Long:
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Apple (AAPL)
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Google (GOOG)
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Rosetta Stone (RST)
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Research in Motion (RIMM)
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Priceline (PCLN)
Short:
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Blue Nile
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AOL (AOL)
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IAC Interactive (IACI)
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Monster Worldwide (MWW)
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Travelzoo (TZOO)
The government is on the verge of rescuing banks from billions of dollars in bad debts and the SEC has announced a temporary ban on short sales in financial institutions. I don’t see how an investor cannot grab some shares in financial stocks.
I bought shares of WM and NCC today.
Today the SEC announced that it has issued new rules to prevent naked short selling. This is a good step. However, these new rules will be useless if the SEC, Wall Street’s whipping boy, doesn’t actually enforce the rules. I hope the SEC is serious about stopping naked short sales and other abuses on Wall Street.
I read a story that the SEC is going to implement some new rules that are intended to curb naked short selling and I think the SEC should have passed tougher rules long ago.
I believe hedge funds and institutions have been using naked shorting to manipulate stock prices for quite a while, especially among small caps. I think this has gotten more pronounced in the last couple of years.
I don’t know how many times I have seen a small cap take a pretty significant drop without any news. It has also become commonplace for small caps to get slaughtered after earnings if they don’t report results that blow away expectations. I think naked shorting is a big reason for both of these events. (more…)
A few months ago I wrote the market was brutal and I think the current market has only gotten worse. There is still extreme volatility in the market and I don’t think anyone has a clue where the overall market is headed over the next six months to a year. I know I don’t.
There are just too many unknows yet to play out. Stocks rallied today after the government took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mae but I don’t think this will lead to a sustained rally. In fact I think the market will react similarly to when the Fed cut interest rates so drastically earlier this year. The overall market, especially financials, will have a short term rally but then the reality of the credit crisis will come back into the picture and the market will sell off again. Until there is more certainty about when the housing market, the credit crisis, and the economy are going to improve I think you are going to continue to see a lot of volatility in the stock market.
I think the best way play the current market is to invest in stocks that you plan on holding for a while. Trading stocks over the short term (holding for a few weeks or months) is always very hard but it is almost impossible in the current market.
By the way, when did our government become the Robin Hood for the rich? The government seems intent on stealing from the poor (the average taxpayer) and giving this money to the rich (big financial institutions, etc.). The average American should be pretty pissed off by the actions our government has been taking to protect the wealth of the super-rich. I will touch on this in another post.
I use Yahoo Finance a lot and I like the website but I am disappointed in Yahoo’s “Financial Blogs” category. You will see this category on the left sidebar when you get a quote for a stock.
The problem with Yahoo’s “Financial Blogs” category is that it doesn’t contain any legitimate financial blogs. The few websites that I see featured under the “blogs” category are not even blogs. The “blogs” that are featured are Barron’s Online, The Wall Street Journal Online, Zachs, Seeking Alpha, and Porfolio.com. The only website in this group that could be considered a blog is Seeking Alpha but it is more of a news aggregator.
The whole idea of blogs in the first place is to get news and information from sources outside of the mainstream media. There is a ton of useful analysis/opinions provided by financial blogs on small and midcap stocks that big financial media companies such as the Wall Street Journal don’t even bother to cover. What’s the point of having a “blog” section if you are not going to link to any legitimate financial blogs?
I have already emailed Yahoo and Google to include more financial blogs in their “blog” category and I encourage you to do the same if you like investments ideas and analysis that come from blogs like mine.
Time to Take a Break, Selling My Blog
I’ve been writing about the stock market on my website/blog for about two years and I have decided that I need an extended break. This website has consumed a great deal of my free time and has also required a great amount of effort. I no longer have the same motivation that I once did to put the time and effort into my blog, hence the lack of posting for the last couple of months.
Instead of letting my blog just languish I have decided to sell my blog and let someone else take over. It is currently listed on sitepoint if you are interested in buying this website.
If you have followed my stock picks and you want my opinion on them before my website is sold email me through the contact link. Feel free to contact me about any other concerns as well.