Wednesday, March 30, 2011

CEPH Receives a Hostile Bid

Had my eye on this one (CEPH) since November '09. Kept it in my watch list into February '10. Pulled the trigger on November 24, '10 at 64.10.
Today, CEPH received a hostile bid from Valeant for 73.00 per share. With a trading price of about 75.20, it is a good time to exit.

Sure, hostile takeovers may attract other suitors and higher bids... but then, the deal could fall apart.

Sudden spikes concern me and, with gains of 17.30% in four months, I would not hesitate to cash in.
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Tuesday, March 22, 2011

An Update on CSCO

Today's article from thestreet.com reinforces a view published in this blog about CSCO on 2/10/11:

http://www.thestreet.com/_yahoo/story/11053420/1/cisco-the-case-for-buying-the-stock-now.html?cm_ven=YAHOO&cm_cat=FREE&cm_ite=NA

Closing at 17.39 yesterday, this may be a good time to own or double up on this giant and consider it as a long term investment.
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Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Do Not Sell Into a Panic!

History has proven that panic selling is not a wise move.
The markets are off about 2.5% this morning, for those who have the intestinal fortitude, this may be the time go long in the market.
Read this article just published:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/it-rarely-pays-to-sell-into-a-panic-2011-03-15?siteid=yhoof

Stay calm and take advantage of the investment opportunities out there.
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Monday, March 07, 2011

Stocks to Watch - March 7, '11

Watch list for March 7, 2011

BX------------18.18
STO-----------27.67

BX is into asset management; I still like STO.

We'll be checking the performance of these picks in a few weeks.
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Results for "Stocks to Watch - Oct 17, '10"

It has been a while, four and one half months to be exact, since I wrote about a stock watch list.
Unpredictable turn of events led to choppy markets and a more difficult environment for a stock picker.

For the period of 10/17/10 thru 3/4/11, this was our watch list and outcome:


Stock Symbol-------10/17/10------------------3/4/11

AVT------------------27.63-------------------34.18 (up 23.71%)
STO------------------22.08-------------------27.67 (up 25.32%)
WATG----------------10.07--------------------6.85 (down 31.98%)

The outcome was not so good, WATG has been on a slide and was the only pick that kept the average returns down, bad choice.
Our average gain for this period was 5.68% while the S&P 500 rose about 12.32% in the same stretch of time.

We'll sharpen up our pencils and try to do better.
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