jeez well I was active herebut life got hectic and I fell off a cliff. However, tomorrow I hand in my masters thesis! Today I received an offer from RMS in the Bay Area, which is exciting.
I sold CEO $5 above my target, quite happy with that trade. I bought into some SNCR. I was down 60% plus on my FMCN calls based on some bad pub and some questionable management decisions, but fundamentals were/are still there and I'm weathered the storm, things looking bright there again. A little push to the upside and I have a big profit coming on a sizeable investment. Still holding my apple, earnings were STELLAR and no business slowdown to speak of. guidance was conservative as usual but for once the street didnt freak. It's nice to see apple trading reasonably after earnings for once.
-- later in the day:
Now that I have more time I'd like to add to this. First, my routine defense of apple as being priced correctly where it is: at $169 a share, more than $22 of that is just good old plain cash. So that means 147 of the stock price is actually pricing growth in. A forward P/E of ~25 for a company with sustained multi year growth rate of 30% + sounds good to me, no matter the market cap. Smart aqcuisitions, incredible efficiency LINK: http://blogs.wsj.com/biztech/2008/04/23/innovation-comes-cheap-at-apple/?mod=WSJBlog?mod=homeblogmod_businesstechnology
good products, brand loyalty, and not having touched china in terms of sales, well, apple is priced right. I like the street's reaction to earnings, finally ignoring the usual apple low balling of earnings numbers.
I see that BIDU had good numbers, and guided higher than consensus. Now I wouldn't touch bidu with a 10 foot pole because of it's volatility and p/e, but this bodes well for all chinese ADR's etc because it makes wall street feel better about chinese companies operating in china. Case and point, my pet FMCN, who I have a lot riding on july $50 calls. In reality I only need the stock (close today at $37.51) to break 38.50 or so to make a profit, but i'd like to see some momentum behind china as a whole again. FMCN, pummeled for it's cell spam, has earnings roughly the same as FSLR but trades for a very very modest forward p/e of 13 or so, and this is after it's downward guidence. I think my favorite thing in the entire market is when a stock is unjustly taken to the shed and beaten-like apple was in feb and like fmcn was earlier this month. The street is so damn emotional, and if one can keep emotions in check-buying when there is blood is generally (and I mean generally) a great idea (always do your dd).
