Need info for current value of historic stock purchases

[Bretsky]

Mad....your a CAL dude

What's the latest and greatest in the technology revolution ?? The Cloud ? Something else ? Give me some juice to research. I think I might have missed the Cloud stocks by a year and now I'm wondering what's next

[Scott Campbell]

Scott

Are you more into growth or undervalued stocks ? Large or Small Cap ? Do you focus on any specific sectors ? Curiuous what avenues of research others use.
Any hot tips ?

I'm heavy on cash right now, and it's partly because I'm lazy. I don't even follow my core investing beliefs that much anymore. I'm in mutual funds and a couple of companies that I know really well because I used to work there. I was Warren Buffet'esque in the 90's, and Homer Simpson'esque in the 00's. But I'm also in a different phase of my life now. I'm big on preservation these days. I don't need to make a killing anymore.

I don't know that I have any great advice - except maybe listen to RG.

[Scott Campbell]

I kinda miss Partial for this stuff. He heard about new technology before most of the rest of us.

[swede]

The Cloud is a technology advance that leaves me not even knowing wtf it is. The only tiny clue I get is that it may be either software or a web-based ap that integrates personal technology use. Is that close?

[Bretsky]

The Cloud is a technology advance that leaves me not even knowing wtf it is. The only tiny clue I get is that it may be either software or a web-based ap that integrates personal technology use. Is that close?

Yes, and to be honest if we'd have invested 5G into the main stock beneffiting from that technology VMW ....we'd have did very well over the past couple of years

[Bretsky]

I kinda miss Partial for this stuff. He heard about new technology before most of the rest of us.

Myself as well. I occasionally keep in touch with him via facebook. He's a big Apple guy; hard to argue against that but it's trading at an insane price already. He also likes AHRMY but admitted he's not up to date on the cutting edge stuff right now

[Patler]

Patler...how is the trading going ? If in your research you run into the next great forecasted technology plz share that info so I can read about it.

I've made a nice watchlist tonight of technology stocks (that is my interest) with high upside that includes NTAP, BRCM, EMC, GOOG, VMN, MU, BIDU, and LPSN. Many are richly priced so I'm hoping for a fallback. Most I look at are the high upside, high reward

Apple is my biggest holding tight now. I keep looking for a company in a new technology, something that I think has break through possibilities; but I haven't found one yet that i was willing to put much money into.

[Patler]

Myself as well. I occasionally keep in touch with him via facebook. He's a big Apple guy; hard to argue against that but it's trading at an insane price already. He also likes AHRMY but admitted he's not up to date on the cutting edge stuff right now

I don't think Apple is trading at a high price. If you look at the price against forward earnings, it is quite low. One analyst wrote a compelling article that at this price the executives might be breaching their fiduciary duty to the company if they don't buy back a big chunk of the stock.. Based on projected earnings, many say it should be selling at $450 or more.

[Patler]

Well, at least transaction feels have gone down for traders.

Short terms is way too unpredictable for me. Too many variables. Long term is much easier. It's all about earnings.

Short term is all about earnings too. I look for companies with a significant positive earnings surprise in their last quarterly, with increased forward guidance, which leads to analyst upgrades. If you get it early enough, you can usually pick up a few points if the market is stable. If they have a decent positive earnings surprise the next quarter you can sometimes get a total 20-30% gain from a small cap that was undervalued initially.

To be sure, I am wrong as much as I am right on which to buy, but I limit my losses to 10% with stop loss orders and my overall return has been decent so far.

My biggest weakness is knowing when to sell stocks that have had good runs before their next earnings report. An example:

I bought RRGB at $24.01 after a good quarterly report in Feb. It had a nice run up leading into its next report. I got cold feet because I had had several that followed the same scenario, had reports that beat projections, but their share prices dropped non-the less for no apparent reasons. Analysts call it "priced for perfection." So:

I sold half on 5/18 at 28.54 the day before their next report. A nice gain, to be sure, but they absolutely knocked it out of the park with their next report and shares jumped to $35 the very next day after their report.

I sold the rest on 5/25 at $34.92 after it started to drift lower, thinking that the jump wouldn't hold. Now analysts are issuing glowing reports, with predictions of $45/share near term, and I hold 0 shares. I made a nice profit, to be sure; but it could have been oh so much better!

On the flip side, I have had several others in the same situation, with nice gains (10% or so) leading into their report, a very good report, and the stocks drop right back to what I paid. So not wanting to lose all of my gains, I got cautious with RRGB and it cost me a lot of money.

But, you should never regret selling for a profit, regardless of what happens after you sell.

[Patler]

For what its worth, the last 3 days brutalized my portfolio, but I am trying not to panic at this point. I had a couple stocks that I planned to sell, but was busy this week and didn't pull the trigger on them. Several got hit for 10% losses from Wednesday to Friday. I need to make some decisions today on how I will approach the early days next week.

[Scott Campbell]

The Cloud is a technology advance that leaves me not even knowing wtf it is. The only tiny clue I get is that it may be either software or a web-based ap that integrates personal technology use. Is that close?

Not exactly. I think businesses are bigger users.

[Scott Campbell]

Short term is all about earnings too.

For the most part I don't agree. Lots of other variables affect stock prices short term, and contribute to volatility. Most traders like the volatility. More than likely you suffered this week because of those other variables (disappointing jobs and housing reports), and not an earnings release or change to guidance. Investors tend to just dismiss this sort of short term volatility unless it impacts underlying fundamentals.

[Patler]

For the most part I don't agree. Lots of other variables affect stock prices short term, and contribute to volatility. Most traders like the volatility. More than likely you suffered this week because of those other variables (disappointing jobs and housing reports), and not an earnings release or change to guidance. Investors tend to just dismiss this sort of short term volatility unless it impacts underlying fundamentals.

Sure, that's true for the market as a whole regardless. My long term portfolio suffered as badly.

The reason I am not panicing after last week with either my long term or short term picks is because I believe my picks were good and will recover because they had solid earnings reports and are expected to again. But my objective with the actively traded portion is to find underpriced stocks that will have fairly short term bounces because of their financials, not because of investors emotions. Not a single one of my picks was based on emotional factors, they were all picked because of reported earnings or improved future earning guidance from the company.

I'm not talking about day trading. Basically I am trying to make money through one reporting period time frame, 3months, like my example with RRGB. Some I have held for over 6 months and longer, a couple I have gotten out of much sooner for both good and bad results. When the market punishes companies emotionally, you just have to hold them longer, which is what I will probably do with several. The worst thing I could do would be to dump stock in a good company just because of last week. Chances are that a good company's stock will recover when emotions get out of the way. It's happened for me several times.

[MadtownPacker]

I kinda miss Partial for this stuff. He heard about new technology before most of the rest of us.

I think a pardon should be issued. What you MFers think?

[mraynrand]

I think a pardon should be issued. What you MFers think?

I said a long time ago I thought Partial and Bigguns shouldn't have been banned. Too many crybabies had too thin skins. They'll never come back anyway - the action is too engaging over at the "Sportsbubbler"