Coca Cola Index of American Consumers

I have been following our current stock market gyrations and began noticing one thing. Why don’t we have an index of companies that directly affect American consumers? It’s nice to know how each sector is doing but who is following American consumers?

If no one is willing to follow, I will. So began my compilation of fifteen or so companies that affect American consumers directly. Sin Coca Cola was the first company on the list, and their symbol KO happens to be my last name, I called it a Coca Cola Index.

The list follows:

KO	Cocacola	46.13
McD	McDonald	54.5
WAL	Walmart	52.69
HD	HomeDepot	20.74
GM	General Motors	6.46
GE	General Electric	19.96
GLD	Spdr Gold Trust	83.24
OIL	Crude Oil Return	44.73
C	Citigroup	17.15
HPQ	HP Compaq	40.02
LLY	Ely Lilly	34.12
FRE	Freddie Mac	1.12
VZ	Verizon	27.96
CPO	Corn Products	21.02
SGG	Sugar Return	39.28
JNJ	Johnson & Johnson	62.89
MSFT	Microsoft	23.86
V	Visa	51.45

 

These are companies that directly impact our lives. By following this list, we can closely watch how our consumers are doing. As of today Oct 15, 2008, combined index was 647

Without doing a complex weighing of each company, a simple addition of each stock should give us a clear idea of consumer health. Matter of fact, I am considering a small pool of fund to invest in these companies to promote invest in consumers of America.

One thing missing from the list is Starbucks and that’s intentional. I hope anyone spending five dollars for a cop of coffee in this economy should be ignored from the society.

I hope I am on the right track and hope to refine the list to correctly reflect American consumer economy.

Economics 101

Current situation in economics forces us to think about the immediate concerns we all have; prices, 401k, job security, etc. However, I believe that we will repeat these mistakes unless we know exactly what caused it in the first place. So, as a normal Joe Sixpack out on the streets, I think about what went wrong, and who made it happen, a lot.

The first one that gets my bulls-eye vote is G.W.B. our beloved president, not the George Washington Bridge. He drove us into two wars, spending ten billion dollars each week, while not minding his own store. All the sharks were in water and yet, he threw us into the pool. Speaking of sharks, traders of complex financial instruments were all there to steal and cheat us while GWB’s eyes were on Iraq. More infuriating, he didn’t even do a good job at that! These sharks are the second cause of the current situation. You can call them brokerage houses or stock traders, I call them sharks.

Third cause was our greed. My Aunt, for example, bought two condos with money taken out on her first home. Rates were low and house prices were rising. It was something that couldn’t go wrong. It was stupid easy. She was swept up on the frenzy of easy money boom and ended up with three homes, two of which can’t be repaid back. We all were a part of quick bucks envy insanity. We all looked up to anyone smart enough to make quick bucks and flaunt it. The envy drove more people into doing it. This was all our doing.

I think it is far too late to point finger at anyone. However, I believe, it is not too late to let most of these banks fail. If they are not smart enough to see a scam, they don’t deserve to be rescued. How is it that our gov’t was sleeping at the wheel while our country was rolling down the hill at 90 MPH? Is this how a market corrects itself? Or is it that now, we all are socialist.