Hot Market or Sitting on Your Hands?

This market sucks.  And that's why I love the markets so much...sometimes they encourage you to go read a long non-business book, play a PopCap.com game, or take a long hike with your kids.

For reading, I've been reading J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan to the kids for bedtime reading.  It's free via the iBook store, and it's a cool un-adapted-for-new-audiences story. For PopCap I'm stuck on Plants vs. Zombies, a delightfully maddening title which can be a source of wasted hours...or a rapid training ground for young minds eager to unknowingly learn the military arts of asset allocation, supply logistics and battlefield strategy (that's how I explain it to the boy's Mom... ;-).  And finally, hiking, well heck, its Summer!

Personally, with the markets, I'm finally in a holding pattern.  No buying, no selling...and it's about time too.  I've been way too "day trader" (though, not really), and not enough Berkshire Hathaway buy-and-hold.  All my options have months before expiration (hopefully that's good), and stocks are locked down to the bare essentials: FB -- I bought in a 43, but kept buying down, so that I'm about even now -- and CROX, which I've considered a long-term holding in a fairly sound globally-based retail gamble.

Now, having said that, I asked my friend what he thought of things - here's what he said:

me:  What's the hottest game in this market? new housing? or sitting on one's hands? :-)
he:  companies that are mainly in u.s. markets that provide dividends.
me:  may I quote you on that for this hot little finance blog I'm helping with? (I won't use names...)
he:  sure
he:  what's the link?
me:  you may have heard of it:  http://swansandcrows.blogspot.com
he:  hmm
he:  i've heard about them somewhere.....

What do you think - are American dividend plays where all the actions at, or housing (as new home sales were up a bit for May), or AAPL (not RIMM), or nothing at all, sitting on your hands? Leave a comment, let us know.

..TS.