Play(ing) Fair?

I have owned PLAY for a month in my sidecar MFI holdings. I didn't feel it was a true MFI stock, but I did feel it had upside potential. So I was excited this morning when I read the following headline (NVIDIA to Acquire PortalPlayer).

I was substantially less excited when I saw the purchase price of $13.50 a share given that PLAY had closed Friday at $13.36. The stock had essentially moved up last week to the purchase price. Hmmmm. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to guess that it wasn't the best kept secret on the Street. Sure enough, check out this headline later in the day (). Wow, that is really weird. I would swear I saw a headline by Seeking Alpha questioning "Who Knew Last Week"? Maybe they pulled it under duress. Wait I found it (Nvidia Buying Portalplayer; Who Knew Last Week?). I can't complain as I made a 22% gain in a month. The possible leaking of the deal didn't hurt me, stock just went up a week early.

ASEI announced their earnings this morning(American Science and Engineering, Inc. Reports Second Quarter Fiscal Year 2007 Results). I always have trouble knowing what numbers to look at. EPS was 20 cents below analyst estimates, but there were 22 cents of Fas103 charges. Revenues were light, but backlog was all time high. Here is what the CEO said:

"AS&E ended the second quarter with strong bookings and the highest order backlog in the Company's history," commented Anthony Fabiano, AS&E's President and CEO. "We recorded backlog of $117 million -- up $54 million from the previous quarter and a 54% increase for the same period last year. Significant trends for the quarter included diversifying our customer base, expanding product markets, as well as closing significant service renewal contracts."

The stock dropped 10% at the start of the day. It slowly rose over the day and ended up down 3% at $54.18. I actually used my proceeds from my sale of PLAY to buy some ASEI (at $52.12) in my sidecar.

Don't Look Back! Man I am having seller's regret over selling PCU from my portfolio a few weeks ago. I had held it for a year in my portfolio so I sold it at what was a 3 month high of $49.86. It closed today at $55.78. That is about $6 per share, which would have really helped.

Wrong Pharma! I bought KG back in May stating that I wanted a pharma in my MFI portfolio. Well another alternative (alphabetically close) KOSP would have been the better choice (Abbott to buy Kos, become HDL-cholesterol leader). A mere 54% premium. That deal doesn't seem to have been linked.

The spike by KOSP (and PLAY last week) has really helped my hypothetical monthly portfolios. They are now regularly beating the benchmarks:

	MFI	Russell 3000	Russ 2000 V
February	10.38%	7.31%	8.76%
April	4.98%	5.98%	5.16%
May	5.85%	6.54%	6.07%
June	6.55%	8.15%	7.67%
July	10.51%	8.18%	6.78%
August	8.82%	8.13%	8.07%
September	6.67%	5.59%	5.01%
October	6.91%	3.04%	3.13%
Average	7.58%	6.61%	6.33%