For believers only ... (ouchie!)

By Thom Calandra

TIBURON, Calif. (TC) -- Good morning,voldy morts. ThomInAtor Bullets for all who believe we should be practicing the principles of Cracking The Buyside Code during this market mayhem in stocks, credits, comps and cotton candy:

• Financial stocks are getting hammered. Those who bet against banks are raking it in right now. I rarely touch banks or other money institutions, as I believe most bankers are just doing their jobs and little more. Still, a big shmacka-da-bum bounceback is in the works, me thinks. The so-called UYG, says my ETF master around the corner here in my neck of the woods, is one way to BELIEVE IN BANKS. The fund acts something on the order of double the gains and losses of the Dow Jones U.S. Financials basket. The UYG sells now for below $29 an ETF share. I own a tiny bit of the basket and already am losing money. We all pay for our beliefs. I believe the world is a good place -- yet that is one belief that pays me! So there, voldies~ ...

• Uranium is still 'working,' as they say. I have just begun buying shares of Western Uranium, a Canadian company that hopes to spin off a lithium unit in coming weeks. The symbol is WUC in Canada and WURNF in Schwab-land here in the USA. (Schwab, by the way, just started real-time Canada stock quotes, though priced in USA dollars.) An acquaintance of mine, Edward Flood, who now lives in London, helped to start the uranium company. Ed, a geologist by education and trade and now, oopsie, a banker at Haywood Securities, tells me ce jour from Toronto, where he is attending the PDAC gathering of miners and other hard rockers: "Thom, the Western Uranium is planning to spin out the lithium assets (24 billion pounds of lithium carbonate currently priced at $3.70 per pound) to shareholders of record." The date of record, when one receives lithium shares for each Western Uranium share, has yet to be set. (Und no, I have received no compensation or discounted shares, not even a bottle of wine or a soy burger, for my admission of purchase! So please do not Lynch me. * Also, if Western Uranium shares happen to rise in the time between now and the one-for-one lithium spinoff, I might consider selling my stake if I am in the money.) By the way, I have never owned shares of a uranium exploration or production company. So this is a first. Oy! As I said, if Western Uranium were to gain some ground here in the next week or two, I personally would think about selling it and buying some swimming goggles for my laps at Strawberry Pool up the block.

• Finally, if you believe in my new nonfiction project, Cracking The Buyside Code, now is the time to buy the next frontier in genomic tools. All of the DNA master equipment builders are getting their shmacka-da-bum. Pick one you believe in and hold it for a few years. Most of the world -- my former audience from The Calandra Report and those kind enough to check in once in a while -- know I am a believer in makers of genomic tools and medical diagnostics for cancer and other diseases. As Alan Greenspan says in his new book (worth a read for some terrific anecdotes about Washington), companies and technologies that displace other, older companies and technologies usually have staying power. Genomic tools are the building blocks for personalized medicine. That's the ThomInAtor prescription for today, I guess.

Hey, feel free to leave comments. Later, voldy morts! (That's a very young pic of my mom up there, circa who knows, 1945?)

* Heh, heh ... could not resist the pun. I interviewed Peter Lynch twice in my career as a journalist, and both times he was terrific. His colleagues speak highly of him, and I, for one, found and still find his enthusiasm for new ideas 'infectious.'

-- Thom Calandra at ThomCalandra.com