Monday, May 09, 2011

Alive and Well in Switerland

Apologies for being silent over the past week. All I had was an I-pad, and I was unable to make a post (all I could do was create a title). I am still in Zug. I did spent the weekend in a charming town in the Swiss Alps called Troistorrents.

The mountain range on the left is what I was looking at in the mornings as I sipped my coffee, "Dents de Midi". If people do get a chance to travel, there are a lot of worse places you can go. We were 20 minutes from Montreax and Lake Geneva. Twenty minutes from the French border, and also very near St Bernard Pass (home of the famous dogs) and Italy.

New Stocks

Ok, I know you do not read this blog for travel advice. It was a busy week (for change) for my mechanical portfolios, which add stocks when they are new to the top 30 or top 50 lists in the past 52 weeks. We had two new ones in the top 50, NVMI and PRX. Wait a minute, haven't we seen NVMI before??? That is right, if you look back in my blogs I had it predicted to hit the lists based on recent earnings and I had bought them at about $6 a share. I then sold a month or so ago at $10.76 as I was trying to clean up and by more official MFI. PRX is Par Pharmaceuticals. I haven't really looked closely at them, but they are largely into generics and many of those appearing on the list historically have done well (IPXL and Barr Labs to name two. MYL didn't do as well).

On the top 30 list, NVMI and PRX also broke into that illustrious group. In addition, KLIC popped on the list after blow-out earnings this quarter. I am kicking myself for not buying when I bought PWER last month as they were my two finalists. KLIC was in the high eights and is now pushing $12. PWER hasn't done much for me. But there is still time. Wait and Hope. That is my motto.

Earnings Central

The traveling has really screwed up my following of earnings reports. Heck, it was difficult following my Mavericks sweeping the Lakers (hooray!).

UNTD - my favorite flower company (I hope you all used them for Mother's day), dial-up ISP and Nostalgia social company (i doubt that will ever sell) posting ho-hum earnings (United Online Reports First Quarter 2011 Results). This has been a ho-hum stock for me, a stock that proves the rule of dividend stocks doing well by being the exception. It hasn't been a disaster, up about 20%,but I doubt I will renew them when the time comes.

MRX - now this has been a great stock and they had another stellar earnings report on Friday (Medicis Reports First Quarter 2011 Results). They are flush with cash, gave great guidance and are just all around super. They are up about 35% since I bought them.

NVMI - while not in my MFI portfolio, I do still own them. They had very strong earnings (Nova Announces 2011 First Quarter Results). They also have a lot of cash and are growing.

PWER - I really thought their earnings were strong (Power-One Announces First Quarter 2011 Results). The world is really betting on PWER flopping. They are about 30% off their highs, they grew revenue Y0Y by 61%, they made 20 cents a share (for an $8.60 stock) and they are a $900m company with 250m in cash.

ARO - they didn't actually announce earnings, but they certainly deflated the old balloon (Aeropostale shares plunge on weak 1Q, outlook cut). I just really struggle on these retailers. I guess I did ok on BKE, but I recall losing $ in the past on AEO and ANF.

I think that is the bulk of the earnings news. My portfolio kind of drifted with the market last week, off maybe 1.5 points.

Top 200 List

This lits is on hold until I get back home. Hopefully next weekend. I do have CHKE coming up for sale in 10 days. I will likely renew them for another year.

Auf weidersehen for now!

3 comments:

AndrewsDad said...

I bought both KLIC, +33%, and PWER, -2%, about 5 weeks ago. Was hoping the recent big day for PWER would send the shorts running for the exit.

I have some cash, enough to add one stock to my IRA account and am currently running my process to identify possible purchase candidates. Half way through, HPQ seems like it could meet my criteria, although it does not meet the MFI Diary 2.4% dividend minimum. CMTL looks interesting.

Any suggestions?

Marsh_Gerda said...

Given my subpar performance recently and frankly in total, I am probably not the guy to ask. That being said, I like CMTL and CHKE on the yield side, along with AZN... which is a British stock that would be ranked quite high if allowed and pays a nice dividend.

AndrewsDad said...

I bought CMTL. Have owned CHKE in the past, results not good, and just not sure of the future plan of the business.

CMTL was on my prior short list from my prior buy and was not seeing anything else jumping out at me from my investing research process. The next few weeks are going to be busy, busy, busy and I try not to have cash on the sidelines so I just decided to go with it.

My fiance is looking to move some money and I told her to look at Formula Investing. She is considering the mutual funds but will probably go with the professionally managed account since it should be a long term investment. My one concern is having so much of our investments in stocks.