Stocks and Trading Thread - Channeling your inner Mono

[Tonitrus]

I use the monkeys/dartboard method myself.

[Ed Anger]

I use the monkeys/dartboard method myself.

I watch Jim Cramer. BUY BUY BUY

not really

[MadImmortalMan]

Read in the Economist that 80% of US retail investors pay for investment advice. 

I spend many hours researching things. I guess that's really not too much better.

[Tonitrus]

Sometimes I think I'd just do better to hire MiM as my financial guru. 

[Phillip V]

Sometimes I think I'd just do better to hire MiM as my financial guru. 

Hire him.

[Admiral Yi]

Anyone giving any thought to the Alibaba IPO? 

[MadImmortalMan]

Anyone giving any thought to the Alibaba IPO? 

A way to play that would be Yahoo!. They own a big share of it.

[Admiral Yi]

Alibaba is going  to be a US listing.  Don't see the need  to make a 2nd cousin play.  Especially when Yahoo! is otherwise a crap company.

[MadImmortalMan]

I agree with you, but not everybody gets a chance to participate in the IPO. The only other way is to buy after it goes public.

[Phillip V]

U.S. Treasury yields hit a new low for the year today. Bond bears may get slaughtered in the near future if not already hurting. The U.S. economy might have actually contracted the first quarter, and there is no convincing evidence yet that this quarter will be a full "bounce back."

[Admiral Yi]

AT&T is trying to merge/acquire DirecTV.

[Phillip V]

AT&T is trying to merge/acquire DirecTV.

Good. Hopefully we also get a SprinT-Mobile merger.

[Admiral Yi]

Going to buy some EnorNOC (ENOC).  Read an article in The Economist.  They pay companies to switch off equipment during peak electricity demand.  Active in Europe, which is going to have increasing electricity supply problems IMO.  Plus they just reported a big quarterly loss and their share price dived.

I'm also thinking there's a built in discont because their name is  too close to Enron's. 

[Phillip V]

Treasurys Rise; Yield Touches 2014 Low

"Benchmark 10-Year Notes Fall to 2014-Low 2.464% Yield"

http://online.wsj.com/articles/treasurys-rise-yield-touches-2014-low-1401284037

Yields this year have been falling on mixed news and in spite of QE3 tapering. Imagine if bad news hits. Yet, stocks stay high. It is increasingly tricky to figure out what to do with investment portfolios.

[MadImmortalMan]

I left for vacation with everything fairly tight. Not much room to fail, but Core Labs did drop significantly. About the same amount as MSFT gained. Which is good for me and good for Mrs. MIM's sock buying program, which has frankly been languishing for more than a decade. Now that Ballmer's gone, there seems to be a spark, and I like it.

I had sold calls and offsetting puts on my CLB position (and the others too---no sense worrying about your portfolio when you're wandering around Ljubjiana). Anyway, I lost a couple hundred bucks there. Gained some in LO. More or less flat, as intended. Those PM puts are toast. I guess people just thought it was to dangerous a time to not be invested in tobacco. Luckily, I had LO to counter. The puts I originally bought on PM are worth about 3c each. I'm just going to let them go in the vain and worthless hope that maybe Carl Icahn will be caught trading them illegally or something.  In the meantime. basking in the happy of the gains elsewhere. My last negative month was August 2011. I don't want to remember that one.