Airbus is in deep do-do. The company that was heralded as the role model of a European Corporation, is well, getting bogged down in the reality of Europe. If there is one thing that the European governments and the American Federal government share it’s getting bogged down in details and bickering. Conventional wisdom says that Airbus is a dud stock! After all there are financial problems, A380 shipping problems, and let’s not even talk about the hen pecking between France and Germany.
Kimber made a post about why Mutual Funds Aren’t for Losers, which was a good article and I see her point of view, however, in this case, I thought I would show the other side of Mutual Funds, which, in my opinion, suck to the point where vacuums should be named after them, or maybe they could rename the Chicago Cubs the Chicago Mutual Funds.
It doesn’t have to get all hot and heavy and technical here on InvestorGeeks all the time! If you tell me an investor with good temperament needs a serious attitude every second, I’ll counter that by saying sometimes you really need to let loose and have fun! Even Warren Buffett gets crazy once in a while; even if his idea of crazy fun may be playing a ukelele, playing bridge or eating Dairy Queen ice-cream.
Investing should be an enjoyable experience, perhaps even fun for you! This is NOT the first time that InvestorGeeks have reviewed sites that try to bring to fun into stock picking with social websites. But I don’t believe my fellow InvestorGeeks have reviewed Motley Fools CAPS; which I believe is on the right track to injecting some fun into a mundane task.
My recent “discussions” with fellow InvestorGeek, Steve, about “baseball cards” as a metaphor for stocks have prompted more thinking on my part. Isn’t that what you wanted, Steve? Actually, I’ve already known that trading stocks is very much like trading baseball cards. I’ve already blogged about the same metaphor many times.
Though Steve and I disagree on whether dividend paying stocks are more than just baseball cards, another point of mutual agreement is that fact that most investors cannot affect any changes with their meager number of voting shares. Whether you own 1,000 or 10,000, or 100,000 shares of a company (even penny stocks), your ownership is no more than a drop in the ocean. But there are investors who do affect positive change through shareholder activism. Notable names include Warren Buffett (Coca-Cola), Carl Icahn (Time Warner), Kirk Kerkorian (General Motors), Ed Lampert (Sears/K-Mart). What if you followed them instead?
Most of you are probably looking at stocks and thinking about moving averages, technical analysis, and probably running some scanner application to find the latest and greatest stock to invest in. Maybe some of you will use fundamental analysis to figure out what the cash flow or earnings per share is. Regardless of what kind of investor you are you will use some kind of indicator.
In the technical analysis or fundamental analysis world there are literally oodles and oodles of indicators. Yet if you thought about it the indicators digest the same data over and over again in different manners.
I’ll discuss why traditional technical indicators and fundamentals can be misleading. Then I’ll give you two macro-economic indicators I’ve been using lately: In-house software, and Remanufacturing.
In case you doubt my membership in InvestorGeeks, I love movie trivia! What’s the highlight scene in James Dean’s 1950s cult movie, Rebel Without a Cause? You are right if your answer is the game called chicken, where Dean and his rival each drove a car towards a cliff. There are many variations of the chicken game, but in the movie, the game is won by jumping from the car later than the other player; but still in time to avert the cliff. For investors, it sometimes feels like your rival is Mr. Market daring you to jump out of your car first. The person who blinks first loses, but if you don’t blink, you might lose even more when you fly off the cliff! Sounds familiar?
I bet many investors out there have had the situation where you did all your homework before buying a stock and yet it still tanked 10%, 20% after you bought a position. It happens to the best of investors. What’s a person to do in this situation? Should you buy more? Should you get out early?
Sticking with the baseball theme, this article is going to look at the fascination with people wanting to find that ‘home run’ stock. It’s stupid. Quit doing it. It’s unnecessary and a really bad strategy.
…
Hi. Enough with the greetings, I’m not here to make friends, I’m here to make you think! Everything you have been told about the Stock Market is bullshit and I’m here to prove it to you. There are a lot of topics I want to cover and instead of just saying “Mutual Funds Suck”, “Diversification is stupid”, “Buy and Hold should be called Buy and Hope”, “Notice how every ‘lesson’ about the Market begins with ‘If you had…”, “A stock has to go up to make money”, etc I’m going to just pick a topic today and I’ll get to those others sooner than later.
Today’s topic is: You don’t own anything but a piece of paper with ink on it.
Here goes… my first attempt at a video stock review.
I take a look at Advanced Environmental Recycling Technology (NASDAQ:AERTA), which has had a recent sell-off due to a factory delay. Is this a buying opportunity or should we be jumping ship too?
Yesterday’s WSJ (subscription required) reported that Yahoo’s CEO, Terry Semel, hinted of a slowdown in search ad revenue growth. Significant news – search ad revenue growth has always been on the incline. His statement preceded a 12% drop in the stock price for YHOO (rival GOOG took a hit as well, dipping the price blow (more…)
