Tuesday, March 08, 2011

Still Thinking

Well, my eight faithful followers have not posted any suggestions on what stock to buy next when I sell KSW this weekend. Perusing the lists, I have a couple of additional ideas.
  1. TSRA - This is a company like IDCC, except they have recently gone the opposite way. They are way cheap. they're trading under $17 and they have over $9 per share. They are earning over $1 a share and certainly have cash to create additional earnings plus they have some ongoing litigation which could result in higher earnings.
  2. CISCO - I was surprised to see them on the list again. Not the glamor go-go stock any more, but it seems to me that at $18.22 for a great American company with over $40b in cash and earning around $1.60 a share isn't bad. I do not see much downside. Kind of like my INTC holding.
Good News on the Eastern Front?

Regular readers may recall back in September when HRBN announced that they were going to take themselves private. That caused a real spike in Chinese stocks that ran for about two months. For some reason, the HRBN deal fell through, which I suspect was one reason the air came out of the balloon on the Chinese stocks.

Guess what? Verse #2 may have been kicked off today (China Security Soars as CEO Talks Up LBO). It is curious, as the market clearly is a bit skeptical. The CEO stated he'dpay $6.50 per share, yet the stock only rose today to $5.24 (from $4.10). If this moves forward and gains credibility, it will cause some of the shorts to reconsider their positions as they could be wiped out if a cheap Chinese company that they're shorting announces a LBO.

8 comments:

Paul T said...

Marsh,

Here are the 6 stocks I'm thinking of picking up in my quarterly purchase:

afam
mpaa
osk
supg
tnav
cmtl

Homer315 said...

I've been jammed up at work and don't really know much about any of the stocks you've mentioned.

AndrewsDad said...

I am wondering why you are selling KSW.

I took your most recent list of 200 and ran them through some software I wrote to get numbers on last night. Have not gone through the actual numbers yet but the software also pops up web pages for those that have certain characteristics and a couple that seemed like they could be interesting were Bristol Myers BMY, Carters CRI and Collectors Universe, CLCT.

One thing I have always been surprised about is how the MFI Yahoo group never has posts asking for suggestions on what stock looks interesting.

Marsh_Gerda said...

Thanks for the feedback. First, to be clear I am not actually selling KSW, I am simply removing it from my MFI portfolio.

Second - Paul, I also think Tnav and mpaa are interesting.

MG

Paul T said...

My goal in my MFI portfolio is to try and spread the stocks around as many sectors as possible. (I'm usually turning 6 stocks over every quarter, for a total of 24 MFI positions).

I've noticed that the MFI list returns a higher than normal number of Biotech, Technology and Pharma type stocks. So when something like MPAA, or OSK shows up, I give it a good look.

Current Holdings (before I cycle my stocks in about a weeks time)

AFAM
AHCI
ARO
CF
CHKE
CSGS
DECK
ELNK
FLL
FRX
GME
HRB
JCOM
NSR
PDLI
PWER
RGR
RTN
SMED
SNDK
SNTA
USMO
UTA
VCLK

And like I've posted before, I'm staying AWAY from all Chinese stocks. And sometimes it isn't immediately evident that a stock is based in China (look at NEWN for example, their "headquarters" is in NY http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=NEWN+Profile)

AndrewsDad said...

I have been trying to put together a list of stocks to purchase and have also noticed my short list has large percentage of tech companies. I know I am naturally biased towards tech and growth which is an issue when those sectors are not in favor. I was interested to read the recent Ted - Glenn exchange on the Yahoo MFI board on diversity. 20+ years ago I would hold only 3 or 4 stocks and did very well, but then 2 of those stocks were MSFT and SBUX. It was not so much I was a genius, but rather where I happened to live and the employers of people I happened to know. Now though, I need to lessen the risk of holding only a few stocks and having them bunched into one sector. As a result I am on the lookout for non tech stock for my short list.

Paul T said...

I was following that thread on the MFI board as well. I certainly don't think that going all in on a single stock is a good investment strategy. No matter how much you dig, there can always be surprises (good and bad).

As long as your trading costs are low enough (say no more than 1% of the cost of the position), then buy small amounts of 20 - 30 stocks.

AndrewsDad said...

Part of what was missing with that thread was risk tolerance and where are you in life. If I am a 50 year old father of 4 and have little risk tolerance and every dollar I have is needed then 1 stock should not be an option. If I am single and 22 and have plenty of disposable cash then 1 stock... maybe. Buying MSFT, BA, something like that. The chance of going to zero is almost zero. Buying 1 random stock off of the MFI list, the chance of going to zero is going to be a bit higher. Still not high but higher than I would like.

I have had some off board email exchanges with Glenn and he seems like a really sharp guy. Turns out he lives somewhere in my general area, probably within a half hour of me. I was kind of surprised at his stance on that thread but I guess it just shows what was mentioned, how diverse we all are in what we consider important.