Does size matter?

Apple has a lot of growth potential! See Gizmoto for the complete story.

TASR

Bought this morning @ $16.56

Currently trading for $17.49

Up 5.6% in half a day! If every trade was this easy, I would be very wealthy.

Early Bird

Bought some TASR today on a dip @ $16.56. Taser came out with steller earngins today with sales rising 56% in Q3. This is one that I am going to put on the side burner and try to forget about. In one year this stock could double (or be a dud:) Here is Howards take on it.

Overall the market is down a bit giving back some of yesterdays gains. I am going to take a look at Amazon which is down do to forward looking statements. Earnings are strong so this may be a buying opportunity.

Currently holding: AAPL, CMG, DWA, TASR, & a bunch on mutual funds

Bullish

The market today was flat and turned bullish toward the close. More great earnings from Amazon and Apple. Both these companies are very bullish. I have been covering Apple pretty consistently and Amazon has been on my watch list for a while. I may pick up some shares tomorrow.

Currently I am reading "Into The Wild" a book about a young mad who ventures out on the road to live a life of travel and adventure(sounds appealing but he ends up freezing to death). Why do men have this instinctual desire to explore & travel, while women have the exact opposite? Good book if you get the chance.

Betting vs. Investing

Investing is calculated betting. When you purchase a stock you have hopefully done sufficient research to make an intelligent decision (based on the best available data). The main difference in gambling and stock picking is that investing is based on facts, not luck (although luck helps). Before buying any stock I always do my research which includes a lot of reading and analyzing. The hardest part of investing is sorting the filler data from important helpful data. Investing is calculated and precise. It requires knowledge, skill, and a little luck to become successful. You have to feel the feelings and live the experience to become a good investor. Most investors will say you need to think logically and not make decisions based on emotions. This is true for the most part, but sometimes you have to listen your intuition and sell that dog or double down.

Apple Blows Up!

Apples new strategy for selling iPods and Macs this holiday season is to make there investors very wealthy. Apple blew away estimates and recorded another fantastic quarter. With earnings of 1.01 a share and revenues of 6.22 billion apple easily beat estimates (see below). Apple shares are up nearly $12 or 7% in after hours trading.

Does money grow on trees? (AAPL)

Apple announces earnings tonight with analysts expecting 86 cents a share, on revenue of 6.071 billion for Q4. AAPL was up today (2.31%) $3.94 on anticipation of earnings. iPhone sales should be the major focus as we roll into the holiday season. I may take a trip by the apple store tonight to do a little product research (ie check out the new gadgets).

Ugly Day

Dow gave back 366 points today on recession concerns. Concerned yes, worried not yet. Another week in the red will get me a little worried. This is a strong market, so I am not going to worry and just think of this as a buying opportunity and have a great weekend. Is it bad that I am more concerned with my fantasy football games this weekend than the Dow?

What makes a stock great?

Today I picked up a little Chipotle (CMG) on the dip. I also had lunch at Chipotle and the place was packed. Chipotle still has a lot of room for growth and could easily add another 20-30 points. Cramer thinks Chipotle will not go much higher, but we will see what the market says. With this momentum it can be hard to stop. Earnings will be released on the 30th.

While I was eating my burrito today I began to compare Chipotle's success with another one of my families favorite restaurants, PF Changs (PFCB). PF Changs owns the highly successful PeiWei chain of restaurants. Why is Chipotle selling for nearly 74 times earnings hitting all time highs, but PFCB is only selling for 21 times earnings hitting all time lows? Two words: Quarterly Growth. CMG's quarterly growth is yoy is 85% while PFCG is only 14.7%. CMG is a growth stock that has huge potential and more importantly momentum.

Disclosure: Long CMG

Adios Analog!

Best Buy (BBY) announced yesterday that they are no longer going to be carrying analog TV’s. This could not make me happier. More stations need to convert to HD, pronto. I recently bought a 40’ LCD that I love, but I only get a handful of channels in HD. The sports are amazing especially golf and football, but I need everything in HD. Once you go HD you will never want to watch regular TV again. I have blogged about Texas Instruments DLP technology before. This is a great trend to follow. Check out Mark Cuban's blog here (yes, Dancing With The Stars Cuban). He owns HDNet that has some pretty great programming and he gets into more specifics on his blog.

Best Buy is a great stock that still has some growth potential. According to business week “more than 60 million U.S. households currently rely on an antennas or analog cable.” This is a huge market that is just beginning to be tapped.

Thanks to Keith for the link.

Craiglist Post

I have received this e-mail from a number of people regarding the craiglist post last week. I decided not to blog about it then because everyone I know that reads this blog sent me the e-mail, but wallstrip has its own twist on this post. Funny stuff.

New Trading Software

I finally downloaded the new active trading software offered by my brokerage company and it has made my trading so much easier. I loaded it last week, and I have seen immediate results. I find myself trading more (I guess that is the idea) and following my positions more carefully.

The market has been in the red for the past few day and today looks like it is not going to break the pattern. Pretty heavy in cash right now, looking for some bargains on trending stocks.

Timmmmmbeeer

Market is down 160 points due to earnings releases today. The bears are eating this up.

The banks are going to team up to try and revive the credit market. Lets see if 100 billion dollars will have an effect on the credit "Crisis." The number of defaulting sub-prime loans is less than 1 percent. I wonder how many stock options have been written with financial companies undervaluing there holdings.

1/15/2007

The 2006 extended tax deadline is finally upon us. This has been one of the tougher tax seasons, but I survived.

The Dow is in the red, currently down 106 points, with no big movers in my portfolio.

Sold Garmin today at $114.99, bought 10/3/07 @ 96.97

Happy with a 18.58% return in 12 days. Annualize that...

Interesting Facts

From the US Department of Health & Human Studies come some very interesting numbers, here are a few I found surprising:

- 24.4% of Blacks aged 12 or older were current smokers
- Among the 21 major occupational categories, the highest rates of past year major depressive episode among full time employed workers aged 18 to 64 were found in the personal care and service occupations (10.8%) and the food preparation and service related occupations (10.3%).
- From 2004 to 2006 an annual average of 6.3 million women (9.4%) aged 18 to 49 needed treatment for a substance use problem.
- An annual average of 943,000 persons aged 12 or older were recent initiates of hallucinogens (i.e., they had used hallucinogens for the first time in the 12 months before the survey).
- In 2006, an estimated 20.4 million Americans aged 12 or older were current (past month) illicit drug users
- Slightly more than half of Americans aged 12 or older reported being current drinkers of alcohol in the 2006 survey (50.9 percent). This translates to an estimated 125 million people, which is similar to the 2005 estimate of 126 million people (51.8 percent).
- More than one fifth (23.0 percent) of persons aged 12 or older participated in binge drinking (having five or more drinks on the same occasion on at least 1 day in the 30 days prior to the survey) in 2006.
- In 2006, among young adults aged 18 to 25, the rate of binge drinking was 42.2 percent, and the rate of heavy drinking was 15.6 percent.

We are supposed to be one of the most progressive nations in the world. Scary statistics. Get off the drugs people.