Investment Idea Sharing May 24, 2014

This Week's Activity – May 24, 2014: 

This week I sold a Covered Call Option on EZPW, see details below.

This week, the world market indices were mixed with minor Up/Down movements.   Except for the Russia RTSI which was up 6%.  Markets are still hopeful that Russia and Ukraine will get along.  Here is an article discussing their natural gas stand-off: http://news.yahoo.com/good-chance-moscow-kiev-gas-deal-june-1-185159822.html

Here is an article about the newly elected Ukraine President: http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/26/world/europe/ukraine-crisis/

Elections were held this week in the European Union countries to elect their representatives to the European Parliament.  Several of these countries are not happy with how things are going and elected representatives who will be voting to get out of the EU.  This should lead to some lively market activity over the next year.  Read more here: http://news.yahoo.com/french-far-earthquake-win-europe-votes-001426328.html

Summary Table of Worldwide Market Index Closing values for this week:

 http://www.ultimatestockfinder.com/weekly_index_summary.GIF

Next Monthly Meeting 2^nd Tuesday of Each Month:

Tuesday, June 10, 2014, 7:30 PM at my house. 

Here are my Stock BUYs for This Week:

Stock Symbol:

Buy Date: 

Buy Price:  

Target Sell Price:

Here are my Stock SELLs for This Week:

Stock Symbol:

Sell Date: 

Sell Price:

Buy Price:

Buy Date:

Here are my Mutual Fund BUYs for This Week:

Fund Symbol:

Buy Date: 

Buy Price: 

Target Sell Price:

Here are my Option (CALL or PUT) Sells/Buys for This Week:

Option: Sell Covered Call on 1,000 shares.

Stock Symbol: EZPW

Sell to Open Date: 5/22/2014

Expiration Date: Jan 17/2015

Strike Price: $12.50

Option Price: $1.25

I originally sold a PUT for EZPW on 11/8/2013 and earned a PUT option premium of $1.30/share.  On 11/8/2013 EZPW started the day at $13.79, but ended the day at $11.34, which triggered my PUT to sell.  EZPW was finally PUT to me on 3/24/2014 at $12.50/share at which time it was actually selling for $11.37.  So, I had to wait patiently for EZPW to come back.  On 5/22/2014 EZPW got up to $12.89 which triggered this Covered Call option to sell.

So, I have now made a 10% premium selling the PUT that got me into EZPW and now have made another 10% premium by selling the Call that may get me out. 

Visit www.ultimatestockfinder.com to download our Stock Evaluator and Mutual Fund Evaluator spreadsheets, read training articles and check out all our web links for investing information.

StockEvaluator ‘Short List’

Download ‘Short List’ here: http://www.ultimatestockfinder.com/stockevaluator_short_list.xls

‘Short List’ screens using 12 fundamental value limits that I want to see in a stock before considering it as a possible buy. 

View our training video that shows how to enter your preferred values for each of these ‘Short List’ screening limits:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAwU48oEkJU

View the Stock Evaluator ‘Short List’ screening criteria and target limit values here: http://www.ultimatestockfinder.com/short_list_12_criteria.JPG

Mutual Fund Evaluator ‘Short List’

Download ‘Short List’ here: http://www.ultimatestockfinder.com/mutualfundevaluator_short_list.xls

View the Mutual Fund Evaluator ‘Short List’ screening criteria and target limit values here:

http://www.ultimatestockfinder.com/mutualfund_short_list_criteria.JPG

Please remember to send me any other investing ideas, information or questions that you want to share with the group.

Thanks,

John D.

Disclosure: The author has no positions in any of the stocks or mutual funds mentioned in this article unless clearly stated above. We certify that except as cited herein, this is our work product. We received no compensation or other inducement from any party to produce this article.  Please see our full legal disclaimer at:  http://www.ultimatestockfinder.com/stockevaluator_disclaimer.html

______________________________________________

To Remove Your Name from this email distribution list, reply to me and I will delete your name.

Ultimate Stock Finder is also on Facebook, you can ‘Like’ us on FB and receive our weekly ‘Investment Idea Sharing’ letter (summary paragraph only) to your FB page.  https://www.facebook.com/UltimateStockFinder

You can read our weekly ‘Investment Idea Sharing’ letter at our Ultimate Stock Finder blog:  http://ultimatestockfinder.blogspot.com/

Investment Idea Sharing May 17, 2014

This Week's Activity – May 17, 2014: 

I am always looking for fundamentally good stocks that pay a dividend of 4% or more.  Stock Evaluator ‘Short List’ is one way that I search for these fundamentally good companies.  This week at Dividend.com, I ran their ‘High Dividend Stocks by Yield’ screen ( http://www.dividend.com/dividend-stocks/high-dividend-yield-stocks.php )  Then I went down their list from the top (first place was SDR at 31.97% dividend) down to 4.0% dividend payers, and added any companies that were not already in Stock Evaluator.  This added about 200 more companies to Stock Evaluator.  In Stock Evaluator, you can always run a Descending Sort on Dividend Yield using the Control-D macro.  Notice that Stock Evaluator has a few companies paying more than SDR due to data differences between Yahoo Finance and Dividend.com. 

This week, the world market indices were mixed with minor Up/Down movements.   Except for the India BSE and CNX indexes which were both up about 5.0%.  India just had an election where the ruling “Congress” party was strongly defeated by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).  The BJP now has a clear majority and does not need to form a coalition government.   Indian stock markets are very hopeful for what this will bring the country.  Here is an article discussing the Indian election:  http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/17/us-india-election-idUSBREA4E0XG20140517

Summary Table of Worldwide Market Index Closing values for this week:

 http://www.ultimatestockfinder.com/weekly_index_summary.GIF

Next Monthly Meeting 2^nd Tuesday of Each Month:

Tuesday, June 10, 2014, 7:30 PM at my house. 

Here are my Stock BUYs for This Week:

Stock Symbol:

Buy Date: 

Buy Price:  

Target Sell Price:

Here are my Stock SELLs for This Week:

Stock Symbol:

Sell Date: 

Sell Price:

Buy Price:

Buy Date:

Here are my Mutual Fund BUYs for This Week:

Fund Symbol:

Buy Date: 

Buy Price: 

Target Sell Price:

Here are my Option (CALL or PUT) Sells/Buys for This Week:

Option: Sell Covered Call

Stock Symbol: CSCO

Sell to Open Date: 5/15/2014

Expiration Date: Jan 17/2015

Strike Price: $25

Option Price: $1.05

Visit www.ultimatestockfinder.com to download our Stock Evaluator and Mutual Fund Evaluator spreadsheets, read training articles and check out all our web links for investing information.

StockEvaluator ‘Short List’

Download ‘Short List’ here: http://www.ultimatestockfinder.com/stockevaluator_short_list.xls

‘Short List’ screens using 12 fundamental value limits that I want to see in a stock before considering it as a possible buy. 

View our training video that shows how to enter your preferred values for each of these ‘Short List’ screening limits:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAwU48oEkJU

View the Stock Evaluator ‘Short List’ screening criteria and target limit values here: http://www.ultimatestockfinder.com/short_list_12_criteria.JPG

Mutual Fund Evaluator ‘Short List’

Download ‘Short List’ here: http://www.ultimatestockfinder.com/mutualfundevaluator_short_list.xls

View the Mutual Fund Evaluator ‘Short List’ screening criteria and target limit values here:

http://www.ultimatestockfinder.com/mutualfund_short_list_criteria.JPG

Please remember to send me any other investing ideas, information or questions that you want to share with the group.

Thanks,

John D.

Disclosure: The author has no positions in any of the stocks or mutual funds mentioned in this article unless clearly stated above. We certify that except as cited herein, this is our work product. We received no compensation or other inducement from any party to produce this article.  Please see our full legal disclaimer at:  http://www.ultimatestockfinder.com/stockevaluator_disclaimer.html

______________________________________________

To Remove Your Name from this email distribution list, reply to me and I will delete your name.

Ultimate Stock Finder is also on Facebook, you can ‘Like’ us on FB and receive our weekly ‘Investment Idea Sharing’ letter (summary paragraph only) to your FB page.  https://www.facebook.com/UltimateStockFinder

You can read our weekly ‘Investment Idea Sharing’ letter at our Ultimate Stock Finder blog:  http://ultimatestockfinder.blogspot.com/

Investment Idea Sharing May 10, 2014

This Week's Activity – May 10, 2014: 

Remember this month’s Investment Idea Sharing meeting is this Tuesday, May 13 at 7:30PM at my house.  Email me for directions if you need them.

Two more corporate buy-outs were announced this week.  Both are hostile takeover offers which may still be refused by the target company.  But both caused big jumps in the stock prices of the 2 target companies.

Pfizer (PFE down 10% the past month) is trying to buy AstraZeneca (AZN up 17% the past month). 

Read story here:  http://www.thestreet.com/story/12700994/1/why-astrazeneca-azn-stock-is-up-this-morning.html?puc=yahoo&cm_ven=YAHOO

See Yahoo Charts here:

PFE: http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=PFE+Interactive#symbol=PFE;range=1d

AZN:  http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=AZN+Interactive#symbol=AZN;range=

Valeant Pharmaceuticals (VRX up 0% the past month) is trying to buy Allergan (AGN up 25% the past month).

Read story here: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/valeant-sales-miss-q1-earnings-223500160.html

See Yahoo Charts here:

VRX: http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=VRX+Interactive#symbol=VRX;range=1d

AGN: http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=AGN+Interactive#symbol=AGN;range=1d

For most of us, our 401K is the biggest and most important part of our retirement investing.  401K accounts provide an easy way to save for retirement and usually have a simple, easy to understand list of around 20 mutual funds to choose from.  My one problem with 401K’s is that most do not provide a simple, easy to use way to view and compare the performance of all funds available for you to choose. 

Mutual Fund Evaluator spreadsheet provides this easy to use comparison view.  You can mark all the funds you want to compare, then click the ‘Row-by-Row’ Comparison function (Control-T) to bring all your marked funds to the top.  Now you can easily compare 17 key financial values across all these funds.  Including:

     Net Fund Assets

     Average Annual Return (1 yr, 5 yr, 10 yr)

     Dividend Yield

     Expense Ratio

     Sales Load

     Number of Years Up over life of fund

     Number of Years Down over life of fund

     Morningstar Rating

     Minimum Investment 

Download Mutual Fund Evaluator spreadsheet here: http://www.ultimatestockfinder.com/mutualfundevaluator.xls

If you are willing to send me the funds available in your 401k, I will prepare a personal Mutual Fund Evaluator list of your fund choices and send it to you.  Then you can see all your fund choices in the ‘Row-by-Row’ Comparison, which will make it easy to separate the good funds from the bad funds.  Next week I will prepare this list for my 401K fund choices from my last job which was with a major defense electronics/wireless communications company.  I will send my list out with next week’s newsletter.

This week, the world market indices were mixed with minor Up / Down movements.   Except for the Russia RTSI index which was up 8.3%.  The continuing uncertainty in Ukraine is making Russian stocks very volatile.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average had its highest closing price ever on Friday.  Here is an article discussing this week’s activities: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/05/09/dow-makes-history-with-record-close-zulily-plunges.aspx

Summary Table of Worldwide Market Index Closing values for this week:

 http://www.ultimatestockfinder.com/weekly_index_summary.GIF

I still think the markets are overpriced but I continue to look for good values on individual stocks of good solid companies. 

 

StockEvaluator ‘Short List’

View ‘Short List’ here: http://www.ultimatestockfinder.com/stockevaluator_short_list.xls

‘Short List’ screens using 12 fundamental value limits that I want to see in a stock before considering it as a possible buy. 

View our training video that shows how to enter your preferred values for each of these ‘Short List’ screening limits:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAwU48oEkJU

View the ‘Short List’ screening criteria and target limit values here: http://www.ultimatestockfinder.com/short_list_12_criteria.JPG

I also use FinViz stock screener as a parallel check along with my ‘Short List’ to find good fundamental stocks that are near their 52 Week Lows.  Here is the FinViz stock screener link set to the 9 out of 12 ‘Short List’ limits that are available at FinViz.  

This is in the FinViz ‘Custom’ view:

http://finviz.com/screener.ashx?v=151&f=fa_debteq_u0.8,fa_div_o1,fa_ltdebteq_u0.8,fa_netmargin_pos,fa_payoutratio_u70,fa_pb_u2,fa_pe_u20,fa_ps_u2,fa_salesqoq_pos,ta_highlow52w_a0to10h&ft=4

Next Monthly Meeting 2^nd Tuesday of Each Month:

Tuesday, May 13, 2014, 7:30 PM at my house. 

Here are my Stock BUYs for This Week:

Stock Symbol:

Buy Date: 

Buy Price:  

Target Sell Price:

Here are my Stock SELLs for This Week:

Stock Symbol:

Sell Date: 

Sell Price:

Buy Price:

Buy Date:

Here are my Mutual Fund BUYs for This Week:

Fund Symbol:

Buy Date: 

Buy Price: 

Target Sell Price:

Here are my Option (CALL or PUT) Sells/Buys for This Week:

Option:

Stock Symbol:

Sell to Open Date:

Expiration Date:

Strike Price:

Option Price:

Visit www.ultimatestockfinder.com to download our Stock Evaluator and Mutual Fund Evaluator spreadsheets, read training articles and check out all our web links for investing information.

Please remember to send me any other investing ideas, information or questions that you want to share with the group.

Thanks,

John D.

Disclosure: The author has no positions in any of the stocks or mutual funds mentioned in this article unless clearly stated above. We certify that except as cited herein, this is our work product. We received no compensation or other inducement from any party to produce this article.  Please see our full legal disclaimer at:  http://www.ultimatestockfinder.com/stockevaluator_disclaimer.html

______________________________________________

To Remove Your Name from this email distribution list, reply to me and I will delete your name.

Ultimate Stock Finder is also on Facebook, you can ‘Like’ us on FB and receive our weekly ‘Investment Idea Sharing’ letter (summary paragraph only) to your FB page.  https://www.facebook.com/UltimateStockFinder

You can read our weekly ‘Investment Idea Sharing’ letter at our Ultimate Stock Finder blog:  http://ultimatestockfinder.blogspot.com/

Investment Idea Sharing May 3, 2014

This Week's Activity – May 3, 2014: 

On Friday, May 1, Jim Beam (BEAM) was bought out by Suntory (STBFY) of Japan.  This buyout was announced in January 2014 at which time, Suntory offered a 25% premium to the price of BEAM the day before.  I wish I had bought BEAM on Jan. 18.  Read more here: http://seekingalpha.com/article/1945041-beam-time-to-drink-after-a-great-offer  

I maintain an archive of spreadsheets of corporate buyouts so I can look for patterns in the financial data of the companies that are bought out.  My hope is that I can someday find a pattern to apply going forward to help me find these buyouts BEFORE they happen.  So far I am not recognizing any patterns.  Please feel free to suggest your thoughts on ways I can improve this pattern search.  Here is the link to the Ultimate Stock Finder BuyOut Archive page:  http://www.ultimatestockfinder.com/stockevaluatorarchiveindex.html

Last week, Richard, one of our Investment Idea Sharing friends asked me to add two fields to Stock Evaluator.  Price/Free Cash Flow (P/FCF) and Shareholder Yield.  He found P/FCF at FinViz, so I made the proper RCHGetTableCell command to put this value into Stock Evaluator. 

Shareholder Yield is not directly readable from any website that we could find. 

Here is the definition:

"To calculate shareholder yield, go to the Yahoo Finance Cash Flow statement. Look in the section labeled – Financing Activities, Cash Flows Provided By or Used In.  To calculate shareholder yield, you have to determine the total amount of dividends that were paid to shareholders (Dividends Paid), the net amount of stock that was repurchased (Sale Purchase of Stock), and the net amount of debt that was reduced (Net Borrowings). Before you get started, remember you are dealing with a cash flow statement so cash outflows, such as dividends, are recorded as negative numbers.  

Add Dividends Paid + Net Share Buybacks + Net Debt Reduction.  This value is called Returned Capital.  Before you calculate Shareholder Yield, change the sign of Returned Capital. Remember, we are dealing with the cash flow statement so negative numbers are flows out of the company’s coffers to you.  Shareholder Yield is Returned Capital divided by Market Capitalization." 

Here is an excellent article with more detail about Shareholder Yield:

 http://www.youngresearch.com/authors/jeremyjones/calculating-shareholder-yield/

StockEvaluator.xls already contained Market Cap., so all I had to do was make RCHGetTableCell formulas to look up the 3 Cash Flow values from Yahoo Finance.

While looking around at FinViz, I found the 14 Day Relative Strength Index value, RSI (14). Michael B. has been asking for this data in Stock Evaluator, so I added it too.

These 3 new added fields are now in StockEvaluator.xls in the following columns:

 Price/Free Cash Flow (P/FCF) in Col. K

 RSI (14) in Col. L

 Shareholder Yield in Col. P

At this time, I am not including these 3 new data values in the Red cell count.  I have added Target values in Columns C & D for each, but am only turning their cells Yellow to show a warning when they do not meet their Target value.  I track these 3 values for a few weeks to determine the proper Target limit value for use adding them to the Red cell count.

This week, the world market indices were mixed with minor Up / Down movements except for the Brazil BOVESPA Index which was up 3.5%.  Here is an article discussing this week’s activities:  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-03/u-s-stocks-gain-for-week-as-dow-hits-record-on-earnings.html?cmpid=yhoo

Summary Table of Worldwide Market Index Closing values for this week:

 http://www.ultimatestockfinder.com/weekly_index_summary.GIF

I still think the markets are overpriced but I continue to look for good values on individual stocks of good solid companies. 

 

StockEvaluator ‘Short List’

View ‘Short List’ here: http://www.ultimatestockfinder.com/stockevaluator_short_list.xls

‘Short List’ screens using 12 fundamental value limits that I want to see in a stock before considering it as a possible buy. 

View our training video that shows how to enter your preferred values for each of these ‘Short List’ screening limits:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAwU48oEkJU

View the ‘Short List’ screening criteria and target limit values here: http://www.ultimatestockfinder.com/short_list_12_criteria.JPG

I also use FinViz stock screener as a parallel check along with my ‘Short List’ to find good fundamental stocks that are near their 52 Week Lows.  Here is the FinViz stock screener link set to the 9 out of 12 ‘Short List’ limits that are available at FinViz.  

This is in the FinViz ‘Custom’ view:

http://finviz.com/screener.ashx?v=151&f=fa_debteq_u0.8,fa_div_o1,fa_ltdebteq_u0.8,fa_netmargin_pos,fa_payoutratio_u70,fa_pb_u2,fa_pe_u20,fa_ps_u2,fa_salesqoq_pos,ta_highlow52w_a0to10h&ft=4

Next Monthly Meeting 2^nd Tuesday of Each Month:

Tuesday, May 13, 2014, 7:30 PM at my house. 

Here are my Stock BUYs for This Week:

Stock Symbol:

Buy Date: 

Buy Price:  

Target Sell Price:

Here are my Stock SELLs for This Week:

Stock Symbol:

Sell Date: 

Sell Price:

Buy Price:

Buy Date:

Here are my Mutual Fund BUYs for This Week:

Fund Symbol:

Buy Date: 

Buy Price: 

Target Sell Price:

Here are my Option (CALL or PUT) Sells/Buys for This Week:

Option:

Stock Symbol:

Sell to Open Date:

Expiration Date:

Strike Price:

Option Price:

Visit www.ultimatestockfinder.com to download our Stock Evaluator and Mutual Fund Evaluator spreadsheets, read training articles and check out all our web links for investing information.

Please remember to send me any other investing ideas, information or questions that you want to share with the group.

Thanks,

John D.

Disclosure: The author has no positions in any of the stocks or mutual funds mentioned in this article unless clearly stated above. We certify that except as cited herein, this is our work product. We received no compensation or other inducement from any party to produce this article.  Please see our full legal disclaimer at:  http://www.ultimatestockfinder.com/stockevaluator_disclaimer.html

______________________________________________

To Remove Your Name from this email distribution list, reply to me and I will delete your name.

Ultimate Stock Finder is also on Facebook, you can ‘Like’ us on FB and receive our weekly ‘Investment Idea Sharing’ letter (summary paragraph only) to your FB page.  https://www.facebook.com/UltimateStockFinder

You can read our weekly ‘Investment Idea Sharing’ letter at our Ultimate Stock Finder blog:  http://ultimatestockfinder.blogspot.com/