$$$ crox

crox = $$$

it's always a good time when you are shorting a stock by buying puts, and the stock sheds over 30% of its value in a day. sold puts at 4.00, netting a 125% return in about 2 weeks. good times.

then today, i bought 200 of crox @ 45, sold at 49.5 later during the day. if crox hits 45 again, i think it will be another good time to get in again.

amgn sucks, the stock had pretty disappointing Q3 results, i think you should dump this stock if you can. i still own it because i have covered calls written on it, but the pipeline seems really weak right now.

airlines and the financial companies are not doing well right now. airlines just never seem to do well. stay away from both for the time being.

on another note, i'm trying to start an investment fund. i am looking for 9 other investors, which would make a total of 10 including myself... 10,000 buy in each, for a total of 100Gs.
50% for high dividend paying stocks, 25% for high growth stocks, 15% for foreign investments, and 10% for high speculative plays.. options, etc.

let me know if you want in. i would like to gather up investors by year's end, start in jan 2008.

bought CROX puts for november, strike 55

in for a baby 3 contracts at 1.70 each, november strike price of 55

lets hope this sucker goes downnn

CROX

i don't think this stock will keep going up, and it's very overvalued.

PE very high, don't see all too much growth.

short this sucker.

winston

aapl

this stock is ridiculous.

come on siri and xmsr merger.. lets do this

simple and short

no need to dwell here.

here are my picks.. hit these like its your job.

AMGN

JBLU

these stocks are poised for very good returns, i'd say AMGN over JBLU if you can only pick one, but both are so solid. i have nothing else to say.

CNBC investment contest

so i think i mentioned that CNBC has this million dollar investment portfolio challenge. basically, i think it runs about 10 weeks, and you have a million fantasy bucks to try and pump up as much as possible. for the first three weeks of the contest, i haven't been doing anything, but i recently decided to start playing.

last week, i scored on a few big plays.
RBN and BLUD- both posted double digit percentage gains, and i sold after each bounce up.

total for the week- up a bit under 30%. That was not good enough to win the week, probably because I started playing on Wednesday of that week.

However, I'm starting to play from Monday for this week, because the weekly percentage gain winner is awarded 10,000. Also, the weekly winner gets to play in the end for 1,000,000 dollars.

My first play for this week was WDFC, which I bought on Friday, and I believe it counts as the percentage gain for THIS week. After hours, it released great earnings. The stock is up 17% right now as I write this. My portfolio is up 34% without this gain, so at the end of market today, I should be at about +50%, or 1.5 million. The leaders of the entire contest are at about 2.7 million right now, so I have a bit of a way to go if I wanna catch up.

Time to grind it out, lets do this.

Amgen (AMGN)

I think this stock is at a very solid price and recommend it based on valuation alone. It's P/E ratio is ridiculously low right now, and compared to it's main competitor DNA, it is about half of it's PE ratio.

If I had more money, I would double up on the 100 shares that I already own since it took a hit these last few days too.

wow the volatility is so freaking high.. this is crazy

keep holding

i bought in JBLU today

market = pwned today

chinese markets got owned yesturday, US sell off today =(

AMGN

in on AMGN at 66.25

progress so far

well, i think my picks have been doing quite well so far.

i'm up double digit percentages in EBAY, PALM, HAL- have options that
all expire in March that are all in the money, so these stocks will
probably get called away. unfortunately, jumped the gun a bit early
on PALM options, which means i'll prob be losing .50 cents a share in
profit- but then again, i'm up about 1.50-2.00 a share on each so it's
not a big deal.

as i predicted, crude oil is doing well, as prices are topping 61 a
barrel, which means that the USO fund is doing quite well also, since
it basically mimics crude. WMT is doing well, and was also a stock
that I believed i mentioned pretty early on. both are still long
positions, although I would take some profits from USO because of the
warming weather. however, the geopolitical situation makes it so that
oil still stays high or may go even higher.

XMSR and SIRI. shoulda sold in pre-market, but wasn't sure if my
brokerage was capable of doing that. instead, I just sold some long
calls for july and june respectively, which I think is a good move,
since I've technically locked in the profits, but hedged the downside
incase the deals don't go through. I'll be looking to cover in the
next few days as the volatilty drops, and make a quick buck here and
there. that way, hopefully when they both announce their earnings
calls, both of these stocks will get another nice pop up. these
stocks are definitely a bit of a bet that the merger is allowed, and
if it is, i think xmsr is the one that benefits more here.. at least
in terms of share price. i believe both these stocks are shorted
pretty heavily, so there might be a short squeeze which would drive
prices up if earnings are really good next week. most of the stock
movement will be around the merger talks though.

so we'll see.. hopefully stocks stay around the price, without too
much up or downard movement. i want more horizontal movement with
options on all my stocks right now.

work today, XMSR and SIRI together

siri and xmsr annouced a deal over the weekend that will allow them to
merge. siri is offering 4.6 shares of its stock for each share of
XMSR. as you know, i own both and so basically the stocks are both up
today, with XMSR up over 25% in pre market and SIRI up about 12% in
premarket.

my play: sell both. if you value xmsr, it should be at 19.00 a share
based on that 4.6 times valuation of SIRI shares at 4.15, but 2 dollar
a share is the 50-50 gamble that this stock will merge.

take the money and bizzounce. go to mortons if you bought xmsr haha.

peace,
winston

PALM

palm is at 16 now.. i told you to buy it when it was at 14.50

IM GOOD

--
Winston

oil

oil is up up up.

past 60 now.. USO fund has broken 50.

EBAY

sold ebay call options, at 1.30 a share, for march 32.5

word

oil stocks

exactly two weeks ago, i told you to get into oil, either through HAL,
or the US oil, (USO) etf fund. well, oil was at the low 50's per
barrel at the time, and now it's in the high 50's, and almost at 60,
which is obviously a resistance level, but may even go to 65 in the
near future.

word. oil is always going to be expensive.

AMZN

AMZN stock down about 4% right now as i post- report not as
dissapointing as i expected, but obviouslt sotck still getting hit as
a result of profit margins getting owned.

told you to buy 1.30 PUT options, you can flip that right now at about
1.50, so 20 cents a share.. not too bad percentage wise. hit that,
and get rid of it becofre it becomes worthless.

RACK- wow, this stock got owned.

HAL

sold march 30 options on hal- 1.10 a share. word

winston

AMZN earnings today

well, it's around 11am on thursday. AMZN releases today. I just don't see amzn doing as well as the stock has indicated since it has had a pretty sick run up in the last few months. I don't think it does that well this past quarter, and will miss, or give bad outlook. I know online sales have been some of the best that it's been ever for the Q4 season, but I think that by providing free amazon prime to customers hurts their bottom line, plus the fact that they offered those heavily discounted items as a promotion during the holiday season, which didn't really bring people to buy other things. Also, they were not able to offer the PS3 until now.

All things said, I think this stock is too high right now. The P/E ratio is pretty high too, and I think alot of the expectation has already been built into the stock price, so basically this stock needs to beat expectations by alot and have great outlook, or just do okay or poorly to take a huge hit.

If I had some money that weren't in stocks right now but was okay to invest and take a gamble with, I would buy some PUTS for AMZN.. probably the 37.5 PUT for March, which is 1.6 a contract right now since the stock is on the upside today, or the Feb one at 37.5, which is at 1.3. However, I am willing to pay the 30 cent premium on the longer term one, since I believe the implied volatility priced into the options right now make the shorter term one the more expensive one to buy. I would probably put a few hundred on the March one, as a small gamble. We'll see what the after market brings when AMZN releases earnings.

thursday moves

EBAY = money.. up 11%, up about 16% since monday

in on XMSR at 14.. 200 shares.

ebay

holler.

ebay released good earnings =)

stock should be up a good amount tomorrow. going to sell option calls on my shares i think at 32.5 strike, prob for the end of this month. holler.

sold covered calls on PALM at 15 for march.

getting back into the investment game

For some reason, I have been more and more interested as of recent to get back into the stock market game. This might be a result of the market doing pretty well recently, and also just more of a need to find something to do besides study for the LSAT. Anyways, I have created this blog to provide some of my own opinions on which stock picks that I think are good, and to provide you with some reasons why I think these will be good moves to make in your own portfolio.

I currently manage my own portfolio, and I don't have much dinero to work with, but I make do with what I have. Anyways, I currently own 4 stocks, which I do recommend (only reason I own them myself).

The first is SIRI- Sirrus Satellite Radio- I feel like this position is definitely one that is a long term commitment, because of its potential for upside, but also because it needs to dig itself out of debt. If you have ever heard satellite radio before, I think it is pretty solid, as even I have become a believer of it. To make things better, Sirrus only has one competitor- XM. This duopoly just means less competition, although both of them do compete to sign talent, and to subscribe people, which actually costs them a good amount of money (due to promotional deals, etc). However, I still think the potential for satellite radio is good, because it is being installed as a standard feature now in alot of cars, and most people would not mind paying $15-20 a month for good radio... and Howard Stern. Thus, I think a strategy that might be good with this stock is to sell short term covered calls, as I have been doing on a month to month basis. The volatility of this stock has been high recently because of potential merger talks with XM, but otherwise, I think it's a good move to hedge your positions by selling covered calls since this stock hasn't moved much recently out of the $3-4 dollar price range.

My second position is EBAY. I think the 4Q sales will be solid due to the holiday shopping season, but I do cringe when I think of EBAY because of the horrid experiences that I've had on eBay selling stuff to buyers who don't end up paying. However, even with those terrible experiences, I still give my money to eBay, and to PayPal, since they basically monopolize the payment method market here. I have lost tons of fees to this company, but still have not turned away, because there really aren't any other alternatives. Sounds like a pretty solid business plan to me. I am really looking for growth in its international business, and hopefully Skype will be successful (yeah, they own that too). However, looking for good upside on this stock, as it has just been hammered over the past year because they don't know how to grow right now. Lets hope that changes.

My third position is PALM. I bought this before Apple introduced the iPhone.. and of course the stock took a hit as a result of it. However, I like Palm because of it's relatively low P/E ratio, but also because I like the product. I own a Palm Treo, and really believe the product is solid, even with its high price tag. However, I am a bit apprehensive about this stock now that this iPhone is coming out, but I feel like the users who will buy an iPhone and who will buy a Treo are not the same types of people, so it won't negatively impact sales. I might be wrong though, as I do want to get an iPhone for myself in the future, if it REALLY does all those cool things. But, the fact that it will only be available on Cingular makes me not want to get it.

My last position is HAL. This is Halliburton, which basically assists all the oil companies in drilling and stuff like that. This stock is at a pretty low price- it has good P/E ratios compared to others in the industry, and with crude at a low price, I think this stock is discounted well. I think that with a continued rise in crude, and with just a dependence on oil, this stock is a great buy for the long term, with good potential for upside. If I had more money, I would also get into some crude oil positions and buy USO- a US oil ETF.

I am looking at some other companies, as Verizon Wireless (VZ) also looks good to me. If only they would offer some cooler phones, then their business would take off for sure. I think retailers, such as Wal-Mart (WMT) are good buys right now, as that stock has not gone anywhere recently.

A play I might make before Amazon.com releases earnings. AMZN. Probably will not be in it for the long side though, as I don't think the stock will really hit expectations and will fall short of targets or outlook. Might be shorting/buying puts- but I'll have to get back to you on that.