Today, and the past few days have been hectic for the market. The price of oil keeps rising and I need to sell my gas-guzzling van. So do we panic yet and where is the market going? Over at HipEgg we did a review of the Dow. I don’t know if a TA is the (more…)
The market has come a long way since its last major crash — an event that transferred much wealth from the ignorant to the informed. It almost feels like deja vu when you see VCs lining up again to fund startups, or companies commanding unreasonable stock price multiples based on little more than hope for the future. Don’t you wonder what we’re not knowing this time around? I don’t wish to convince everyone to be value investors, but what if there’s a way to play a popular trend, but also err on the safer side of risk to avoid the extreme volatilities?
Renault saved Nissan in 1999. The partnership now boasts the highest profit margins in the industry. GM took a $10.6 billion plunge last year. Can the powerhouse French / Japanese duo rescue the US’s largest auto maker?
Devaluation of currency is not uncommon in other countries, but so far has been moderate in the U.S (in part because the dollar is the world’s currency). I recently discussed this in an article titled Speculating on the Future of the Dollar. But given our massive debt, budget deficit and trade deficit, a significant drop of the dollar against other world currencies (and corresponding increase in inflation as all types of imports become more expensive) becomes a possibility.
How can you protect your portfolio from a significant slide in the dollar?
Ah, the tenbagger. That mythical creature from stock trading lore that grows 10 times in price. This is what dreams are made of. I like a quote from Jason Kelly’s book, The Neatest Little Guide to Stock Market Investing. “It takes only $10,000 and two tenbaggers to become a millionaire.” It’s simple in concept really. Find a fast growing company, hold on to it for 5 or 6 years, and sell it for a long-term windfall. The equivalent of 50-60% annually. It’s every investor-boy’s fantasy but mysteriously elusive. In fact there may only be a few stocks a year that turn out to be tenbaggers. So the question is how do you find them? Maybe I can help.
“Is now the time to jump into MSFT now that it is trading above its 30 day MA?” That was the question presented to me recently.
Before I go into the answer I wanted to take a moment to introduce myself. I am a regular poster over at HipEgg. On that site I post under the pen name Jym Khana. My real name is Kevin Hamrick and I have been involved in investing for, well, many years. I even spent a very little time working for a couple of the big brokerage facilities. Regardless of that fact, everything I am presenting is only my opinion. I am no longer working with or for any financial institution and if I post on a stock that I own I will make that clear. In this case, I don’t own any MSFT stock.
Phil Town took an email recently about naked put options. A Rule #1 reader was trying use naked puts to make a little extra money while he waited for a stock to fall to a reasonable MOS (margin of safety) price. It’s an interesting tactic, and Phil has a great response.
Trading strategies are great, but a more pressing issue for me was how this article got me thinking about these so-called naked options. Why are they “naked”?
You guys may know that I have a position in Crystallex (AMEX: KRY). If you follow the stock, you know that yesterday was a bad day. There was a press release today, which speaks of… well let me just quote some of it:
If you follow the stock, you know that yesterday was a bad day. There was this press release, which speaks of… well let me just quote some of it:
Crystallex International Corporation … announced today that, subject to receipt of all necessary regulatory and shareholder approvals, it has agreed to amend the terms of certain unlisted common share purchase warrants … held by two holders in the United States. The proposed amendment is in relation to 2,272,727 Warrants originally issued by the Corporation as part of an issuance of 4,545,455 special warrants (each special warrant consisting of one common share and one-half of one Warrant) completed on August 29, 2003. Each Warrant entitles the holder thereof to acquire one common share in the capital of the Corporation at an exercise price of US$2.75 per share until September 15, 2006.
Read on for much much more…
We here at InvestorGeeks lean towards the side of “fundamental” “investing”, but as I’ve been reading up on technical analysis for my upcoming articles I’ve run into some interesting reading. When we invest in a market, we want to know the players. We spend a lot of time trying to figure out what the institutional (more…)
Last week, we were watching Microsoft’s stock and hoping it could break through the resistance level at $24. If it did that, the stock was set for a nice break into the mid-to-high twenties. Instead, the stock dropped along with the general market and tech sectors. Closing price yesterday was around $22.50.
