Archive for November, 2006

Google took a dive

Published at November 27, 2006 in Stocks. 2 Comments

Like a lot of stocks today, Google (GOOG) took a nose dive and hit my stop loss at $487.30. Given that I was more than 20% up in Google, I could have waited a day or two to see if it turns around. It probably will, but I’m happy with a 21.83% gain (after commissions). Sure it will most likely recover and go up, but that is OK as now I can find something else to get into, and who knows, it might very well go down some more before recovering and that isn’t something that I’m willing to wait for. After all, I’m not a buy and hold kind of investor. I want to make good money in a fairly short period of time and go find something else. If I wanted to buy and hold I would just put my money in a mutual fund and forget it. Where’s the fun in that?

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Festival of Investing

Published at November 22, 2006 in Stocks. 1 Comment

I’ve finally made my third different festival at the Festival of Investing. Be sure to check out the other entries at Investing World Today

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26 percent in under 7 weeks

Published at November 21, 2006 in Stocks. 0 Comments

Google (GOOG) has finally hit 500 and it did it pretty quickly this morning. Yesterday it was kind of stagnant, but today it took off and so far is hovering around the 504 mark. I really didn’t think it would happen this week, but I’m glad I was wrong!

Right now I am just a couple hundredths of a percentage point away from a 26% gain on this stock, which means I should lock in at least a 20%. I bought it almost exactly 6 1/2 weeks ago, and that is a tremedous gain in that time period.

If you are a practictioner of the CANSLIM method of investing, an 8 week gain of this type is a signal for a long term holding. Other stocks that have shown this kind of performance were Microsoft, Cisco, Home Depot and WalMart back in the 80s and 90s when they made their incredible runs.

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Festival of Stocks

Published at November 20, 2006 in Stocks. 1 Comment

I made my first festival of stocks and it was the editor’s choice! If that isn’t motivation I don’t know what is. Be sure to check out all the other entries.

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34 Cents Short!

Published at November 17, 2006 in Personal Finance. 3 Comments

Google almost made it to that magical 500 today. It got up to 499.66 and finally settle the day at 498.79. *sigh*, I was really hoping to end the week with a 500 but it didn’t make it. It may not happen next week either but I’ll bet that it happens the week after that for sure.

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This week’s reading

Published at November 17, 2006 in Personal Finance. 1 Comment

We are starting off with some good stuff over at Pronet Advertising. Neil has a post on his 50 favorite resources for blogging. A must read for anyone serious about blogging.

MyMoneyBlog has a list of free financial tools. I know I’ll be checking some them out myself.

Over at the Credit Card Watcher, you can find a great tool for comparing various credit cards. As a developer I can appreciate the kind of research and work that went into this. Check it out.

If How this blog attracted 100000 visitors in 30 days isn’t an inspiration for blogging, I don’t know what is!

This one comes from the ‘inspirational reading’ category. John Chow talks about his early start with TheTechZone. As always with John’s stuff it is good reading for those of us that are still small and have little traffic. Yes he got a big break with MaximumPC, but it was his posts combined with that break that really set him apart.

This has got to be the funniest headline I’ve read in a while.

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You CAN beat the market

Published at November 15, 2006 in Stocks and Personal Finance. 5 Comments

I started to post this as a comment in response to this post but I felt it better as a post here.

First, I call BS. While there is nothing wrong with investing in index funds, or even mutual funds, it doesn’t mean you can’t beat the market by investing in individual stocks. Anyone who makes a blatant claim like that is just voicing either ignorance or is closed minded. Anyone who is willing to put in the right effort can accomplish almost anything. If you aren’t willing to put in the time and effort, then by all means pick a fund of some sort and leave it alone. There is nothing wrong with that and it is the means by which most people invest. Congratulations, at least you are investing.

However for those who don’t mind putting in the effort, you can make money and beat the market. The argument that even analysts don’t make money is also a little too vague. Maybe this comment applies to actual analysts and brokers, but doesn’t necessarily apply to the investors themselves. Do you actually think that index or mutual funds only contain the best stocks? Not likely.

By applying sound advice and research, you can beat the indexes and the market in general, even when there is a bear market. While I don’t advocate most systems, I have read (as you can see from the left sidebar) both Jim Cramer and William O’Neil and while each has a different approach to buying stocks, both are very, very successful at it. As I have once heard “If you want to be rich, learn from someone who is rich”.

Yes, there are a lot of losers in the market. Why? Because they don’t know what they are doing. The ‘play’ the market or solely take the advise of a broker. They have no entry strategy, no disversification strategy and worse, no exit strategy. You could even make the argument that funds are over diversified and that dillutes the returns.

Now I am by no means an expert at buying and selling stocks, but I am also not afraid of them and more importantly I don’t mind doing a little research and I don’t get emotional about them. This has lead me to be consistent with my goals for each stock and most importantly when I sell a stock that isn’t performing. With my approach (which is O’Neil’s for the most part), I only have to be correct on a buy 1 time in 3 and I still make money. Why? Because my good stocks end up being good performers, like Google where I am up 24% as of this writing.

So again, while there is nothing wrong with funds, don’t let anyone scare you into thinking that buying stocks is a bad thing or that you are going to loose all of your money.

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Are you the wrong audience?

Published at November 15, 2006 in Misc. 0 Comments

Trent over at The Simple Dollar has a question about whether those of us in the financial blogosphere are just preaching to the choir by reading each others blogs. In other words, the right people are not being targeted by what we have to say.

Well, I have to admit there is some validity in his argument, but there is still room for all of us finance bloggers to help each other out. Some focus on credit cards, some focus on banking, some focus on planning and motivation, all things that each of us can benefit from. To use myself as an example, I am aware of most of these things and the ‘correct way’ to go about them, but I don’t always know the details and by reading other blogs, I am learning quite a bit as I go.

So I think there is a lot to learn from each other and while it would be good to get some of those ‘outsiders’, all is not lost. Matt made a good comment about search engines. With us linking and commenting to each other and blogging about our topics, the more search engine traffic we will get and thus more potential visitors. Not to mention that since most of us monetize our sites, more visitors will help with that as well.

Another traffic source which Maria pointed out is forums. While I haven’t hit up any of the really big forums, I do regularly read Steve Pavlina’s forums and that has generated some traffic as well. I’ve mentioned before that Henry over at BinaryDollar is a regular contributor there as well.

As for site promotion, I too am not comfortable directly asking for links and such, but I do try to link to as many other people as I can when I find something of interest to me. I also tend to add people who have left comments on more than one occasion to my blogroll. I know comments are great for traffic as well as motivation for me to continue blogging, so it is my way of saying thanks. While I only have one subscriber (according to FeedBurner), maybe that will go up as I write more informative, savvy or otherwise interesting posts.

So, maybe we are preaching a little to the choir, but even the choir can learn new things and during all that singing, somebody just might hear and decide join in.

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A few more you might be interested in:
You CAN beat the market
26 percent in under 7 weeks

New 52 week high

Published at November 15, 2006 in Stocks. 3 Comments

Woohoo! Google(GOOG) has hit a new 52 week high! As I write this it is at $496 a share, which makes my goal of $500 a share look even more obtainable. It is only noon in NYC, so there are still a few more hours of trading to go. With the price at 496, who knows, maybe it will hit 500 by the end of the day?

What is even better though is that with the current price of 496, I’m up in that stock just a tad over 24%. With my trailing stop I’m really hoping to lock in a good 25% gain.

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Three new Amazon Affiliate offerings

Published at November 15, 2006 in Misc. 0 Comments

I got an email from Amazon noting that they have three new offerings for affiliate members. First, their eCommerce offering, called aStore, has come out of beta and is ready for full on users. At the moment I don’t think I have a need to become an Amazon reseller, but it might interest some.

Second, their Omakase product is out. While visiting their page shows that it is still in beta. The Omakase offering is basically a contextual links product, offering naturally Amazon products based on the context of your site. For those that don’t want to go through the hassle of setting up the other link products with specific categories and such (although it isn’t that hard), this is an option.

Their third is Product Previews. I already use this service for the books in my “Books I’ve Read” sidebar widget. If you hover over each book, it gives a preview and price info.

As an extra incentive, they are offering double base for the Omakase and aStore offerings, so if you aren’t currently an affiliate, it might be worth checking out.

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