(Note: I do not own any shares of AMZN. I do own some shares of WDC.)
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Amazon beats estimates
(Note: I do not own any shares of AMZN. I do own some shares of WDC.)
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stocks
Missed this headline somehow...
In any case, WDC announced their results with EPS of $0.06/share (net income of 14M). That's adjusted for restructuring charges, so pre-adjustment, EPS was $0.55/share (net income of $123M). Just a quick peek at the market, WDC is up $1.50 (10.42%). Pretty nice. My only lament was that I didn't buy a larger lot; I only have 13 shares. I had purchased WDC with my proceeds of when Budweiser merged with In-Bev. Ever since then, I've told myself to try to aim for trades of 50 shares or more.
Anyway, WDC is my strongest performing holding, and I am slightly kicking myself for not having at least bought 50 shares. But I am also very glad for not selling WDC to get Seagate to try and get another dividend-paying stock. They're having some problems with one of their products. WDC, on the other hand, just announced their 2TB Caviar drive. And I still like their Passport external drives very much. Very sleek. It's even in the Apple store, and anything blessed by the sacred fruit can't be that bad right?
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stocks
Monday, January 26, 2009
Pfizer to buy Wyeth
The only issue I have with this is that investors will try to correct for this gap. Most of the time, the buying company's stock drops since an acquisition is costly. This drop will then affect the end result of the acquisition since part of the deal is 0.985 shares of PFE. That's a variable that you can't control. So if one takes the time to write out an equation and solve it, you could probably come up with an equation that would tell you how high PFE prices would need to be relative to WYE's price to see if it's worthwhile to buy before the acquisition. But for now, it seems like an automatic gain of close to 10%.
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stocks
Friday, January 23, 2009
Google leads tech sector
(Note: I do not own any shares of GOOG. Too rich for me.)
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stocks
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Google expected to post earnings
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stocks
Mob pyschology theory for stocks holding up
This morning, I told one of my friends that Apple would go up. I just checked and as of 10:40AM, AAPL is up to $88.10, a gain of 6.36%. It's not much, especially since AAPL moved a bit yesterday from news that they are being investigated about the whole Jobs thing (kinda silly to spend the energy on that, but whatever). But as I've said in a previous post, losing Jobs does not mean they will sell less MacBooks and iPods. It doesn't work that way for a company as innovative as they are.
In any case, I'm gonna keep applying my gut feelings to certain headlines and see if the market responds relatively the same way. By the way, even though AAPL is up, rest of market is down, so that 6.36% should be considered a blessing. Now you might ask why I didn't buy AAPL? Well, I told myself to stop buying little bits of stock and to at least buy 25+ shares (preferably 50+) to make any trade worthwhile for me. Commission really eats away at any gains, so it's silly to run around buying 10 shares here and there (although for AAPL, 10 shares yesterday would've been $800+). So I have an excuse to just lay low and test my gut feelings. I just wonder, sometimes, how things would be different if I had $10 - 25K lying around and I made the gambles (I say gambles, cause that's what they were) on AIG, FRE, PALM, and AAPL when I thought of them. Hmm...
(Note: I do not own any shares of AIG, PALM, or AAPL. I do, however, own some nominal shares of FRE.)
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stocks
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Mob psychology
Now I don't know about the rest of you, but I'd like to think Jobs isn't the only reason Apple is as successful as it is today. Sure, he is mostly responsible for the innovation and success Apple has enjoyed of late. However, I'd like to think that Jobs is business-savvy enough to surround himself with other smart people such that there is not a total collapse should Jobs ever leave or move on or even "move on." I mean, if there is no plan in place at all, I'd be very disappointed in Apple as a company.
Let's think logically for a minute. Would Jobs's leave of absence really mean the DRM-less Apple store will suffer? Does this mean the supposed iPhone nano would sell any less? Does it even mean people would buy iPods, iPhones, MacBooks, and all things white and glorious any less? I really doubt it. If anything, this slumping economy would have a bigger effect. Stop panicking and look at the company numbers.
(Note: I do not own any shares of AAPL, much like I don't own an iPod)
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stocks
Friday, January 9, 2009
Missed the Boat again
Anyway, Palm was doing their announcement for their "new-ness" they were buzzing about. I knew that this announcement was going to make or break them, so I didn't want to make any moves market-wise. Well, I stayed on top of the announcement and realized that Palm had a pretty good contender for the smartphone category. I figure I was too late to enter so I didn't buy any shares. Palm was up $0.09 after the announcement. A small blip. Well, by the end of the day, Palm was up $1.15. A near 30% gain. I kicked myself a bit, but didn't think too much. I missed the mob buying in and I'll live with it. Well, I just checked again today and Palm is up another $1.62 (35%). Boy, am I pretty annoyed now.
Now Palm is a decent company that made a lot of money on Palm Pilots and then the Treo before the smartphone market exploded. But they made some not so good decision recently and paid for it with loss of market share. So this buy would've been a gamble. But this was a good gamble that I missed. Here are the reasons and lessons that I've learned from this:
1) A floundering decent company buzzing about some new product garners a lot of attention. People either want to see them succeed and comeback or watch the company crash and burn. So a lot of eyes were on this announcement.
2) The new Palm pre is pretty darn cool. It isn't as revolutionary as the iPhone when it came out, but it definitely makes it's presence known among the iPhones, Storms, and G1's out there. They have wireless charging and a pretty slick OS.
3) The market can be slow to respond with tentative news like this. Usually the market goes up on the rumor and down on the actual news (recent bank bailouts and auto bailouts). But this one, people weren't confident Palm could do it. Palm announced the Centro and the Treo Pro to very little fanfare. So when Palm announced the WebOS and the pre (and they were actually pretty good), it was a bit unexpected. Therefore, the market didn't respond till after it sunk in that they might actually comeback as a real contender in the consumer smartphone market.
In any case, I missed the big gain. We'll see how they price the pre to see how Palm will do in the future. Hopefully, Palm realized that they need to keep up with the other competitors and keep the "new-ness" coming and not just update the pre for another five years like they did with the Treo.
Oh, in case you were wondering, if you had 100 shares in the morning yesterday, you would have made $260+ right now. But again, it would have been a gamble. Palm could've just as easily announced a Treo 900 or the market might not have responded so well. So if you're risk-adverse, go buy Coco-Cola. As someone said: "Economy good, people drink Coke. Economy bad, people drink Coke."
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stocks
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