Saturday, May 25, 2013

Investment Idea Sharing for May 24, 2013

This Week's Activity - May 24, 2013:
At the suggestion of my new LinkedIn colleague, Robert W. at http://stocksaints.com/ , I have written a detailed tutorial “Training Module 1 - Why Use StockEvaluator.xls  And How to Use It”  Here is the direct link: http://www.ultimatestockfinder.com/stockevaluator_training_module_01.html   Training Module 1 is also available at the Ultimate Stock Finder website on the “Training” page. 

This week, the Japanese Nikkei 225 index was on a wild ride, from starting Monday 15,276 to being up 4% by Thursday morning, then down 12% by Friday mid morning, then back up 3% at Friday close of 14,612.  Here is the Yahoo Finance chart for this week.  http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=%5EN225+Interactive#symbol=%5En225;range=5d;compare=;indicator=volume;charttype=area;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off;source=undefined;.  The rest of the world markets did not seem to react much to this Japanese roller coaster ride.  So I am hopeful that nothing bad will be triggered from this.    

Remember the StockEvaluator “Short List” is now a web page instead of an Excel spreadsheet. This means it will open immediately on your smartphone.  “Short List” is the special sort and filter screen from StockEvaluator.xls that I run every week so I can see only the few companies that are within 5% of their 52 week low AND have less than 5 Red cells.  This week’s “Short List” has only 9 companies out of the 2,200 companies we follow in StockEvaluator.xls.  One of these 9 is HMY, which I bought last week.  Short List shows you companies that require further research to see if they fit your investment objectives.  You can open StockEvaluator.xls “Short List” from the home page at UltimateStockFinder.com

Here is the direct link to StockEvaluator.xls “Short List”:

Next Monthly Meeting 2nd Tuesday of every Month:
Tuesday, June 11, 2013 , 7:30 PM at my house. 

Here are my Buys for May 2013:
Buy   Company   Buy
Date  Bought     Price    Target Sell
----- ---------- ------ -------------
5/16   HMY         $4       $5

Here are my Sells for May 2013:
Sell      Company    Sell     Buy       Buy
Date      Sold         Price   Price     Date
-----  ----------   ------ -------  ------------
 none

StockEvaluator.xls and Mutual FundEvaluator.xls are available for download at www.ultimatestockfinder.com

Remember to send me any other stocks or mutual funds that you would like to see added to the Evaluator spreadsheets, and any other investing ideas, information or questions that you want to share.

Thanks,
John D.
______________________________________________

Visit Our Website UltimateStockFinder.com for More Investing Ideas:
All the Yahoo!Finance data is refreshed on Saturday morning into StockEvaluator.xls and contains over 2,200 company stocks.  We will add any company you would like to the list. Download "StockEvaluator.xls spreadsheet" at: http://www.ultimatestockfinder.com/ 
MutualFundEvaluator.xls is also updated weekly and currently contains over 650 mutual funds.
Also, View our YouTube training videos.

Run the various Ctrl-_ sort commands in StockEvaluator.xls and MutualFundEvaluator.xls to bring the best companies to the top based on their key financial values. 

At "Web Search Links" you can find our favorite links for good investing information including:
   Screener for New 52 week lows
   Screener for Good Fundamental Values
   Screener for Stocks with High Volatility
   Links that show current P/E values for the major worldwide indexes. 
   Current Prices and 52 week ranges for major commodities

At "Investment Training" read more information on how we do our investments.
   "How We Use PUTs and CALLs to Minimize Risk and Increase Profit on Each Buy & Sell"
   "S&P 500 Total Return Comparison" spreadsheet for 25 year comparisons of many funds
   "Compare Annuity Returns, Expenses and Death Benefit v.s. Managing it Yourself"

At "Stock Evaluator" download various pre-sorted views this week's StockEvaluator.xls 
   also, sign in and view the Ultimate Stock Finder watchlist on Yahoo Finance

Visit Our Blog and Facebook pages:


Remove Your Name from This Email Group:

If you want to be removed from this email distribution list, reply to me and I will delete your name.  You will still be able to check the Ultimate Stock Finder Blog and Facebook pages to read this same eMail update.

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Update for May 18, 2013


This Week's Activity - May 18, 2013:
ViaSat (VSAT) jumped from $50 to $71 (42%) due to surprising and impressing the market by reporting a profit of $0.04 per share for the most recent quarter.  VSAT also reported a 28% growth in revenues compared to the same quarter last year.  The stock market REALLY liked those numbers.  Back in February when VSAT hit $50 for the first time ever, I thought it was too high, so I sold my shares.  Now that it is at $71, I am not feeling very smart.  Back in 2008, Seth Klarman of Baupost Group started buying VSAT shares.  Since then he has built his VSAT holdings to be 25% of the VSAT shares on the market.  He bought in at prices in the $30’s, so he is looking REALLY smart right now, having doubled his money.

Link to article on VSAT quarterly report:

Link to VSAT 1 year stock price movements from Yahoo Finance:

Gold prices continued to fall to new 52 week lows this week.  Several of the gold mining companies have been showing up on the StockEvaluator “Short List” for the past few weeks due to being within 5% of their 52 week lows and having less than 5 Red cells.  So this week I finally bought Harmony Gold Mining (HMY) at $4.  As soon as I bought it at $4 it then made a  NEW 52 week low of $3.75.  But, it has very good fundamentals and only 1 RED cell, so I will hold it and wait to make my 20% profit before I sell.  It currently pays a 2.1% dividend, but if gold continues down, the dividend may be in jeopardy.  I do not believe that gold will go down much further, since it is already down 24% for the year and is back to prices from mid-2010. 

Link to commodity prices from CNN Money:

Link to 10 year chart of gold prices:

I have changed the StockEvaluator “Short List” to be a web page instead of an Excel spreadsheet. This means it will now open immediately on your smartphone instead of going to your downloads folder where you had to find it in order to open it.  “Short List” is the special sort and filter screen from StockEvaluator.xls that I run every week so I can see only the few companies that are within 5% of their 52 week low AND have less than 5 Red cells.  This week’s “Short List” has only 10 companies out of the 2,100 companies we follow in StockEvaluator.xls.  One of these 10 is HMY, which I bought.  Short List gives you companies that require further research to see if they fit your investment objectives.  You can open StockEvaluator.xls “Short List” from the home page at UltimateStockFinder.com

Here is the direct link to StockEvaluator.xls “Short List”:

Next Monthly Meeting 2nd Tuesday of every Month:
Tuesday, June 11, 2013 , 7:30 PM at my house. 

Here are my Buys for May 2013:
Buy   Company   Buy
Date  Bought     Price    Target Sell
----- ---------- ------ -------------
5/16   HMY         $4       $5

Here are my Sells for May 2013:
Sell      Company    Sell     Buy       Buy
Date      Sold         Price   Price     Date
-----  ----------   ------ -------  ------------
 none

StockEvaluator.xls and Mutual FundEvaluator.xls are available for download at www.ultimatestockfinder.com

Remember to send me any other stocks or mutual funds that you would like to see added to the Evaluator spreadsheets, and any other investing ideas, information or questions that you want to share.

Thanks,
John D.
____________________________________________________________________

Visit Our Website UltimateStockFinder.com for More Investing Ideas:
All the Yahoo!Finance data is refreshed on Saturday morning into StockEvaluator.xls and contains over 2,100 company stocks.  We will add any company you would like to the list. Download "StockEvaluator.xls spreadsheet" at: http://www.ultimatestockfinder.com/ 
MutualFundEvaluator.xls is also updated weekly and currently contains over 650 mutual funds.
Also, View our YouTube training videos.

Run the various Ctrl-_ sort commands in StockEvaluator.xls and MutualFundEvaluator.xls to bring the best companies to the top based on their key financial values. 

At "Web Search Links" you can find our favorite links for good investing information including:
   Screener for New 52 week lows
   Screener for Good Fundamental Values
   Screener for Stocks with High Volatility
   Links that show current P/E values for the major worldwide indexes. 
   Current Prices and 52 week ranges for major commodities

At "Investment Training" read more information on how we do our investments.
   "How We Use PUTs and CALLs to Minimize Risk and Increase Profit on Each Buy & Sell"
   "S&P 500 Total Return Comparison" spreadsheet for 25 year comparisons of many funds
   "Compare Annuity Returns, Expenses and Death Benefit v.s. Managing it Yourself"

At "Stock Evaluator" download various pre-sorted views this week's StockEvaluator.xls 
   also, sign in and view the Ultimate Stock Finder watchlist on Yahoo Finance

Visit Our Blog and Facebook pages:


Remove Your Name from This Email Group:
If you want to be removed from this email distribution list, reply to me and I will delete your name.  You will still be able to check the Ultimate Stock Finder Blog and Facebook pages to read this same eMail update.

Friday, May 10, 2013

Update for May 10, 2013


Ultimate Stock Finder Housekeeping - Important Message:
We are still having a data integrity problem in MutualFundEvaluator.xls.  Our Ultimate Stock Finder web query program is not able to retrieve the "52 Week Low" values from our preferred website due to changes in the format at that website.  We are working on a solution to this problem, but for now the "52 Week Low" values in MutualFundEvaluator.xls have all been replaced with "1" to prevent the Red cell count from returning an error code.  We are NOT seeing this problem in StockEvaluator.xls.  Please be sure to let me know if you ever find any bad data in our spreadsheets because we want to fix it.

This Week's Activity:
This week Tesla Motors (TSLA) jumped from $55 to $76 (38%) due to surprising the market by reporting a first ever profit for the most recent quarter.  TSLA carries a staggering Debt to Equity of 374%, so I am not willing to buy them.  But for anyone who did buy, this was sure a good week.

My former employer ViaSat (VSAT) jumped from $49 to $58 (18%) due to no official news, but the hope by the market that VSAT will report good quarterly numbers next week on May 16.  We will keep an eye on that report.

Several of you have asked me about annuities, so I made an "annuity_calculator.xls" spreadsheet that compares a Schwab variable annuity that guarantees 5% payout on $100,000 for your lifetime versus investing this same money yourself in a very safe bond fund like PRGMX in a self directed account.

Download these 2 documents at www.ultimatestockfinder.com "Investment Training" webpage:
schwab_annuity_example.ppt
Schwab shows their annuity where you start taking payouts at age 65, and then the annuity surrender value (also called residual value or death benefit) drops every year until reaching $0 at age 93.

annuity_calculator.xls
This Excel spreadsheet shows a self directed account that you manage where you start taking payments at age 65, and the invested value (same as residual value or death benefit) drops a lot slower because you are not paying the annuity provider.  You can change your current age and expected rates of return for your self directed account to match your estimate of what rate of return you expect to earn over the next 30 years.

The bottom line is that by age 85, the annuity residual value (death benefit) has dropped to $46,000 and the self directed invested value (death benefit) is worth $147,000.  At that point, you have paid the annuity provider $100,000 for giving you a secure guaranteed income for life.

Next Monthly Meeting 2nd Tuesday of every Month:
Tuesday, May 14, 2013 , 7:30 PM at my house. 

Here are my Buys for May 2013:
Buy   Company    Buy
Date  Bought      Price    Target Sell
-----   ---------    ------   -------------
 none

Here are my Sells for May 2013:
Sell      Company    Sell     Buy       Buy
Date      Sold         Price   Price     Date
-------   ----------   -------  -------   ------------
 none

StockEvaluator.xls and Mutual FundEvaluator.xls are available for download atwww.ultimatestockfinder.com

Remember to send me any other stocks or mutual funds that you would like to see added to the Evaluator spreadsheets, and any other investing ideas, information or questions that you want to share.

Thanks,
John D.
____________________________________________________________________

Visit Our Website UltimateStockFinder.com for More Investing Ideas:
All the Yahoo!Finance data is refreshed on Saturday morning into StockEvaluator.xls and contains over 2,100 company stocks.  We will add any company you would like to the list. Download "StockEvaluator.xls spreadsheet" at: http://www.ultimatestockfinder.com/ 
MutualFundEvaluator.xls is also updated weekly and currently contains over 650 mutual funds.
Also, View our YouTube training videos.

Run the various Ctrl-_ sort commands in StockEvaluator.xls and MutualFundEvaluator.xls to bring the best companies to the top based on their key financial values. 

At "Web Search Links" you can find our favorite links for good investing information including:
   Screener for New 52 week lows
   Screener for Good Fundamental Values
   Screener for Stocks with High Volatility
   CNN links that show current P/E values for the major worldwide indexes. 

At "Investment Training" read more information on how we do our investments.
   "How We Use PUTs and CALLs to Minimize Risk and Increase Profit on Each Buy & Sell"
   "S&P 500 Total Return Comparison" spreadsheet for 25 year comparisons of many funds
   "Compare Annuity Returns, Expenses and Death Benefit v.s. Managing it Yourself"

At "Stock Evaluator" download various pre-sorted views this week's StockEvaluator.xls 
   also, sign in and view the Ultimate Stock Finder watchlist on Yahoo Finance

Visit Our Blog and Facebook pages:

Sunday, May 5, 2013

Update for May 3, 2013


This Week's Activity:
This week, I found a data integrity problem in MutualFundEvaluator.xls.  Our Ultimate Stock Finder web query program was not able to retrieve the "52 Week Low" values from our preferred website due to changes in the format at that website.  We are working on a solution to this problem, but for now the "52 Week Low" values are wrong in MutualFundEvaluator.xls.  We are NOT seeing this problem in StockEvaluator.xls.  Please be sure to let me know if you ever find any bad data in our spreadsheets because we want to fix it.

This weekend is the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting in Omaha, Nebraska.  Over 35,000 people attend to hear what Warren Buffett has to say.  I found a website that lists Berkshire's top 15 holdings, and have marked them with a "b" in Col. A of StockEvaluator.xls.  You can do the Ctrl-T sort to bring these 15 companies to the top for easy comparison.  These 15 companies have RED cell counts ranging from 4 (WFC) to 11 (KO).  None of them are near their 52 week lows.  But if any of them do drop in the next market dip, I will definitely give them a closer look.


Yesterday, I read an article talking about how the stock market often drops between May and October, this is the "Sell in May and Go away" strategy.  So I ran a Yahoo Finance chart of S&P 500 from Jan 2008 to April 2013:

The S&P 500 hit yearly lows on:
   November 17, 2008
   March 2, 2009
   July 2, 2010
   Aug. 8 to Oct. 3, 2011
   June 1, 2012  

So, "Sell in May and Go Away" would have worked in 3 of the past 5 years, but I prefer to buy and sell individual stocks based on them having good fundamental values and a low price.  Any individual stock with bad news does not abide by any calendar of May to October.  But, since our mutual funds typically stay fully invested at all times and hold many stocks, this "Sell in May and Go Away" strategy may work for them.  I will check 3 of my favorite common stock mutual funds  (FCNTX, FBGRX,  PRWCX) to see if they follow this May to October dip.  I will have this in next week's email.

Next Monthly Meeting 2nd Tuesday of every Month:
Tuesday, May 14, 2013 , 7:30 PM at my house. 

Here are my Buys for April 2013:
Buy   Company    Buy
Date  Bought      Price    Target Sell
-----   ---------    ------   -------------
4/17   AAPL        $410    Covered Call at $500

Here are my Sells for April 2013:
Sell      Company   Sell     Buy       Buy
Date      Sold         Price   Price     Date
-------   ----------   -------  -------   ------------
4/17     PUT AAPL   $40     Strike $370, Jan 2014 
4/24     CALL STM   $.25   Strike $10, Oct 2013 
                     Bought STM @$5.50 in May 2012

StockEvaluator.xls and Mutual FundEvaluator.xls are available for download at www.ultimatestockfinder.com

Remember to send me any other stocks or mutual funds that you would like to see added to the Evaluator spreadsheets, and any other investing ideas, information or questions that you want to share.

Thanks,
John D.
____________________________________________________________________

Visit Our Website UltimateStockFinder.com for More Investing Ideas:
All the Yahoo!Finance data is refreshed on Saturday morning into StockEvaluator.xls and contains over 2,000 company stocks.  We will add any company you would like to the list. Download "StockEvaluator.xls spreadsheet" at: http://www.ultimatestockfinder.com/ 
MutualFundEvaluator.xls is also updated weekly and currently contains over 600 mutual funds.
Also, View our YouTube training videos.

Run the various Ctrl-_ sort commands in StockEvaluator.xls and MutualFundEvaluator.xls to bring the best companies to the top based on their key financial values. 

At "Web Search Links" you can find our favorite links for good investing information including:
   Screener for New 52 week lows
   Screener for Good Fundamental Values
   Screener for Stocks with High Volatility
   CNN links that show current P/E values for the major worldwide indexes. 

At "Investment Training Webpage", read more information on how we do our investments.
  See "S&P 500 Total Return Comparison" spreadsheet for 25 year comparisons of many funds
  View the Ultimate Stock Finder watchlist on Yahoo Finance

Visit Our Blog and Facebook pages:
Blog:  http://ultimatestockfinder.blogspot.com/

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/UltimateStockFinder