OK, now for a break

So, I get it. Enough about the stocks for the weekend. Busy weekend ahead. The older boys are starting indoor soccer tomorrow. This is the first season of indoor, though they have both been in outdoor before. Then we are going to get a real tree tomorrow, in lieu of Sunday (wintry mix?). So I guess Sunday frees up for some football....
Shipoopi?
JC's first word was uh-oh, very fitting. His third word, though, was football. (Second was simply ball). He seems very enthralled by football and cheers for the teams as they run the ball. He even seems to pick up when an incompletion occurs, because he says " Ohhhhhhhhhh". I am completely fascinated by his interest at 17 months. He now can say a version of touchdown and raises one or both of his arms. It is damn cute.
My other two are not too interested in football just yet. Though my wife and I have brainwashed them to like the Ravens and Broncos. They are also brainwashed by their teachers to like the Eagles, so needless to say, they are confused as to who to like.
The same situation happens in baseball with the Yankees, Orioles, and Phillies.
They like the Blue Rocks too (Wilm.'s AA team), but that is okay since it is the hometown team, right?
Well sort of.
At any rate, things are going well. I saw an old buddy from MBNA (yeah, that place) and he talked about maybe wanting to go back. But it's simply not the same after BofA took over. I think he wouldn't like it nearly as much as he did before.
I suppose after 15 years of working for the same place you will feel attached when you helped it grow from a fledgling company to a mega-corporation. I guess that is the nature of change, right?
Just remember the good times >;)
(note the sarcasm).
Well, my wife is off to a show with a friend (girl... giggity). So I get to spend quality time with my best buddies and watch the taped shrek-the-halls, eat ice cream, and party. Party time at the Kuntz household.
Later out there folks,
-K

P.S. More stock stuff to follow next week, I promise.

See?

Alrighty then! I don't mean to gloat, but talk about CBH pulling through. In the last five days it corrected from the $35 range to nearing $40. Sell at $40, buy at $35-$36. As many times as possible between now and March.
Anyway, another fine pick is NUAN. They are a voice communications company that has deals with Tom-Tom and other card manufacturers. Get this: You can say your destination to the device and it will then map it out. How cool is that? Well, NUAN (Nuance Communications) makes that possible.
Check them out as a buy in the $19 range and a superbuy at the $18 range.
PCU (Southern Copper) looking to make a comeback.

On a completely unrelated topic. Superbad comes out on DVD soon. Buy it, rent it, whatever. Funniest goddamn movie I have seen in a while. I laughed the entire time. It is written from the vantage point of a pubescent-teen-male-just-about-to-graduate-high-school point of view. That explains why my wife wasn't that amused by it. I, however, found Mclovin to be the funniest character since Napolean Dynamite. Kudos to a quality comedy. Perhaps this wasn't the greatest 9-yr. anniversary movie to see.....

Well, nothing much else new around here. Trying to blog and work on a side project of mine own. Not sure of the value of it. Certainly not a quit-your-day-job type of thing. Perhaps it will have no takers. We'll see. I found a need I couldn't fulfill online and decided to make my own. While doing it, decided I could maybe try this out as a thing. Not finished. Got a bit of coding to do.
Let y'all see it when done (whenever the hell that is).

Well, much love to my homies...
-K

P.S. Oil barrel prices drop: XOM makes more money. Watch for record 1Q08 earnings if the price keeps dropping....Good buy? You decide. I vote yes to high dividends and great returns.

Hey

So, buy or hold. I fear the market is on a down turn. And it might last for a while. Warren Buffett recommends ETFs for a reason. Basically, you can buy into a large chunk of stocks and sit on it. (Not figuratively or literally).
For an uninformed investor, guessing timing and which stock is most likely to recover is hard. I can't say. The only real factor here is oil prices that can turn in our favor. All else is not looking good. Housing bad, credit crunch bad, war bad. Our only economical saving grace will be lower oil barrel prices. Some experts think it can happen. Gas Buddy <--Interesting site. Allows you to plot up to 6 yrs. gas price history. Plot the U.s. price vs. oil prices. See how the margin (gap between the lines) pull away very wide lately? That means one of two things: speculation on the price of crude oil is way out of line and large correction will happen soon. (Say yeah for everyone, incl. our economy.) Or it could mean gas at the pump will spike to $4 this winter.(Boo for everyone but the conservationists who will love the drive for green tech.
(Please check out links to Popular Science in previous post for something to hope for)
All in all, stay the course. Nothing has come out to drive things either way. Consumer confidence dip did not substantially impact market today, leading me to believe we are in a temporary plateau.

Otherwise, things are fine for me. Not much new.
Hope all of you reading this are alright!
Amusing Filipino humor

Hang in there for now!
-K

Welcome Back

Hello out there again!
I had a decent Thanksgiving. Thankfully for us we went to my wife's uncle's house for Turkey day. He is an Ear-Nose-Throat Dr. and was able to check out my oldest son's illness. He had strep. After finding a Rite Aid that was open all day on T-Day and getting a 'scrip for amoxocillin, B was on the road to recovery. What a trooper. He was clearly in pain and tired. So he slept a lot during his time off. I have to say, though, that he could've have been much worse for the illness.
As for the rest of the family, we had a good time. I didn't actually eat any turkey,
I had a whole lot of food, though.
Not much else interesting going on. Kind of wish I had some external money coming in from outside, moonlighting type of work. Not sure how that would happen. Things like that don't really find me.
Anyway, the market has been a real bummer. I am fearing that it will get much, much worse before it gets better. I am going to try an bail out of some of my stocks as soon as they see the light of day (a.k.a. a profit, even if small). I fear the U.S. economy is on the way to a recession.
Interesting topic, talk about making money. Usually, before a corporate acquisition, the company being acquired goes through a somewhat predictable cycle. (So does the buyer... we'll get back to that in a moment).
The news hits the street and the company being bought is at say $38/shr. The acquisition specifies a buy-price of $42/shr. Therefore, once can assume that the stock will reach $42 in value. This causes an immediate jump in price to near, but below, the target buy-price. See this graph as an example:
CBH gets bought
Notice the upswing after the acquisition news came out in the beginning of October. So over time CBH falls back in line with the market. But remember, come March when the acquisition happens (and possibly upon the news of the approval by the OCC), the stock will convert to TD Banknorth stock at the equivalent of $42/shr. At a current price of $65/shr. that means you would get somewhere in the ballpark of .65 share of TD per share of CBH. Near the acquisition date, though, the trading price will be pretty close to the sale price.
As an example, see MBNA. Notice that after the large drop (due to them severing more people than expected in March), the stock recovers back to the $21.50/shr. range. Then, after the announcement of the acuisition in June, the stock spikes to near the $26+ acquisition price, dips a little and then closes above $27 around acquisition time. So you can time the buy between the announcement and the actual sale to make a "guaranteed" return. As an example, buy CBH at $35 now and sell prior to the March conversion at $40-$42. Easy money right? It gets sweeter...
Post-conversion the acquiring company always drops. Why? Because of valuations. TD made $4 billion in 2006. If it now has acquired CBH, that means more shares outstanding (based on the above ratio). So, initially, the stock price will plunge as the earnings/shr. looks inordinately low. Over time this will correct itself. See Bank of America's share price around the time of the MBNA acquisition:
MBNA sinks another profit
Notice the large drop around July 1st, when the acquisition went through. (Also notice the recovery by the end of 2005, once merger and speculation details settled out and the profits started to roll in).
Bottom line is this:
1. Buy CBH LONG now at the basement price of $35/shr.
2. Sell CBH LONG at $40-$41 around the end of February, beginning of March
3. Buy TD Banknorth (TD) SHORT around the beginning of March
4. Sell TD Banknorth (TD) SHORT after it's drop has begun (perhaps wait a week or two to maximize profits)
5. Buy TD Banknorth (TD) LONG directly after your SHORT sale.
6. Sell TD Banknorth later, once it has recovered and gone up.

This will net you some $$. Just review the MBNA-BAC merger and others to verify.
Don't know what buying/selling SHORT is? Check this out: Shorting


OK, so enough of that. I am looking into trying out for the Series 7 certification, since I seem to have an interest in investing and providing advice.
Well, have fun out there.
Talk to you all soon!
-K

Hello

Hey everybody out there.
Not much new. Just looking forward to Turkey-Day. I hope everyone has a good day and a "gobbles" down some food.
Hope all is well out there.
Later,
-K