their precious European conglomerate, Airbus Industries.

No Jack or George (with or without a W) can mess with that. Stay tuned.

I got off topic. Politicians do that. I mean politicians do that to you.

I was talking about Nortel bringing the house down with their announcement. Along with them came a slew of networking stocks on Friday, JDS Uniphase (JDSU) down 9.9%, Corning (GLW) down 9.3%, Lucent (LU) down 6%, Cisco (CSCO) down 6%, and Tellabs (TLAB) down 4.6%. Mind if I throw a butt joke in here? Anyway you look at it, it was just a big fat downer.

Contributing to my big fat downer is macaroni and cheese. I love it. Sometimes I add salt and pepper, sometimes I douse it with ketchup, sometimes I put it on my Oscar Mayer hot dog, and other times I omit the cheese and slap on a ton of butter. Kraft Macaroni and Cheese is staple in every kitchen and Kraft knows it. Kraft Foods (KFT) debuted this week as the second biggest public offering ever. They finally decided to break off from parent Philip Morris (MO), most famous for their beer and cigarette distribution. Kraft also makes Oreos and Planters peanuts which have been known to cause my butt to turn to Jell-O, another one of their big sellers. They sold 280 million shares at $31 each. This was originally set at $27 a share, but was raised due to butt cravings everywhere.

Whatever you do, don't eat anything while driving and talking on your cell phone. You'd drop the cell and that's exactly what Nokia (NOK) did this week -- dropped. Nokia, the world's largest maker of mobile phones tumbled to the floor, right next there next to the gas pedal (don't you hate when that happens) on Tuesday. It's the lowest they've been in 52 weeks. They came out with a major profit warning, saying that earnings would be lower than expected due to a slower cell-phone growth. Now if only that could somehow translate into slower cellulite growth, I'd be happy. Either way, the market didn't like the news and the stock dropped 19%. Ugh, the Chicks own Nokia.

Add McDonalds to the slowed earnings for second quarter. No jokes about contributing to the cellulite here. And quickly (and I'll tell you in a sec why I have to be quick), some other market news: Procter & Gamble is taking a 1.2 billion dollar hit in restructuring charges. Changes to their more than 300 brands cost more than they thought. Woops. Also, Delta (the airline Chick Jeanette took to see her daughter Chick Jana this week) expects to report a second-quarter loss of $140 - $160 million because of a weakening economy and the lengthy pilots' strike at Comair Inc.

ON a brighter note, Oracle reports on Monday, rumor has it, it's good news. Keep your fingers crossed; maybe it's our lottery ticket in the drawer!!

I must run, it's my 16-year wedding anniversary, and my groom wants to take me to dinner. He's so cute; for our anniversary he had the book cover of Chicks Laying Nest Eggs framed for me. I bought him a pair of shoes.

Closing Market Numbers