JJC:   What did we tell you yesterday, at the beginning of the show?  We told you the market was too low...  We said you shouldn't be selling...   We said the negativity would produce higher, not lower, prices...

We think the market can still go higher.  We're not done.  And we hope you use yesterday's weakness to load the boat with our faves...  gold, oil, and agriculture...

Gold going to $1600...  Natural gas going to $16...  The grain complex going to $16...  It's the Sweet Sixteen time...

Now, of course, all of these were fabulous today...

But, tonight, we're done telling ourselves how great we are...  Tonight, we defrock our least favorite asset...

Tonight, we celebrate the slow regicide of king cash!...

With every rate cut, cash becomes a less and less attractive place to stash your money, because Bernanke's cutting the short rates, which are the rates that banks pay out to you as the depositor.  He's already taken things low enough that you'd be insane to keep money in a certificate of deposit, or a money market account...  and, with every additional rate cut, cash becomes - you got it - trashier and trashier!...

This is the cut-by-cut beheading of king cash... and, yeah, Bernanke's just as bad at performing the execution as...  well, he's managing the execution just as badly as he does everything else...

.  .  .  .  .

First up is... Consolidated Edison Inc. (ED)!

This is, as far as I'm concerned, the single-best electric utility in the nation to own... It is, by far, the best utility stock.

ED has a 5.7% yield.  And, remember, since dividends get favorable taxation...  it's great for shareholders after the 15% tax on dividends, so your 5.7% yield on ED becomes a (real, after-tax) 4.8% yield...  still better than a long bond gives you, even before its much higher tax rate...

Oh, and last I looked, a 30-year doesn't have the upside versus a common stock...  You know, Treasury doesn't raise the interest rate they pay you on that bond... but ED just raised its dividend for the 34th consecutive year... not big, alright... half a penny, or about 0.9%... in January...

But, c'mon... think about it... a better deal than cash, interest rates don't go up - they don't pay you more interest...  Here, you've got a chance for it to go up, but not have the bond go down which, in this case, happens to be ED...  

The best reason to buy this stock, dividends aside, is that utilities are classic recession stocks...  They have virtually no economic sensitivity...

And the fundamentals?...  Like I said, best of breed...

Back on January 24th, ED reported a fabulously better-than-expected quarter. They earned 76 cents a share, beating expectations by a massive 15 cents. And, believe me, that's not easy to do, when you're a heavily-regulated utility...

They just had very good price increases... but, coming from this company, it's no surprise. They beat thanks to the just a little bit of rate increases... They also beat thanks to higher heating demand.

While they didn't get the rate increase they wanted recently, I think they'll still get enough to cover another small boost in the dividend next year...