Procter Puts

(c) 2010 F. Bruce Abel

OK, I'm siting up here in Canada with excellent wireless link and nothing but nature sounds to disturb the Procter conference call August 3rd at 8:30 am.

Sat through the whole hour and a half.  Smooth, incredibly well-done conference call.  And I had boned up on the jargon (organic sales, FX).

Procter is betting on the if-come!  Maybe that's always the case, I don't generally listen to their conference calls.  But this reminds me of the Dirk Jagger (sp?) years.  If so maybe that print at 39 during the Flash Crash wasn't so out of line.

I had bought the puts because of a deep-seated feeling that the Euro was going to be a problem and the pin-action from the Clorox, or was it Colgate, miss of last week.

From the conference call I gleaned that the Euro was not a problem.  And Moeller does not "dig" hedging, so P&G glided out of Euro problem by the natural action of the market on Euros (back above 130).  He did say FX and commodities would be a headwind going forward, so there's something to be learned about how their accounting works on this.  Makes Procter another Enron -- pretty impossible to figure what's going on.

Yes, thank God! I made money on the puts.