February 20, 2007

Buy...I mean Sell!

I got out of JDS Uniphase today (JDSU) because the stock is just sort of stagnating. All in all I didn't do too bad. Keep in mind I'm playing with small numbers here

Bought 310 shares @ $1.56 ($483.60)
Sold shares for total of $642.58
Difference of $158.98 (+%32.87)
Minus total fees of $14 (+%29.98)

Not too bad at all, at least it's a lot better than my 401K. Now the question is what to invest in next...

Posted by Guy at 12:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 29, 2006

Hays Is Way Off

I just got done reading the Hays Advisory [haysadvisory.com] Comment for 13 December, 2006 and I was quite shocked to see Don Hays predicting a 27.5% growth in the S&P 500. I don't think I agree with that number and I wrote my broker explaining why. I thought I would post this for posterity.

Thanks for sending this my way. It's always interesting to see how people in other industries view charts and graphs and try to analyze them, especially with a world view correlation.

That being said I don't think I agree with this report. It seems that Hays is trying to draw parallels between the ramp-up of the last boom and our current situation based on trends he noticed within the S&P moving averages. I'm a firm believer of the saying "There's lies, damn lies and statistics", so I use a wary eye when people start talking about how similar charts look and that since this happened in the past there is a better than average chance that it will happen again.

Second, Hays indicates the pre-cursor of this rise in the moving average will be heralded by an "unwinding" that will drop the price of gold under its 55-week moving average. However, some are saying that gold is in a prime position for an explosion. Some analysts are indicated gold will pass into 4 digits. I'm not so optimistic, but I believe it has the potential of going higher and maintaining.

Also, I can remember in 94-95 baby boomers were thinking very little about the long game and were trying to go for short wins. There was also disruptive technologies that were being integrated into business that generated excitement in fringe companies. This excitement led to people trying to make a quick buck and pumping money into the market that shouldn't have been pumped in. Now we are in the situation where baby boomers are looking at retirement and cannot take the chances of a quick buck.

Without this large pool of cash waiting for investment and no disruptive technologies/industries even near production I don't think the estimated 27.5% is attainable. Energy is probably the next technology/industry that will fuel the next bubble, but I don't see anything coming to fruition in that until at lest 2009-2010.

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Another point I forgot to mention is that Hays seems to think (I'm reading between the lines) the US has the potential to switch from a global consumer to a global producer. I don't think the US has a snowball's chance in hell of being a global producer on the scale of say China or even Korea. The US' economy is more of a services based economy, not one of "widgets". Also, I think that nationalism plays more of a role in consumerism outside of the US, which would also hurt the US' chances of being a global producer.

Posted by Guy at 09:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 17, 2005

No News is Bad News

It seems that my investment woes just keep on coming. I think I'm down almost 11% now! One thing I have learned though is that if a company isn't doing any press releases then their share price won't move. To sum up,

No News = No Movement (up, but maybe down) = Bad News

Posted by Guy at 07:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 01, 2005

Know Your Markets

It's been about a week since I made my first trade. I invested in a VoIP company because I really believe that this technology will take off in the long run. However, I'm doing this experiment in the short run. Hmmm, seems like a conflict to me. Yep, I screwed up.

It seems that most VoIP companies have been hurting financially for the past couple of years. In fact, I started reading some blogs [voipnuke.com] and it seems that most VoIP investors feel like they made the biggest mistakes of their lives. There does seem to be a single saving grace that if ever sees the light of day will result in a MAJOR rally (thus signalling the exit strategy for those currently invested).

What I'm talking about is the possible buy-out of Skype by Google. Long shot? Sure. Possible? Sure. Probable? Unknown.

In retrospect I made my first trade without really knowing the current trend in the market to which I was investing. Sounds like lesson 1 newbie stuff to me.

Posted by Guy at 09:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 28, 2005

My First Trade

I made my first trade today. It was as simple as I had expected it to be. Just enter the number of stocks and the symbol and voila!

I know it sounds bad, but I'm treating this as more of an experiment than anything else. I have no grand illusions of being able to quit my job and live off dividends, but rather I want to have the experience of being in charge of all my personal transactions.

Because I'm treating this as an experiment I figured I would try and see how much money I could lose ;) by playing risky penny stocks. That probably makes me an evil trader that could possibly atificially alter stocks. Don't get me wrong, I'm just one person and I will not do anything crappy like a pump-and-dump, but if I were multiplied a couple hundred times then the market could (possibly....maybe) be artificially altered. Like I said, though, this is an experiment.

Posted by Guy at 02:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 26, 2005

Step 1: Funding

So far, so good with Scottrade. I funded my account today simply by dropping by one of their local branch locations (they have 233 across the US) and writing them a check. One of the reasons I went with Scottrade is because you can open an account with as little as $500USD, which is exactly what I did. I want to think that I won't lose this money, but I remain pessimistic and believe that I will. Time will tell.

Posted by Guy at 09:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)