I will be away on summer holiday for around a month, so blogging will be nonexistent, linking will be light, and tweeting will be sporadic at best.

Newsletter subscribers, never fear, despite being in the wilds for many weeks armed only with a pad of graph paper and a pencil, I will continue to get the weekly email to you one way or another.

Here’s a 15-minute chart of FTI showing its recent reversal. The Box never gives a conceptually bad idea, the trick is executing it. Good trading ideas are a dime a dozen (almost as common as financial bloggers in pajamas), but entering and managing a trade is the hard part. Always ask to see that guru’s trade confirmation slip!

I follow three bond ETFs for the core portfolio of my newsletter: Investment Grade Corporate Bonds (LQD), Inflation-protected Bonds (TIP), and the Long-term Treasury Bonds (TLT). In recent months subscribers and I got out of many stock funds and bought all three of these bond funds (I described the timing of the TLT buy here).

I just follow the money and it’s been shifting away from risk since last May, definitely getting more “defensive.” I’ll leave it to other (double) dips to speculate on why this is happening.

Hormel is trading at an all-time high. I know this because every day I review uglychart.com’s unique, free list of stocks trading at all-time highs. Ugly provides this invaluable service for nothing, so go bookmark that page and make sure to click on a payday loan link every time you visit.

Hormel is doing a good business in China. I know this based on the amount of refrigerated shelf space they have in the grocery stores I visit here in Beijing. I just learned from skimming their last 10-K that they have a research and development operation in Shanghai — interesting. Investing in food stocks makes sense given increasing standards of living. It’s something to chew on anyway (yuck, yuck).

(Imagine the day when every Chinese person eats like an American.)

Here’s a trading idea spit out by the old Box. Standard voodoo trading set-up. You can search the site to find hundreds of old posts about these kind of trades, even some animated ones. This old dinosaur will one day start making proper screencasts.

The Box faithfully sits on the desk cranking out set-ups day after day which go ignored. Think of those old ticker tape machines with a big mound of paper piled beneath, that’s what my desk looks like.

As you can see from the chart below, my entries and exits in Clean Energy (PBW) have been less than pristine. People don’t pay me $200 a year because I get everything right; they stick with me because I never cover up or gloss over my failings. When prices go sideways there isn’t a trend following system on the planet that doesn’t take it in the neck — my subscribers understand this.

I have a bad heart so this company’s product interests me: an implantable 50 cubic centimeter blood pump capable of pumping up to 10 liters of blood per minute. I’m not at the stage where I need this thing, but I might be one day. Pretty neat.

I enjoyed a bottle of Sam Adams the other day here in Beijing. It’s not easy to find but there was some at the “foreigner” grocery store. The price of a bottle of decent imported beer seems to be fixed at RMB 11.90 (US$1.76), which makes life hard for a cheapskate who enjoys good beer.

MillerCoors and AnheuserBusch Inbev together account for over 94% of US domestic beer production. Boston Beer doesn’t really compete with these guys; SAM is trying to become the leading brewer in the “Better Beer” category — they’re currently in third place (behind imports Corona and Heineken). They sell to approximately 400 wholesale distributors and have a sales force of around 265 people. As you can see from the chart, they’re doing something right.

Related: Maximum Freshness and Flavor

I mentioned in yesterday’s post on Agribusiness (MOO) that Brazil (EWZ) turned up at the same time in December 2008. I’d be more pleased about that entry and the January 2010 exit if we didn’t take a nasty 8.5% whipsaw loss later in 2010, but that’s the nature of trend following. Anyone who tells you it’s all smooth sailing is trying to sell you something.

I make it very difficult to subscribe to my newsletter. There’s no instant paypal button here. I don’t want anyone to do anything impulsive. You have to email me, and then I send you some old issues to look over, and then you have to email me again at which time I tell you to sleep on it. The next day you have to email me again, and I’ll try to discourage you some more. Eventually after the eighth or ninth email exchange I’ll grudgingly hand over the paypal link. This is the way I do business, high-pressure huckster that I am.