Biblical Money Code - WWJD?i

A couple rapid fire thoughts this morning.

First, I heard on the radio this morning about a product claiming to have unlocked "the biblical money code", and if you send them your money, they will give you the code to help achieve your much deserved earthly riches. Really?  I am sure the prophets that put the bible together were encrypting a code to make money in the stock market.

Second, on CNBC this morning Joe and Becky were arguing over the corporate tax rate in the US and the best way to measure it. I agree that you really want to get a snapshot of just the US component as that is what can be changed by lawmakers. My idea would be to take small cap stocks (say $1 b and below) that are US based. I have to believe that the majority of their income would be from the US. Then look and see what their taxes have been. I could probably do this fairly easily using my MFI worksheet and just pull different data from the corporations.  It might also be interesting to see how the tax rate varies by size of company.

Third, CYOU reported earnings early this morning. While they looked good to me - they were expecting 1.36 and they earned 1.36, they are trading down sharply in pre market trading.  I eat through the report and the guidance for 4th quarter is between 34 and 41 cents. That is a sharp drop off. It looks to be caused from their plans to ramp up marketing expenses to promote new line up of games etc. the idea is that this will expand user base and be beneficial to shareholders value in long term.  So the million dollar question (or perhaps $30 question for CYOU and shareholders) is whether this strategy works and whether it is a short term increase spend (a one time type of thing) or whether it is ongoing. I am inclined to think this might be a buying opportunity, but will want to read the transcript when it comes out.

Thanks to everyone regarding thoughts about my November 15th date. I think I will stick with it. I may buy some of the stocks as discretionary prior to November 15th, but will keep MFI pure.  I will also likely add CYOU to the watch list. There is actually an inherent advantage to waiting until right after earnings as sometimes the selling is way over done (WU was a tremendous example of that last year). I just need to stay patient and disciplined.