Stocks And Investing: The Good, The Bad And The Ugly
Read more articles on Finance and Life and Internet and Investing.November 5, 2007
Posted by neillevine
November 5, 2007
Posted by neillevine
279 Views
In order to follow the stock market, an investor needs information.
The internet provides great amounts of news and data to assess both the stock market, in general, and individual stocks in particular. Besides having read “The Wall Street Journal” for what seems to be forever and a day, I use many other financial sources to keep track of what is going on.
One of my biggest sources of investment information is my personal Yahoo page. On it, I can easily find my hypothetical stock portfolios, current news clips, search capabilities, stock upgrades and downgrades and company news.
Company news lists current headlines about companies I am following, with full details just a click behind the one line summary. There are times I feel up to the minute details are vital and others when following a stock is like watching traffic on a side street. Sometimes with good stocks like Yahoo, YHOO, and Google, GOOG, checking on earnings guidance is the most important thing I need to do and I can find what I need on Yahoo Finance or one of its competitor’s sites such as MSN.
The other very important listing on my Yahoo Personal Page is the stock portfolios that I have selected so I can follow whatever companies I am interested in with as much depth as possible.
I have several lists of potential investments, most from several years ago, so WoldCom, WCOM. and Lernout & Hauspie, LHSP, two scandals from way back when Enron was riding high, are still there although quotes have not been available since the scandals concluded and investors were left holding worthless wallpaper.
I have Rite Aid, which was restructured after it went through a separate scandal that resulted in virtually new ownership, but while the stock has risen and fallen as all stocks do, it has not rallied, meaning to make money an investor has to figure out the cycle of the shares, something I may try to calculate. Right now it is $3.83, fairly low I suspect.
Then there is Xerox, XIX, the photocopier manufacturer, that has staked out a good piece of turf selling higher end, automated equipment. At $71.05, the stock has not really gone anywhere in quite a while.
I also have lists of biotech companies, some of which no longer exist because they were absorbed by others. Most of these companies have been very volatile and hard to predict because the clinical testing required to bring a drug to market is very strict and unpredictable.
I also have lists for chip equipment manufacturers, such as Applied Materials, AMAT, $18.60, and Novellus, NVLS, $27.09, the two leaders from when the industry converted from aluminum to copper on silicon chips. Both down from the internet bubble and recently comparatively flat. My thinking was that more powerful chips would significantly increase equipment sales, but investors are not buying that story right now.
The point being that it takes thinking and research to follow the market and not every hot stock pans out, as too many sadder but wiser investors will testify to.
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