Since I started this blog I have had the mantra that it is ALWAYS a good time to start a business. Never more so than today. The start-up costs are cheaper and your markets are deeper and wider than ever. I was eating world class sushi in Bracebridge, Ontario last night.
If you can’t get excited about Greg Norman in the lead at the British Open, you are his ex-wife.
If you can’t get excited about leaving your dead end banking or engineering job, than you may surf the web, but you don’t get the web.
If you read this blog regularly, you know I follow market ‘TELLS’. Before the recent meltdown, I was using Federal Express and Fannie Mae’s January lows. When both broke – eg. Fannie below $19, I had a good idea we were going much lower. We did.
I don’t want to own banks (except mine), though I traded Visa, American Express and Goldman Sachs the last week. With Wells Fargo’s earnings being treated with a ‘Glass is Half Full’ attitude, I have a basis for watching the financial sector through one stock and that’s Wells Fargo (WFC). As long as I see it above the gap up price of $24/share, I will treat the market as calmed down and add to my stronger positions and even consider some new breakouts. People make this stuff harder than it is because they want to catch bottoms and tops.
A few positions I have added to the last week include:
ELP
CCC
EURX
CRM
PPO
NTDOY
WCN
Some into recent weakness (NTDOY, CCC and CRM), some into their all-time high strength.
Still extremely light at about 30 percent invested. No rush to get invested. I will let the market dictate that.
I am not sure who will survive and what the landscape will look like, but banks are still the best business once the shit is cleared out of the system. Big bets are already being plunked down in the last few days on who will survive and thrive. That type of betting is not for me.
BUT, I am a tiny investor in a new local bank going up in Phoenix (once it’s doors open I will send all my subscribers a preloaded ATM card ). Seems like as good a time as ever to be starting one from scratch.
You collect money, pay no interest, charge lot’s of fees for everything and you loan money (when sober). No industry has benefitted more from technology the last 10 years. How hard could it be to actually own one. I have asked the board to call our bank “The Phoenix Monkey Bank” – because even a monkey should be able to run this business.
Much like Larry David in ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ when he invests in a restaurant and asks that the waiters respond to table bells, I want our bank to have a Mattress Motif. You may laugh, but my ideas can’t be worse than the shmucks at WAMU and Wachovi of the last few years. TurdPutz’s.
Why should’nt banks have sponsors for f#$@k sakes – Come open an account at Howard’s ‘Phoenix Monkey Bank’ where your money is safe. Sponsored by ‘Smith and Wesson’, ‘Certa’ and of course ‘Lifelock’ .
When I created Wallstrip , the idea was one show a day about a stock at or near an-all time high and a look at the issues of why it was hot and than you were left to ponder if it could continue. I have owned many of the stocks that we have covered and still do. I will continue to blog about the episodes and provide links and additional information on the stocks.
We now have well over 400 shows and it was time for a new look and a site that gave first time and repeat watchers an ability to roam and catch up.
I think the team has delivered that.
Our first show for the new site is Papa John’s Pizza (PZZA). The stock has held up surprisingly well and maybe it’s due to their amazing online campaigns and focus on the web. It’s not a stock that interests me, but the leader for sure in the restaurant pizza space and Wallstrip worthy.
Go scroll around the archives and you will find some of your old favorites.
You know it’s slim pickings in technology when Yahoo looks like the best internet stock. Seriously, at this point, Yang is best to go it alone rather than hand the reigns to Steve ‘LIP’ Ballmer. As for Carl Icahn, he should be buying graveyards, and biotechs aimed at virility, not web businesses.
The investment world is indeed upside down, but the TAPE never lies.
The financials were due for a massive rally and I played it, but technology stocks never budged,
It was quite obvious that technology stocks were cooked before the Microsoft earnings call and now Google implosion.
Crackleberry, Apple and Google barely rallied on the huge move of the last few days. They are broken. So is our investment spirit. Anyways, it’s the summer and you should have been mostly gone from stocks back in late January.
The only technology stock holding the market together is Salesforce.com and it can’t carry the Nasdaq alone.
This is a true bear market and it’s a game of attrition. I am LOVING it.
Other than Bloomberg , ‘The Fly ‘, and StockTwits stream on Twitter, I have cut down on my financial reading. I am still excited to grab a weekend Investor’s Business Daily just to check in on the leadership, but that’s been a waste of time lately.
I have learned that writing about stocks and the market, especially when the market sucks and there is no leadership, while somewhat boring for you, has saved me a fortune.
As for comedic and ironic headlines though…we are at all-time highs.
The UBS auction-rate stuff is a financial fiasco of new epic proportions . Bloomberg’s headline is classic using the word ‘Appease’. UBS is now trying to appease it’s clients that were stiffed by aggressive sales tactics by buying $3.5 billion of the worthless paper they sold. Here’s a thought…Why not just give away the $3.5 billion to clients before you piss it away. Great press, happy clients…you get it? Maybe even make a viral video on YouTube while you hand out the $3.5 billion…you YUTZ’s.
The SEC according to Bloomberg headlines…is issuing subpoenas looking for ‘manipulators’ in Fannie ‘Woops’ Mae and Freddie ‘Boom Boom’ Mac. Hello…we have UBS admitting they manipulated clients and you are chasing this? How about the SEC starts shooting fish in a barrel with their staff of FIVE and not chasing goblins and people on the Fannie Mae ‘can suck my sack’ Facebook Application widget thingy who are short 3 shares because the Cramer Facebook ‘Booyah’ Application widget thingy said to go to cash before 3pm on every Wednesday before triple witching Friday’s before full moons…you get my point.
This stuff is comedy gold for Jon Stewart and Colbert if they had the right people reading the headlines.
I know with the Dow down 3,000 plus points I should be more bullish, but I can’t be. I am optimistic, but frustrated and out of sync. Even stepping back and reading just headlines has me confused.
Time to do even less and watch Seinfeld clips like the one below…and PS – Thanks StockJockey for finding my latest appearance (from Toronto) on Fox Biz.
PSS – Another Ironic headline and story from my friend Eric at Blackstar…Wachovia downgrading AIG after it’s already down 80%. Wachovia whose stock is down 83%. They should downgrade themselves too.
In 2005 The ‘Venture Vixen’ and I sold our oversized home and lot in Paradise Valley for something half the size. Our utlility bill in the summer was over $500 per month and could spike to $700 with the pool. Dumb.
We sold the home the first day on the market as if it was a stock (not Yahoo but more like Google).
Yes, we thought we were leaving money on the table and we believed in the neighborhood, but the government was giving $500,000 in gains tax free and we could just buy a smaller home for pretty much nothing. We did. We invested everything else in internet companies like GolfNow.com and than Lifelock.com . I also had a clear head and the ability to ‘nut’ up and start another company – Wallstrip .
Lot’s of good have obviously come from the decision to downsize. You could call it luck, but I believe that getting the big house off our back and focusing on opportunities.
The Lindzon’s are not big house and property people and being in a financial position to pounce, gave us a great deal of freedom. It took the pressure off us to go for it when opportunities presented themselves.
The luxury of downsizing in 2008 may not be in the cards for most Americans, but in order to take advantage of all the opportunities in the coming months, you need to clear your table and FOCUS.
The winners of the last bull runs are not going to lead us in 2009 and beyond.
If oil and agriculture stocks prices stay up at these levels, it will be tough for a much broader section of the market.
Only GPS has really given way and that is due to it’s amazing growth, competitive landscape and shrinking of margins. Trends end.
If I were to bet on the trends going forward I would still choose Oil, Gold, Apple, Canada, the Canadian Dollar and Inflation (travel and food). Since I have been stopped out of so many stocks in the last 6 months, I am on the hunt for the new ones.
Here are some interesting ones I am watching:
1. Qualcomm – great strength so far. Apple and Rimm are the bullets and should still do fantastic in the phone wars, but Qualcomm is quietly strong with their patent and licensing business
). Seems like as good a time as ever to be starting one from scratch.
