Welcome to the 73rd edition of the Festival of Stocks, brought to you by the folks at Investing Adventures in conjunction with Value Investing News. Hopefully by now you have your long positions in place, the coffee’s hot, and you’re ready to go. Let’s start you off with some reading material to help get you through this Monday morning. Enjoy!
- Aussie Investor presents How To Invest In Gold posted at Australian Investing, saying, “Find out what your options are for investing in gold.”
- Ryan presents Buffet, Baseball and Patience posted at Building Millionaire Money Habits, saying, “Buffet has been known to be an incredibly patient investor, which has made him exceptionally successful. While he constantly pours through annual reports to find great pitches, he finds nothing wrong with waiting for the right moment. Here’s his story on how he became a self-made billionaire.”
- Head Pig presents Lipstick This Pig | Pig Logic Recession, Recession, Recession posted at Recession, Recession, Recession.
- AlexG presents Crisis Investing for 2008 posted at La Contra, saying, “It is easy to understand but few will follow through once crisis hits such as the current credit crunch. In his classic book Contrarian Investment Strategies: The Next Generation, David Dreman devotes a whole chapter on how to profit when blood hits the street.”
- AlexG presents United Rentals Is The Name,Value Investing Is The Game posted at La Contra, saying, “It is amazing what a volatile market can do. . The big financials are the obvious choices but finding a small well-run company is where the big money is made. I could sit here and write several articles on big banks but that is not why I set up this blog for in the first place. I wanted to find small caps that would outperform the market in the long run.”
- Investing Angel presents Tips For Shorting Stocks posted at Stock Tips, saying, “In today’s unstable market, many people are considering shorting stocks. This might be because they believe the market is going to get worse, so they want to bet against the market or they just wish to hedge their bets.”
- Dobromir presents Are Dividend ETF’s for you? posted at Create Rising Passive Income From Dividend Paying Stocks.
- The Investor presents Being fearfully greedy: Why I buy in bear markets posted at Monevator.com, saying, “Rather than whimpering in a bear market, if you’re well-positioned you should be whooping with joy that you’ve got an unlooked for chance to buy the same shares you were buying last month for 10%, 20%, or even 50% less than you expected to pay.”
- Dave presents Ballooning Inflation – Vox posted at Cheapo Groovo.
- LIVING OFF DIVIDENDS presents Global Markets Crash: All Non-Correlated Markets Converge In A Downturn posted at LIVING OFF DIVIDENDS, saying, “Living Off Dividends explains why global markets converge during a down cycle in the economy.”
- Dividends4Life presents Is It Time To Upgrade Your Portfolio? posted at Dividends4Life, saying, “A look at a HOT fund that has a good track record of beating the S&P 500 through active management using a unique method of “upgrading”.”
- Raag Vamdatt presents Interpreting Price to Earnings (PE) Ratio :: RaagVamdatt.com :: Financial Planning demystified posted at RaagVamdatt.com – Financial Planning demystified.
- Tyler McKinna presents It’s Time To Buy POT! posted at Dividend Money, saying, “Potash Corporation (POT) is a highly profitable fertilizer company that produces and distributes fertilizer worldwide. The company’s stock price has been beaten down with the recent market conditions and now offers a great entry point for investors to profit from the high demand for fertilizer throughout the world. Thank you for reading.”
- KCLau presents Why Financial Planner will be the Hottest Job in 2008 posted at KCLau’s Money Tips, saying, “An article on why financial planning will be a hot job this year. Also the introduction of financial planning into various domains in life, eg. education”
- Dr. Barry Burns presents Enjoy This Bull Market! posted at Top Dog Trading, saying, “Does this look like a bull market to you? Well it is, and I can prove it with these 2 charts.”
- Ken Sterling presents Commentary – Sovereign funds pose a threat posted at Pivotal Investing, saying, “Hard hit by multi-billion dollar losses, U.S. financial giants are selling their souls — they call them stakes — to China, Abu Dhabi and other foreign governments. But these stakeholders are interested in more than profits.”
- Middle Class Millionaire presents Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) – A Sliver of Good News posted at Middle Class Millionaire.
- Michael Bass presents Dave Ramsey, Peter Schiff, and decline of U.S. Economy. posted at Debt Prison, saying, “There are two distinct differences in their perspectives concerning our U.S. Economy and monetary policy that I find puzzling.”
- Valulicious presents Finally! A Dharma Index and How It Will Make Me Rich posted at Valulicious.
- Jed Norwood presents Forex Trading Secrets | Building a Profitable Trading Account posted at Forex Strategy Secrets, saying, “Building a profitable trading account can be done by developing a trading system that you are consistent with. This article can be applied to stocks, or the forex market.”
- Pinyo Bhulipongsanon presents Market Volatility, Should I Get Out of the Stock Market? posted at Moolanomy, saying, “commentary on recent market volatility and shares practical ideas about what to do.”
- Leon Gettler presents Will the Fed avert a recession and other questions posted at Sox First, saying, “The Fed has stopped, at least for now, a global rout but fears of a recession are continuing to mount. How deep is the link between the market downturn and the real economy in the US, and the rest of the world?”
- wilson ng presents Its not the Brain, its the Stomach posted at Reflections of a BizDrivenLife, saying, “I always feel that a lot of people throws an unanswered question to everybody which starts like ” if you’re so smart, when are you not richer?”. I believe making lots of money is not about your brains, it is about your stomach. You can garner above average wealth if you are smart, but only if you have the stomach for risk, coupled with luck, will you have the chance to become outrageously rich.”
- Matthew Paulson presents Grandma’s 529 Account Probably Better posted at American Consumer News.
- Silicon Valley Blogger presents The Stock Market Ruined My Life – NSFW Video posted at The Digerati Life. Editor’s note: This is NOT SAFE FOR WORK DUE TO LANGUAGE
- neumes presents Stock Watch List – Have Citigroup and Bank Stocks Finally Bottomed? posted at Millionaire Neumes, saying, “Despite months on declining stock prices, bank stocks look like they are ready to rebound.”
- Super Saver presents 1/21/08 Stock Purchase Update – Signficant Decline In Portfolio posted at My Wealth Builder.
- The Dividend Guy presents Dividend Stock Wednesday: General Electric (GE) posted at The Dividend Guy Blog, saying, “My personal analysis of General Electric.”
- Millionaire Mommy Next Door presents How I Stomach the Market’s Bumpy Ride posted at Millionaire Mommy Next Door.
- Michael Davey presents Tracking Liberty’s John Malone posted at Value Investing News – Comments.
- George presents Steak n Shake Earnings Call Notes posted at Fat Pitch Financials, saying, “Steak n Shake is in the cross hairs of activist investor, Sandar Biglari. Here are my notes for their most recent conference call.”
- Jeff Cullen presents American Express (AXP) is Simply Exceptional posted at College Analysts, saying, “Lots of financial stocks are cheap right now, but very few of them have the excellent business economics of American Express.”
That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of festival of stocks using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page. Hope you have your Dramamine refilled for this week. It’s going to be a bumpy ride I think!
meets for their regularly scheduled get together. I don’t think we’re out of the recession woods just yet, but if the FOMC does cut again in addition to the insurers receiving a bailout plan, I think we’ve just seen the bottom of the short bear market. There’s still quite a bit of housing inventory out there, but with mortgage rates nearing the sub-5% region plus decreasing prices, expect folks, such as myself, to seriously look into purchasing and refinancing their homes. Also expect TLC to air new episodes of Flip That House.
Dow futures are down 300 points this morning reaffirming my thoughts that rate cuts mean nothing! Apple’s guidance last night has really set the stage for the rest of the market. If Apple’s warning of lower estimates, what does that do to others such as JCP, COH, other retailers, and the economy in general? Not to put my entire faith in Apple and Steve Jobs, but he’s a bright cookie from what I understand. If he’s seeing a slow down in consumer spending, there aren’t enough rate cuts in the world to fix it. I think we’re in a recession already seeing as how the FOMC is usually about 3-6 months behind the curve.
Last night, the futures market showed the US markets dropping over 500 points on fears of an emerging recession in the US. While I was hiding in fear at the doctor’s office, Bernanke and the FOMC held an emergency meeting and cut interest rates by 75 bp, bringing both the Fed Funds Rate and the Discount Rate to 3.5% and 4%, respectively. The markets initially opened over 400 points down but quickly recovered within minutes and held steady throughout the day, closing down only 120 points.
