Stock Market Analysis–07-19-2011
Just when it looked like the market was ready to fall through some support levels, we get a day like today. Maybe the US is about to default, but don’t tell the tech industry. After GOOG got back on track last week, a slew of other tech giants hit homeruns on their earnings calls, including IBM, AAPL, and VMW. While all interesting stocks to own right now, make sure you play them objectively since it’s easy to fall in love with companies you know and to hold on to them too long after the bubble bursts.
I have no doubt we’re forming another tech bubble, but don’t get too conservative too early. It could go on for another year or 2 or 5 and you’d be leaving too much money on the table trying to guess crash beforehand. Just manage your risk and stay strong with your stops.
Stock Market Analysis–04-19-2011
The market still seems to be heading south, but there’s some hope for the future. Some stalwarts like GOOG and BAC disappointed last week, but with INTC and VMW surprising, we may see techs bounce back sooner rather than later. A bunch of other big techs will be releasing their earnings soon, including a little company named Apple, so we’ll see how what the feeling is heading into the summer. Keep a close eye on the top of your watch list since the recent pullback made some enticing entry points on these earnings surprise breakouts.
Stock Market Analysis–02-24-2011
The market has been in a pretty long uptrend since September 2010. There was a patchy spot in November, and then a few places that looked like we might pull back, but overall the bulls have passed every test up to this point. We’re at another iffy spot, but to really claim a downtrend we’d have to fall through $1275. I stopped out on the last of my long term positions today, but will be ready to jump back in some new things should the market continue its march upwards. A lot of the stocks that I’ve posted recently are still valid ideas, and the typical long term favorites are also interesting (AAPL, GOOG, AMZN, etc), but I’ll be refreshing the watch list in the near future…
Stock Market Analysis – 04-15-2010
Tax day! With the booming market during 2009 (and the busted one in 2008) you most likely made more in 2009 on capital gains than 2008. In these situations, the key is to always make sure you withhold just over 100% of the down year’s taxes to get free margin on your $5k, $10k, $100k, etc. for the whole up year. The downside is that you end up paying the piper on tax day, even if it is penalty free, but at least you weren’t paying any juice to your broker for the leverage. Maybe some day my return can look like Obama’s though – a $5.5 million AGI would be nice.
Anyway, the market had some strong volume, but lacked movement. The telling thing is that GOOG announced some good earnings, but dropped almost 5% in the afterhours trading. Remember last year when everyone was announcing that they lost money, but they were losing less than the market expected so they were shooting up after the earnings calls? Well, now we’re doing the opposite, so that could mean this overbought market will finally start cooling off. Pay close attention to GOOG tomorrow to see if they carry this bearishness through the day. That could be an indicator of what’s to come over the next month or two.
Research in Motion (RIMM) – 09-25-2009
RIMM has been under attack from AAPL, GOOG, MSFT, and PALM in the smartphone market and it’s finally starting to show in their numbers. Their days of complete domination appear to be over, so now they need to come up with a way to keep their current user base or expand the market. Fortunately for them, the market is rapidly expanding, but they can’t afford to rest on their laurels or they’ll end up needing a huge comeback like AAPL in 2000 (completed successfully) or PALM right now (TBD).
The volume of the drop today outpaced the breakout that brought us here, so it will be interesting to see what happens. If the market follows through with its correction, RIMM may be a nice short play. If not, it should at least be interesting to day trade on some bounce back days. Either way, all of these stocks are interesting to watch if you like tech stuff for the long run too.
Palm Inc. (PALM) – 06-19-2009
The first stock screen beginning investors implicitly learn is to think about the products and services they really like in their lives and look up whether the companies are public. Palm happens to be one of those companies for me now after spending some time with a Palm Pre. If you want a phone that lets you play games and listen to music, the iPhone is probably the only thing you should be looking at. However, if you’re like me and you want something as a personal organizer, email, messaging, web browser, etc. device, I don’t see how you could live without the multitasking Palm Pre.
I know I’m abnormal, but I always have at least a few different web pages loading and a couple conversations going on at the same time, which the Pre allows me to do seamlessly. Surfing the internet on the iPhone feels like going back to pre tabbed browser days. Is the Pre going to take over the smartphone market? Probably not — at least not in the immediate future. As much as the AAPL fanboys will hate me making this comparison, the iPhone is essentially the Windows of cell phones, and the Pre is a little mix of Ubuntu and OS X. Each have their technical advantages and disadvantages, but if you aren’t leaps and bounds above the competition it’s tough getting people to switch, as Apple has found out in their PC war. Fortunately for Palm, the turn over on phones is a lot quicker than on computers.
If Apple decides to stay AT&T exclusive, look for this race to get a lot closer much quicker. Also, pay attention to GOOG’s big surge of Android phones coming later this year, MSFT’s WinMo 7, and RIMM who’s starting to become a bit of a dark horse after dominating the market for so long. Of these companies, as a trader I would selfishly prefer that PALM or RIMM win the war, since dominating the mobile phone market would make a much smaller impact percentagewise to the bottom lines of any of the other gorillas. Other companies that are interesting are ARM and Imagination Technologies, since they make the chips that all of the phones are using right now, so any expansion of the market would be good for them. However, they’re both on the London exchange (ARM has an ADR under ARMH though). Expect more posts on the subject in the future…