Call me a hater if you like: I find it bizarre that the participation rate slipped from 64.0% last month to 63.7% this month, which is the lowest it's been since at least 2002. Yeah, some people are retiring, but if unemployment really dropped from over 10% to 8.3%, I'd expect to see some rise in participation, or at least no drop.

As far as favorite candidates, I wish to hell that Huntsman was still in the running, but I'll take Obama over either Newt or Mitt!!

And regardless of the news, SPWR rose from ~6.6 to 6.94, and GOOG rose from 6.85 to 6.95, so I made some money scalp-trading. Hoping for either some bad news or some good news next week, maybe a little of both. Volatility is my best friend, and it makes for fun times.

Nor am I crying about the lower participation rate -- fewer people that can qual for a mortgage, so I have more of a chance to snap up some distressed property before the government buy-to-rent program snaps into full swing. (Right now, they're testing with 500-1000 homes and only in a few markets. To qualify investors, test sales, and evaluate the results will take 6-12 months, which is just dandy peachy with me. Govno-mint working slow is to my advantage, since I don't have enough dough to qualify to buy thousands of homes at once, and anyway, don't want to be a "partner of Fannie Mae" in a "new investment vehicle." Prefer to be my own investment vehicle.)