The PelRing

While it is rather rare that value gurus sell stocks short, Robert Olstein has been selling short in his Financial Alert Fund. The accountant-turned fund manager spots values by looking behind the numbers. In the second quarter of 2004, Robert Olstein sold short American Italian Pasta Co. (PLB) at $31. After about 6 months he covered at $20, easily made more than $1 million for his fund. Currently he is shorting two stocks: Computer Sciences Corp (CSC) and Fleetwood Enterprises Inc (FLE), although things do not always go that smoothly.

Robert Olstein is certainly one of the best money managers (that is why he is in GuruFocus’s Hall of Fame). The strategy of looking behind the numbers has brought his fund a 15.5% average annual return over 10 years after all fees. Its only down year was 2002, off 19%. In 2000, the year the tech bubble burst, the fund was up 12%, and in 2001, up 17%.

Robert Olstein started shorting Computer Sciences Corp (CSC) in the first quarter of 2004 at an average price of $41. He said that the accounting of CSC is not in accord with its economic reality, CSC is worth about $30. The price of CSC did not go down, however. He then shorted more shares. But the price of CSC went up, by the fourth quarter of 2004, the price of CSC was $56. It came down some in the first quarter of 2005, Robert Olstein was confident enough to short more shares again. As of the end of the first quarter, his shorting position in CSC totaled 504,500 shares with an average price of $42. As of this writing, the price of CSC is $46.4.

The other short selling of Robert Olstein is Fleetwood Enterprises Inc (FLE). He thinks that Fleetwood Enterprises Inc is worth about $5-6 per share. He sold short 1,195,500 shares of FLE at about $9.2 per share in the first quarter of 2005. Right now Fleetwood has a price of $9.5 per share.

Interestingly, another highly respected value manager, GuruFocus guru, Robert Rodriguez, does not agree with his value peer Olstein. In the fourth quarter of 2004, Rodriguez added 269,500 shares of FLE to his holdings at around $14 per share. As the share price dropped to $9, he added 2,261,900 more shares, which makes his total holding of Fleetwood to 3,714,400 shares.

Who is right, Robert vs. Robert?

Dr. Charlie Tian is the Director of Research of GuruFocus.com, a website tracks the stock picks and market insight of guru investors such as Warren Buffett, George Soros etc.

Be overbold today to if you have a nice deal or if you don’t with the bank that offers you a loan.

The translation says: Woon je in Heemstede of Brunssum en heeft u BKR codering. Lenen met een BKR registratie is nog nooit zo eenvoudig geweest. Verwen jezelf met een nieuwe auto met geldlening met negatieve bkr notering, 236647 euro is altijd mogelijk om te financieren. Van Hendrik-Ido-Ambacht tot Alphen aan den Rijn, financieren met en BKR codering is altijd mogelijk.

18.7 percent rate of interest may seem so equitable but will that be ceaseless after you’re going to redeem your money loan. Now you can check into rates of interest quickly at websites and image if there are other sneaky conditions you should know about. This is the reason why now you need to check out and come across if you can have a credit loan at a honest percent rate. Lots of of the moneylenders wil show you a interest rate that looks clean but doesn’t feel considerably or so after some time. It doesn’t matter if you live in Augusta Georgia or in Biloxi Mississippi a upright online check up will relieve you often lots of inconvenience. Inspect to see if the moneylender who you a bank loan is estimable. A merchant bank in Everett Massachusetts or so can have a total different actual interest rate for a 20000 dollar deferred payment then a moneylender in Blue Springs Missouri and that makes a large clear gap in your yearly pay offs.

I’ve been involved in online trading, specifically with stock and index options, for several years. In this time, I’ve spent a great deal of time thinking about value and the fact that anything, be it a stock or currency or even a house, is worth exactly whatever someone else will pay for it. Sure, there are a million and one pricing models (especially in financial markets) that will tell you precisely what something should be worth. But in the final analysis, if nobody will pay that much, then it’s not actually worth that price.

Let’s illustrate this concept in a very simple fashion. I’m an American so I’ll
use U.S. currency to make my point.

What is a $20 bill worth? Without over thinking it and talking about inflation,
exchange rates, etc. let’s just say that it is generally believed to be worth
$20.

Would you pay me $20 for a $20 bill? I’m going to guess probably not, as there
would be no real reason to do so. You would have to go to the trouble of
getting me your $20 and I would have to go to the trouble of giving you my $20
bill, and neither of us would be in a better position than we were before.
Therefore, I would like to present the idea that a $20 bill is not actually
worth $20 since nobody would likely pay $20 for it!

So how much would you pay for a $20 bill? Would you pay $19.99? Is it worth
the effort for 1 cent? No? How about $19.50? $19? Shall I keep going?

In a free and fair market it is the market itself which determines value, and
given a large enough market, that value should be fairly accurate. I read an
article online some time ago about someone who decided to conduct an experiment
just for fun. He put a new $5 bill up for auction online and began the biding
at 1 cent. He crafted a creative description of the note, and waited to see the
results. When it was all said and done, the bill did in fact sell - for
slightly over $3. He then spoke with the winning bidder, who said he had made a
profit many times online by purchasing currency for less than face value
(including a $20 bill for less than $10 as I recall).

The conductor of the experiment left it at that - nothing more than a somewhat
humorous exploration into what people think something is worth. But to me this
meant so much more.

A dollar is not actually worth a dollar… so what is it worth? What
would you trade for $1? For $20? For $100? $1,000? And if a dollar isn’t
actually worth a dollar, is a share of stock worth $50, or in fact anything at
all?

The answer is yes. At any given moment it is worth precisely what someone is
willing to pay for it. No more, no less. Money and value are merely ideas,
they are not absolutes.

Consider this carefully the next time you are convinced that the stock, option,
currency, house, or anything else you want to buy, is worth what you’re about to
pay.

Jonathan van Clute is a full time investor, educator, speaker, and online
options and sports arbitrage trader. In addition to his business activities, he
is also a musician, video editor/animator, and one of the world’s greatest
Segway Polo athletes. He can be reached via email at jonathan@PMLinvestments.com
and is speaking at an upcoming teleseminar, visit
http://www.snurl.com/vcfmv for details.

I had the pleasure of being invited on a friend’s yacht to sail in a race on Sydney Harbour yesterday. On board, as one of our motley crew, I met a top ranking corporate executive from one of Australia’s largest banks, who we’ll call ‘Phil’ here for the purpose of this article. After the race ended and after being told of my trading experience, he told me he has a large stock portfolio, many of which are speculative resources stocks. He said that he’s excited by all the money he’s making and wondering how long this has been going on?

As would be expected, ‘Phil’ also asked me for some “hot tips” for more stocks to buy. He was surprised with my reply when I told him Daryl Guppy’s standard response of “Tips are for waiters” and that I thought he was asking the wrong questions. (Daryl Guppy is a well known Stock Trader and International bestselling author - see www.guppytraders.com)

Rather, I explained he should be asking:

* How much longer will this last?

* When it finishes how will I know & what will I do?

* How do I find out about Technical Analysis and Money & Risk Management?

* What’s a Trading Plan and how do I put one together and follow it?

* How and when do I add to the stocks I already own?

* How should I structure my portfolio regarding individual stock risk, sector risk and total portfolio risk?

* What’s my exit strategy for each stock I own?

* What’s my exit strategy for my whole portfolio?

* How do I keep accurate records and monitor my performance?

* What am I going to do to learn more about myself and my own psychological weaknesses (many of which I may not even realise I have) that can make all the difference as to whether I win or lose long term?

‘Phil’ was genuinely surprised that I had taken the wind out of his sails - luckily it was after our sailing race together, but hopefully before he loses his own financial race.

In January at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/1/prweb193459.htm I issued a worldwide press release to caution unprepared novice investors and traders of the potential pitfalls ahead in the market. My wife Angela and I lost our waterfront home on Sydney Harbour in the ‘Tech wreck’ of 2000, so we speak from hard personal experience.

As complete novices in the market in 1999, we doubled on paper a large stock portfolio in only six months. Then in less than a year we suffered catastrophic losses in the tech stock crash of 2000 and beyond:

* We were set back more than 15 years financially and emotionally

* We were forced to sell our waterfront home - the very same house we had set as a goal soon after arriving in Australia as new and penniless immigrants in 1979. We began renting what I called a ‘dog box’ - as the housing market then rocketed.

* Angela was working as a retail assistant

I have a First Class Honors Degree in Civil Engineering that didn’t help. In fact I have since come to understand that it actually helped to work against me. With our experience of riding some of the largest waves (up and down) in the market and having lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process, we know more than most stock traders in the world of the pitfalls that await unsuspecting novice traders and investors.

We have since greatly appreciated being exposed to the successful methods taught by expert traders Alan Hull, Daryl Guppy, Jim Berg, Dr Van Tharp and others to trade profitably and with better risk control.

The forum for serious investors www.stockmeetingplace.com is the only chatroom where you will find Daryl Guppy. We recently received the following response from a fellow Australian trader Nathan Unger on that site (see below):

“…thank you for sharing. Your comments on this subject are very insightful, and rightfully so considering your near trading death experience, per se. Failure is always such a difficult moniker to be branded with, for it involves us having to acknowledge that we were wrong. Of course, acknowledging our mistakes means that we must swallow our pride - an admittedly difficult feat for many traders. Grappling with our own motives amidst the psychological matrix that is the stock market is, to say the least, a bewildering struggle.

In an almost paradoxical fashion the stock market can create whelps out of us through both our losses as well as our victories. We are unnerved when we lose and must somehow muster the courage to tentatively re-enter the markets. Yet, potentially even more dangerous are the unbridled successes that often distort a trader’s perception about their ability to regulate further success - successes that work to chide the future admission of failure.

Who would have thought that winning could actually become a setup for losing - a conundrum of the worst kind? I know of no other occupation that has the ability to masquerade as both friend and foe and then make you think that you can tell the difference.

Your experience is, I believe, a treasure worth perhaps more than the sum of your losses. It reminds me of how the most seaworthy vessels have typically been known to be the ones that have weathered the most devastating storms. Yours is a stellar effort, my friend. I will most certainly be purchasing your book.

Thanks also to Daryl and Alan for their assistance and encouragement in helping to mould John’s encounter into the best trading tool of all - practical experience…”

During 2001, not long after losing our home, we made contact with Daryl and I take this opportunity here to acknowledge and thank him once again for his wisdom and support since that time and also to Alan Hull and Dr Van Tharp since then. Daryl subsequently invited me to write a short article for his regular weekly newsletter (Tutorials in Applied Technical Analysis) which became the first of many articles as my wife Angela and I began our search for education.

He made a strong point that by concentrating on the research needed to write the articles we would pick up good habits and through sharing with others, we ourselves would be more inclined to stick with the discipline involved in the subject being covered.

We have recently collated the articles I have written for his newsletter and they are now available as ‘The Atkinson - Guppy Articles - Stock Market Educational Options for Investing Online & Online Trading - Opportunity for a Home Based Business’. Most of these articles deal with concepts and trading skills which are still relevant to readers today and include the following:

* CONDITIONAL STOP LOSS ORDERS: A real life comparison between using two brokers for monitoring stop loss orders - the true cost of slippage

* DIRECTORS DEALINGS: A snapshot study of the Australian share market to determine, if by monitoring the purchases and sales of company directors with their own shares, whether it is possible to obtain an insight into the future direction of the share price and hitch a ride in the right direction - or jump ship with them.

* EXPECTANCY - the net profit or loss that you can expect over a large number of single unit trades. A series of articles with thanks to the work of Dr Van Tharp, author of ‘Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom’

* TAKE-OVERS: A brief overview of some of the strategies traders apply to take-overs.

* AVALANCHE SELLING and KANGAROO TAILS: A series of articles on the recent phenomenon in the Australian share market caused by computerised automated conditional stop loss brokers savagely cascading sell orders into the market, with prices often rebounding several percent within minutes

Through my writing articles and through our site, my wife Angela and I now aim to provide a ‘Road Map of Discovery to the Stock Market’ to help new and existing online investors and traders find the trading education information they need to initially survive the pitfalls ahead, then to thrive in the market.

We wish you every success in 2005 and beyond and trust that if you haven’t done so already, you will be seeking out the answers to the questions I offered to my sailing team member ‘Phil’.

This article was printed in Alan Hull’s weekly newsletter ‘ActVest’ for Active Investors in March 2005 (available from www.alanhull.com) and is reprinted here with Alan’s permission.

John Atkinson is the author of ‘10 Ways’ Not to Lose Your Home in the Stock Market’, due for release in 2005. His E-book of The Atkinson-Guppy Articles is now available with a special savings of 30%. The site http://www.sharetradingeducation.com also contains:

• A FREE exclusive stock market club, including FREE Sample Chapter of John’s ebook and FREE sample Home Study course slides; guest author’s Article of the Week,special promotions & more for investing and online trading

• Portfolio Management tools for planning, optimising and managing your portfolio

• Home Study courses on the work of Jim Berg, Daryl Guppy, Alan Hull, Van Tharp and Simon Sherwood

• Resource Links including stock brokers, traders’ forums, seminars, newsletters, books, data, software, Self Managed Superfunds & more

• Investing Online Newsletter and Online Trading Report - written by expert trader Jim Berg and his team to help investors and traders survive the pitfalls and profit in the stock market. Jim Berg is a guest speaker at the SFE and ASX

To find out more, visit http://www.sharetradingeducation.com

One of the leading traders on Chicago Mercantile Exchange, because of a single trade lost everything!

For all of his years of experience and money, he had failed to master the most important concept in trading: Risk Management!

Each trader seems to have his own unique way of identifying market opportunities. One buys a stock in the hopes of never having to sell it, while another might hold a position in the market for a day or even just a few hours. Yet both individuals might be immensely successful in the markets. How can that be?

It’s because every trader who has been consistently successful in the markets has mastered the concepts of risk management.

Warren Buffet’s two rules of investing are:

1. Never lose money and

2. Never forget rule number 1!

Paul Tudor Jones says that he is always thinking about losing money as opposed to making money. He does not focus on making money; he is focusing on protecting what he has!

Jim Rogers, who for years was a partner with legendary hedge fund investor George Soros, said “My basic advice is don’t lose money!”

Bernard Baruch, the renowned investor from the first half of the 20th century advised “Learn how to take losses quickly and cleanly.”

Yet, when most people start trading, the only thing they think about is the profit objective. Countless hours are spent on discovering how to buy and sell the market with unwavering accuracy. Once they buy a market, the amateur trader only thinks about how high is the market going to go. Little effort is put into considering how low the market could go, and where they should get out in order to control their losses.

These thoughts, which are so distant from the minds of most traders, are what separate the winners from the losers.

Risk management is the practice of determining what percentage of your account to risk for each and every trade in order to maximize the expected profit potential of your trading strategy.

Once this amount is determined, this percentage must be translated into an absolute value and stop loss orders must be placed once a trade is entered in order to control potential losses at this value.

There is no guarantee that such efforts will control your losses, since the market can gap in price beyond your stop loss order, resulting in losses greater than planned.

Ioannis - Evangelos C. Haramis was born in Greece in 1951 and he studied in Greece, USA and in Belgium. He has been active in the stock markets since 1972. Since 2002 he is New Business Development Managing Director at an Investment Bank and the editor of http://www.greekshares.com/

To learn how to profit with your investments read: http://www.greekshares.com/orderbook.asp

Copyright © 2005 I.E.C. Haramis

haramis@greekshares.com

Stocks that are not listed on a traditional exchange but trade via the NASDAQ system are handled with a very different mechanism. There is no centralized exchange, but there is a system of competing market makers who post quotes on NASDAQ stocks. The spreads between the bid and ask prices tend to be much larger for NASDAQ stocks than for comparable exchange-listed stocks, and the number of shares that the dealers quote are usually not representative of their willingness to trade. As with exchange-listed stocks, your broker can tell you what the best quotes are at any moment. If you place a market order, you will probably get the order filled at the current bid or ask quote. Limit orders on NASDAQ are handled very differently from limit orders on the NYSE or Amex. Most likely, your limit order will stay with your brokerage firm and only be executed if the market makers’ quotes change to meet your order. For example, suppose that you are interested in purchasing a NASDAQ-traded stock whose best displayed quotes are a bid of $8 and an offer of $8.75. If you place a limit buy order at $8.25, your order probably will not be filled until one of the market makers decreases their ask quote from $8.75 to $8.25. Your broker is under no obligation to show your order outside the firm. Many of the larger brokerage firms maintain their own internal limit order books, but there is no formal limit order book like the ones the exchanges maintain for exchange-listed stocks. Thus, your order to purchase at $8.25 may go unfilled even if there is an order at another brokerage firm to sell at $8.25. Unlike the NYSE, the market makers may trade ahead of your limit order even if you placed your order first. It is also important to think about what might happen if your limit order is not filled within a reasonable amount of time, and you still want to trade the stock. If you think that the stock is going to make a major move, then it may move before your limit order gets filled. On the other hand, if you are not expecting the stock to go anywhere soon, it may not run away from you. If you really want to get the trade done, you need to consider this risk that the stock may run away from you.

For more FREE trading tips, enter your email address at:

http://lb.bcentral.com/ex/manage/subscriberprefs?customerid=12826

During every correction, I encourage investors to avoid the destructive inertia that results from trying to determine: “How low can we go?” and/or “How long will this last?” Investors who add to their portfolios during downturns invariably experience higher values during the next advance. Yes, Virginia, just as certainly as there is a Santa Claus, there is another market advance in our future.

Corrections are part of the normal “shock market” menu, and can be brought about by either bad news or good news. (Yes, that’s what I meant to say.) Investors always over-analyze when prices are weak and lose their common sense when prices are high, thus perpetuating the “buy high, sell low” Wall Street line dance. Waiting for the perfect moment to jump into a falling market is as foolish a strategy as taking losses on investment grade companies and holding cash.

Repetition is good for the brain’s CPU, so forgive me for reinforcing what I’ve said in the face of every correction since 1979… if you don’t love corrections (and deal with them like visiting relatives) you really don’t understand the financial markets. Don’t be insulted, it seems as though very few financial professionals want you to see it this way and, in fact, Institutional Wall Street loves it when individual investors panic in the face of uncertainty. Psstt… uncertainty is the regulation playing field for investors, and hindsight isn’t welcome in the stadium.

A closer examination of the news that’s fit to print (but isn’t printed often enough) should make you more confident about the years ahead, whatever your politics.

The good news is very, very good: 1. Employment, jobs, and unemployment numbers are as good or better than they have been in years. 2. Manufacturing numbers are stronger and trending upward. 3. The “core” inflation rate is historically low. 4. Interest rates are also historically low. 5. Durable goods orders are trending upward. 6. Corporate earnings reports have been strong. 7. Corporate dividend payouts have been increasing. 8. Equities, as an Asset Class, are considered the most fairly valued, when compared with Real Estate, Fixed Income, and Commodities. 9. Income Tax Rates are at low historical levels, particularly with regard to investment income. 10. Gross domestic product is growing.

The bad news isn’t all that bad, pretty much the same ole stuff: 1. Hurricane Damage. We’ve actually had fewer major storms than anticipated. The ones we’ve had were devastating, but the rebuilding/preparation task ahead will be good for the economy. 2. War in Iraq. There’s always been a war of some kind, somewhere. It’s bad, but only the battlefield has changed… and war has also always been good for the economy. 3. Politics. We have an unpopular President who can’t seem to get out of his own way. Who were the last ones that were loved? Didn’t they have wars? 4. Wall Street/Corporate scandals. Hardly new and never economy busters. 5. Energy prices. I still don’t see gas lines, and maybe somebody will push for added refining capacity. 6. Trade deficits. News would be giving foreigners more money so that they could buy more of our products. 7. High consumer debt. New? Not. 8. The terrorism threat. A major serious problem for the past how many years? The federal regulatory agencies probably do more damage to the economy. 9. The Avian Flu pandemic? Maybe, but not yet, and we’ll really need those bad boy drug companies then, won’t we? 10. The Anniston/Pitt break up, and neither the Yankees nor the Bosox in the World Series. Now we’re talking!

Clearly, there are no new (economic) problems to be overly concerned about. And for now, we simply (and I mean simply) have to deal with the opportunities at hand. Low, but increasing, interest rates force fixed income prices down and yields up… Opportunity One! Economic good news encourages higher rates to reduce inflationary pressures causing equity prices to trend downward… Opportunity Two! These forces of good are intersecting with the dark side of calendar year mentality Wall Street, causing premature tax loss selling and portfolio Window Dressing… Opportunities One and Two squared!

There is an Investment Mindset Solution for the problems that most people have dealing with corrections, and rallies too, for that matter. I’ve never understood why “yard sale prices” here are so scary. What if you cut off a finger each time you get a splinter? Wounds heal, and so do the prices of high quality securities.

In recent years, Wall Street and the media have turned the process of investing into a competitive event of Olympic proportions and stature. What was once a long term (a year is not long term), goal directed activity, has become a series of monthly and quarterly sprints. The direction of the market isn’t nearly as important as the actions we take in anticipation of the next change in direction. Performance evaluation needs to be rethunk (sic) in terms of cycles!

The problems, and the solutions, boil down to focus, understanding, and retraining. It would be impossible to cover each of these issues here, but here are a few teasers. You need to focus on the purposes of the securities in the portfolio. You need to understand and accept the normal behavior of your securities in the face of different environmental conditions. You need to overcome your obsession with calendar period Market Value analysis, and switch to a more manageable asset allocation approach that centers on your portfolio’s Working Capital.

But for now, relax and enjoy this correction. It’s your invitation to the fun and games of the next rally.

For those of you who follow our trading on our blog at www.livingonlargecaps,blogspot.com, you will have noticed we do not enter a stop, when we enter our positions. It is actually the #1 question we get in our email as well. And in this article we try to explain our rationale for this.

First off, let us go back to why we trade only large caps to begin with. Although for many of you this will be review it is fundamental to our reasoning for not placing stops on our entries. Large cap stocks, defined as stocks with over $5 billion in market capitalization, have REAL value. Not an idea, not a scheme, not a, change the world, pie in the sky, plan. But REAL hard-core, nuts and bolts value. Chances are they have already changed the world, they have already proven their value to the world. We are not betting that they will do something, we know they already have. They might even own things like real estate, patents, have money in the bank, a steady earnings stream, proven management etc. etc. Therefore because they are predictable, reliable, so is their stock pattern. Predictability and reliability, of course, are relative in the stock market. No stock price is as reliable as the sun rising, but in the world of financial markets large cap stocks are very reliable.

However, having said that there are hiccups. There are out of character moves to the downside, and the upside, but the downside is always more dramatic, especially when you are holding a stock while it occurs. The difference between a large cap and a highly speculative stock when the move comes, however is; the size of the move and the character of the move. There are other differences to be sure but these two are of the most important to the swing trader.

Large caps will rarely plunge more than 10-15% in a single move. Breath taking to be sure, but nothing compared to a 50% initial drop, and then continued down ward pressure with no relief. If your portfolio cannot handle a 10-15% drop in a single holding, than your money management skills are where you need to be applying your learning time. The second difference is after this initial drop, there is almost always a time to exit your position at a better price. Sometimes it is within the next few days as bargain hunters move in. Sometimes it takes 6 months or longer. Not a pleasant experience as our average trades last about a month. However, we tend to hold 10-12 positions at a time and at times up to 5 of these could be caught up in a down ward move looking for an exit. We call these positions our weak sisters, and have come to learn to accept this as part of our trading. They are not losses until they are liquidated, remember this.

For examples of how large caps tend to rebound take the 2005 chart of AAPL. In mid-October it made headlines after dropping 10% in one day. How long did this last? Not long, in fact look at the chart for the whole year, you will see several such drops, and they all recovered quite nicely and then some. The story isn’t always so rosy however. Take the chart of HIG for the same year. We were actually holding this, with stops and limits in place to lock in profits (yes we do use stops once we have a profit). And in August the stock fell right through our stops and limits, and frankly wiped out most of our profit in one gapping day. And this is with an insurance stock, sometimes thought of as bastions of safety. We canceled our open stops and limits, and rode it out. Like an acrobat without a net, we had to adjust. Just a few days later, the action seemed to good to be true and we got out. Luckily for us, it was the exact best time to exit, that HIG has had to date,. (It is 10/23/05 as we write this.) But the point is there are several places alnog the way one could have exited this position at better than the spot of the initial drop. And that is the main reason we don’t use stops on our initial orders. Because there are usually better places to exit when trading large caps. The sky rarely falls, and when it does it doesn’t fall at once cataclysmic moment.

We have recently begun to place holdings in different categories to recognize when our trade isn’t working out as we had hoped. We call moves by these stocks out of character. Such as the move HIG made in August of ‘05. And our whole goal with these stocks is to find a dumping spot for them, and get out. If you notice AAPL’s move didn’t classify as out of character, it didn’t break the continuity of its pattern that it had going. But it DID make the headlines, nothing will make you question your positions faster than a bunch of ‘experts’ trashing them in the press. However, once a stock has made an out of character move, one that changes the very landscape of its chart, looking for a place to dump it, will not only free up your cash, but very well might be the best place to rid yourself of a stock that is heading south for the winter. And when you swing trade the winter is a very long time to park your cash. But on the other hand, if you find yourself having to hold a stock that long, remember there is better places to park your cash then in a fundamentally sound large cap, waiting for it to come back into vogue again. You did remember to check the fundamentals before you purchased it didn’t you?

Being single in the world where you notice couples in every bar and nightclub can be a horrible feeling. I personally know of 4 without a girl friends who go on dates each and every week and each month they are sad because they are still not with a girl. In the capital city of the UK there are a vast collection of fantastic call girls, these spectacular escorts are the perfect present to give to yourself if you are not with someone.

Working girls in the wonderful city of London are super and beautiful and have a high education making them first-rate companions as well as spectacular lovers. The escorts in London are often more expensive than anyplace else like Leeds, the reason for this is the working girls tend to be of an improved class. You can always have a great night in with a London Escort.

Working girls have been made beloved with the television show Secret Diary with the elegant Billie Piper. In the television show the escort is made out to be glamorous and rich and always looking dainty. The show is a top rated tv show in the United Kingdom and many guys have seen it and have now booked an escort. This has helped to fuel the increase in single boys feeling much happier and better about the choice of women a single boy has in London.

1. Insider Buying Information

Insiders are company’s CEO, Chairman, board directors, executive vice president of various departments.

Insider buying information top my list for obvious reasons. Insiders have lots of reasons to sell their shares: buying a house, huge vacation expense, etc. However, there is usually only one reason when insiders buy their company’s shares with their personal money: the insiders believe the stock price are cheap and they can make money by buying their own stocks.

Insider buying information is also very informative to understand market sector movement. Many time I looked at the insider buying information from sector point of view. Certain sector during certain period of time constantly had insider buying activities from different companies of the same sector, which could indicate a sector wide undervaluation or bullishness. That was exactly what I found in late 2003 and early 2004 when I found insiders of lots of oil and natural gas companies constantly buying their stocks. Eventually I picked two oil and gas stocks in late 2003 and early 2004 Whiting Petroleum (ticker WLL) and Chesapeake Energy (Ticker CHK) from insider buying information and they have been huge success for my premium investment newsletter Blast Investor Real-time Plus (BIRTP) and rewarded myself financially very significantly.

2. Guru Watch

It is certainly worth the effort to track stock picks or ideas from legendary gurus such as Warren Buffet, Eddie Lambert, Jim Rogers, etc.

Wall Street Journal is great source of investment and financial information. My 2003 stock pick PetroChina (PTR) was from an article of Wall Street Journal, which published news of Warren Buffet buying PTR. I immediately bought into PTR stock on the same day that I read the article and profited handsomely from this pick.

Warren Buffet is the best value investor in the world and you can not afford to ignore him. One way to track Warren Buffet picks is to go to Yahoo Finance and then read news headlines under stock ticker of BRK-A.

Recently, internet information grew so large and I believe it is now much easier to track gurus from web rather than reading newspapers or magazines. An easier way to track guru picks is to use tracking services offered in the web. Here I highly recommend the tracking service provided by Gurufocus.com. Gurufocus tracks almost all the value-oriented Wall Street gurus. Their list of gurus is huge, Warren Buffet, Edward Lambert, George Soros, etc. They even publish a newsletter alerting you the latest guru buy and sell actions. Their service is great and best yet, it is all free!

3. Software Screening Tool

BlastInvest operates internally a Mysql based relational database storing about seven thousand stocks with all kinds of valuation metrics and tools that I can do for Benjamin Graham NCAV ranking, return on equity modeling, low pe or low price to sale screening, etc. We update database information every week and I constantly mine the database looking for the huge winner that can reward both me and my newsletter readers.

Insider buying information could be even more powerful when you can combine insider buying information with valuation or strategy screening, which exactly what we do at BlastInvest with this powerful internal relational database.

However, I found the free or cheap screening tools out there in the web are not impressive. Validea.com tool is nice, but it lacks the powerful feature that I want. Yahoo tool or MSN tool works, but still they are not for power value investors. Therefore, I may rank my internal screening tool very high for getting stock leads, you may be dissappointed if you do not have access or can not pay for those powerful tools at reasonable cost.

4. Online Message Board Networking

Stock message boards are wild and you may be surprised that I put this as one of top sources of information for getting stock leads. Well indeed, I got tips and found very solid stock leads from internet message boards.

Actually, I started myself as quite wild BBS stock guru many years ago before I started blastinvest.com newsletter business. Lots of Chinese American friends who frequently visit big online BBS (mitbbs.com, or goofiz.com) would know my past track record very well. My past BBS investment performance certainly beat performance of most if not all of the value mutual funds hands down. My past history certainly can tell you something on the nature and quality of message boards. Sure, most of BBS members probably are not investing gurus, and some folks in the stock forum may well be dangerous stock promoters or hypers. But certainly there are some excellent stock gurus there and there are valuable investing or stock pick information there. So just be careful and do your homework when you use information from online stock boards.

Two of the well known value investing forums in US are Valueforum and Value Investor Club. Unfortunately, Valueforum is fee based message board and you can not post any messages without paying fee. Value Investor Club seems to reject beginners or amateurs and they only want gurus (maybe Wall Street Gurus) offering stock tips to each other.

I myself certainly disagree with approaches of Valueforum or Value Investor Club. That is why Blastinvest LLC recently launched a free forum dedicated for individual value investors: value-investing-forum.com. For more information on why you should participate in a forum regardless whether you are a value investing beginner or a savvy value investor, please click here: http://value-investing-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=483

5. Traditional Newspapers and Magazines

This group includes Investor’s Business Daily, Forbes, Fortune, Barrons, etc, I read them all from time to time.

If you live near New York city and tune in to Bloomberg radio, you are going to hear bombardment of ads such as “Barrons, the best source of stock investing information”.

However, my rating on their capability of giving me stock leads or ideas are poorer than above channels. The stock picks published in the public media are pretty mediocre.

Of course, I still believe they are very useful information to understand economics and to know what Wall Street gurus are doing or thinking. So they may not be worth subscription fee for you to pay, they are certainly worth your time to visit public library once a while to read them.