Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Swine Flu Called Off: Smithfield Up 42% in Two Days (SFD) "See You in September"

After closing at $8.61 on Friday the nation's largest pork producer is among the best NYSE performers over the last 48 hours. [at minimum in the smoked and/or cured meat category -ed]
Here's today's action:
12.25 +2.38‎ (24.11%‎) May 5 4:00pm ET
Open: 9.79
High: 12.84
Low: 9.73

Volume: 16,823,893
Avg Vol: 3,299,000
Mkt Cap: 1.76B


Last week I left a comment at ClusterStock:
The story was out Sunday night. We decided to pass.
The frission of scurrilous rumor-mongering is so hard to resist that I had to look at a picture of a hog while replaying a snip of Chris Mathews saying "...My, I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don’t have that too often."

Nice touch with the question mark in the headline.
Because their story "Is A Smithfield Farm Ground Zero For Swine Flu? (SFD)" seemed to conflate the H1N1 with the filth of a hog operation. Making the same leap as, for example, "Profiteers helped to cause swine flu threat" from Socialist Worker Online.

Now if only I had had the sense to make the contrarian play. Oh well, according to the epidemiologist poobahs we'll get another, better, chance this fall.
(Sorry Henry but when am I ever again going to have the chance to juxtapose ClusterStock and SWO?)

Here are The Tempos (I thought there was a Ramones cover on YouTube but I don't see it, sorry):