Saturday, May 12, 2007

An Old Portfolio of EX-52 Week Lowbies



I was cleaning out an old watch list I had on Yahoo! Finance called "52 Week Lowbies". As the name suggests, it's a list of well known large cap companies that were at uh... well 52 week lows however over the course of a year, dominated (for the most part). Let's check them out:

PLT (Plantronics): $14.80 August 2006 - $25.95 May 2007 (75%)
WMT (Walmart): $42.31 July 2006 - 52.15 November 2006 (20%)
GPS (Gap): $15.91 July 2006 - $21.39 January 2007 (25%)
ARO (Aeropostale): $21.07 July 2006 - $45.19 (Today!) May 2007 (114%)
FINL (Finish Line): $9.55 August 2006 - $14.97 November 2006 (58%)
YHOO (Yahoo!): $22.65 September 2006 - $33.74 April 2007 (51%)
TTWO (Take Two Interactive): $9.06 July 2006 - $24.80 April 2007 (173%)
CSCO (Cisco): $17.10 August 2006 - $28.99 May 2007 (69%)
CMCSA (Comcast): $20.47 July 2006 - 30.18 Jan 2007 (50%)

Although I have recently hated on large caps *cough* DAMNYAHOO *cough* the truth of the matter is that companies with proven business models usually rebound. Just another lesson in Buying Low and Selling High and if you did with this lot of stock, well my friend, we would be in pretty decent shape now.

So! I'm sure the burning question is... what's next? Well, I have a very short list (The market's been good to us) of stocks that are still at unusual lows. Here they are:

SBUX (Starbucks): $29.60 - 52 week high is $40 (42%)
MO (Altria): $68.30 - 52 week high is $90 (31%)
MOT (Motorola): $18.00 - 52 week high is $26.3 (45%)
AMD (Advanced Micro Devices): $14.00 - 52 week high is $40.00 (185%)

So there are my handful of stocks. I personally own SBUX and AMD and I'm seriously looking at MO and MOT now. As always, do your own research before buying and I'll keep adding to this list as I come across them.


Saturday, May 5, 2007

YHOO (Yahoo!): Yahoosoft? Microhoo!? Yacrohoosoft?


Like the names in the title of this entry, the rumor of Microsoft buying out Yahoo! is silly. So let's get the details on this deal:

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"Shares of Yahoo Inc. soared as much as 19 percent to their highest level in nearly a year on Friday after two newspaper reports said the company and Microsoft Corp. were in preliminary merger talks to take on common foe Google Inc."

later that day...

"About 15 minutes before the end of Friday's session, the Wall Street Journal, citing a source, reported that merger talks with Microsoft were 'not active.'"

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So when I woke up Friday Morning and saw Yahoo! at 33.4 and read the hot air, the first thing I did was made sure my mother and fiance sold all the Yahoo! they had and then the moment after, I shorted the hell out of it. There is no way that this is going to happen. There are too many issues with this. The ones that stand out to me are:

1) Yang and Filo (The founders of Yahoo!) hate Microsoft. Executive support is sorta important in decisions like this ya know?

2) They're selling when Project Panama (Yahoo!'s new ad platform that's supposed to help them compete with Google) hasn't even had a chance to take off. And what's the point of selling now? All the Panama hype was already killed after Q1 earnings reports.

3) Culture Clash: There will be a mass Yahoo! employee exodus if Microsoft succeeds.

4) Anti-trust concerns

I don't know about you all, but I'm going to ride this hot air balloon back down to earth.

And while you're at it short Microsoft too. A bunch of companies are creating online tools so you'l never need to buy word, excel, powerpoint ever again.




Notes:
In Portfolio: You mean out right? I just sold shares I don't own.
Duration: Will be short. It'll hit the 20's soon and I'll cover then.
If athletes were stock: Dirk Nowitzki just crashed.