Best Day in a While

I had almost forgotten that it is possible to have a good day. My portfolio was up 1.8% on Wednesday. The big gainers were SOLR, DELL and NEWN.

SOLR has been having a real run of great news. Check out some of these headlines:

GT Solar receives $228M order for polysilicon equipment and technology
GT Solar inks sale deals for $84.3 mln, shares up
GT Solar Receives $91 Million in Orders from Customers in Asia for its Advanced Sapphire Furnaces
UPDATE 1-GT Solar receives $218.9 mln order; shares up
GT Solar gets $94M order from Powertec Energy

These are all sales in the past thirty days. Now I am not crazy about a company that posts every sale to the world. But if you add these up, you get over $700m in sales in the past thirty days. Now is that a "good" number?

Yes Watson, it is a HUGE number. In the fiscal year ending April 2010 they had a total of $544m of sales. The year ending April 2009 also had about $540m in sales. Analysts expect the year about to be reported to have sales of $850m, with the upcoming year at $940m. So $700m in a month is very promising. Of course, we don't know if they are sacrificing margin, but I am very excited about GT Solar.

Dell really had a break-out quarter. The promising items to me was where their sales came from. They are breaking into the services side, as some of there acquisitions are starting to pay off. And commercial sales are picking up. All of these companies that have put off buying the next cycle of computers may finally be buying again (just as many of them are starting to hire). I say if you believe in the US recovery story, you should believe in Dell. I am very excited about Dell.

Goldman Downgrades Intel to Sell

Ouch! They lowered the price target of Intel from $21 to $20. Pretty low for a stock pushing $24 and that has just increased their dividend (Goldman Sachs Downgrades Intel).

On the Road Again

I will be traveling again for the next six days. I will be taking a PC (not just an IPad) this time, so time allowing I will try and post this weekend. The travel has really increased this year. This week it is Connecticut. Then in June I am heading to the UK. And in August, back to Switzerland. I will have a lot of frequent flier miles...