web analytics

Monthly Archives: January 2009

The Next Apple?

January 14, 2009
By

So how do you find a hot stock? Watch charts, of course, and pay more attention when you find a young unknown company that’s growing fast. In 2006, Crocs (CROX) was the ticket.  People thought their shoes were funny looking, but they sold like hotcakes, profit margins were excellent considering the industry, and as perceptions improved, the stock doubled in its first year. In 2007, First Solar (FSLR) was a huge winner.  Virtually unknown at the start of the year with just 50 mutual fund owners (and in a relatively tiny industry), its screaming growth and a public eager...

Read more »

Steve Jobs, Apple and AAPL

January 13, 2009
By

Today’s first topic is Steve Jobs, Apple and AAPL. Steve Jobs, of course, is the man at the head of the company.  Apple is the company itself.  And AAPL is the stock. They are three separate entities.  But investors often make the mistake of confusing them, and that can be dangerous. For example, the media in recent weeks have focused on Steve Jobs and his health (first there was pancreatic cancer and now there’s an unspecified “hormone imbalance”), and worried about the effect on the company should Steve’s health problems force him to step down.  Others have wondered how...

Read more »

10 Investing Resolutions for the New Year

January 12, 2009
By

I like to write down some New Year’s investing resolutions every January, and I think you might get a valuable nugget or two out of them.  So here are 10 to consider (in no particular order): 1. Cut ALL losses short.  You’ve read enough about this one, from me and others, so I’ll just leave it as is. 2. Calculate your risk for every trade before (or as soon as) you execute it.  That means you’re effectively telling yourself, “I’m buying XYZ at 50 a share, and I’m buying $10,000 worth of it.  If it falls 15%, I’m selling,...

Read more »

A Solid Insurance Investment

January 9, 2009
By

Recently, I’ve recommended genetic medicine companies, for-profit schools and infrastructure rebuilding companies, and those are still the three most attractive sectors right now, based on both chart action and fundamental prospects for growth. But there’s another group of stocks whose prospects are better than average in the next bull market, and those are stocks that have come public in the past year or two and have not enjoyed a major uptrend yet.  Stocks like these, in a nutshell, have no major selling pressures … and if their companies have good growth prospects, the stocks have major upside potential, as...

Read more »

The Case for Gallons per 10,000 Miles

January 8, 2009
By

I recently read an article in The New York Times that claimed we’d save more fuel as a country if we stopped measuring miles-per-gallon and began measuring gallons per 10,000 miles.  The sentence that got my attention was this: “The jump from 10 to 20 m.p.g., for example, saves more gas than the one from 20 to 40 m.p.g.  The move from 10 to 11 m.p.g. can save nearly as much as the leap from 33 to 50 m.p.g.” On the surface, it doesn’t seem to make sense, and I assume that’s because we’ve been brainwashed (conditioned) into thinking...

Read more »