The Blog of Burgher Jon

Steelers Defense this Season:

• First in points allowed per game by .7 points over second place and by 8.0 points better tan the median.
• First in yards per game allowed by 23.9 yards over second place and by 122.2 yards better than the median.
• First in pass yards per game allowed by 22.8 yards over second place and by 48.5 yards better then the median.
• Second in rush yards 3.4 yards behind first and 30.0 yards better then the median

Though work and family have given me a run for my money the last few days, I am indeed still quite alive. I apologize for the massive delay in posting, but I’m sure you all managed to survive without me.

Now, the tasty bits of cabbage:

• Burgher’s farewell from Bram has a peculiar comment thread. The Judge and O have some hilarious musings. Maybe the Judge was Burgher, after all, it is widely assumed the Burgher had inside information, and who has more info then a Judge?
• How bad are cell phone carriers? Check out this NY Times piece that speculates how much money they must be making on text messages. A text message is so small you could send it by carrier pigeon for $.20 and still make a margin. Ridiculous.
• Interesting post over at The World of Threes. Keep an eye on him, he’s writing some good stuff. Three, any chance you make it so I can read your whole post in my RSS reader?

Penn State Women’s Volleyball Highlights This Year:

• The title’s is there second in as many years.
• The team has four first-team all-Americans. FOUR, there’s only 6 (7 with the libero) players on the court at a time in volleyball.
• National Player of the Year is a Penn Stater, and only a Junior.
• Oh ya, and she won player of the year last year too. If Tim Tebow played women’s volleyball, he’d be Nicole Fawcett.
• 38-0
• #1 Seed from wire to wire
• They lost two sets all season (volleyball is best of 5 sets), TWO. That makes them 114-2. That means they lost one set for every 57 that they played.

Congratulations ladies, from a guy who once was an avid fan (hey, you have to do something while you wait for the bars to get humming, why not watch some world class volleyball?)

This wrapup is little because little happened. The Dow Jones was up 0.17% and the Pittsburgh Fund was up 0.45%. It’s nice to be doing almost three times as well as the market, but I’d prefer to be doing it when the market is up 5%. Individually:

• It’s worth noting that US Steel may have been halted on their ridiculous run, actually down on the week.
• Heinz was up, mostly because of the dividend.
• PNC was down (but up from where bought it), is only a buck or so off its 52 week low.

Investing Pittsburgh is a regular part of this blog. It details the ins and outs of a mock portfolio of Pittsburgh Stocks invested and managed by me. For a list of all of the previous “Investing Pittsburgh” posts, click here.

PNC’s stock has fallen over 37% since the first time I wrote it up in this blog as an exception to the downward market trend. The company has remained primarily the same, the major differences being that it has taken a few hits on anticipated loan defaults and it has acquired National City. I believe that given the sweetheart deal PNC was given, the National City merger will be a successful one. Furthermore, I believe that PNC will continue to be viewed as one of the few banks to have fairly low impact from the sub-prime mess. With that in mind, I want to add PNC to the portfolio.

The problem is, I’m not sure when to do it. The stock took a huge hit yesterday, and I think it will recover some today, but I’m not sure it has hit its floor. For this reason I’m going to take a conservative position, only buying 40 shares. I’ll complete the position with another 40 when I’m more confident that the stock is rebounding.

Also this morning, I’m selling roughly a third of the position in US Steel. I’m doing this for three reasons, all three have to do with the stock’s 64% return since we purchased it. First, because of the large return, the stock now occupies a higher percentage of the portfolio then I’d like any one investment to occupy (a full 10% more then Heinz, the second largest position). Second, I’m not sure how much short term growth the stock will bring. I still think it’s a hold, but I don’t want a large portion of the portfolio tied up in a stock without much short term upside, not when there are so many bargains in the market. Third, as I have mentioned, I want to maintain a large cash position to hedge any huge market drops (which I think are still possible).

There are your moves for the morning. In case you’re keeping track at home, that leaves us with the following positions (weird that three of the four positions currently have a value with no change following the decimal):

PPG (NYSE: PPG) – 40 Shares – $1780.00 – 10.3% of Portfolio
US Steel (NYSE: X) – 75 Shares – $3159.00 – 18.2% of Portfolio
HJ Heinz (NYSE: HNZ) – 75 Shares – $2946.00 – 17.0% of Portfolio
PNC Financial Services (NYSE: PNC) – $1839.20 – 10.6% of Portfolio
Cash – $7597.50 – 43.9% of Portfolio

Investing Pittsburgh is a regular part of this blog. It details the ins and outs of a mock portfolio of Pittsburgh Stocks invested and managed by me. For a list of all of the previous “Investing Pittsburgh” posts, click here.