Uncle Ben to the Rescue
By · Comments1/25/12
I mentioned last night wanting to wait til 10:30, 11:30, 2:30 etc to see how the market would go. Apple had already announced an awesome quarter so that stock was up about 9% in the aftermarket. But things didn’t really get going til old friend Uncle Ben Bernanke gave asset prices the green light by pledging another 2-3 years of ZIRP – Zero Interest Rate Policy. Then the party started.
Gold stocks launched – and I mean launched – with many of the the mid cap companies rising 6-10% on the DAY. The large cap miners like Goldcorp, rose almost 7%. Gold itself rose just under 3% with silver up about 4%. Perhaps it’s finally time for the miners to outperform the metal. I think with the all clear from Helicopter Ben, investors will feel safe buying. It also gives a green light for foreign currencies, until central banks worldwide try to fight back (Currency Wars), and foreign stocks as emerging markets rose across the board. Copper took the cue also and rose.
I am curious to see if an Uncle Ben rally could last as long as the last one. Remember in August of 2010 when Read More→
More Blah (except for Apple wow)
By · Comments1/24/12
Another unexciting day in the markets – though what I am noticing is that many stocks that were down going into the end of 2011 have strongly reverted to the mean with many deep value stocks moving up 10-40%. Today’s edition was EMC, which moved up over 7% today right to the breakout point of the double bottom base and rested there. EMC was helped by good numbers from VMware – which is over 80% owned by EMC.
A Word About Apple
iPads everywhere
The big news was Apple reporting their results after hours. It seems that either everyone now owns an iPhone and iPad or some very devoted fans own 2-3 of each because their numbers were huge. Cross selling is likely running rampant as many iPhone owners are probably Read More→
So Many Deal Sites – So Many Options
By · CommentsDaily Deal Sites – you’ve heard of them: Groupon, LivingSocial, BuyWithMe, Deal Find, Eversave, Bloomspot, Angie’s List has one, Travelzoo, Zozi (travel related) - all of these offer deals in various approaches for a limited time to help build awareness for the advertised product. So Are they good? Should you check ‘em out? I’m not sure but I’ve had some good experiences – here’s my say on the matter…
I recently used a teeth whitening special from a Brookline dental office (wow that hurt on the third pass) which I purchased for $99 (sessions typically go for $400-600). I’ve also used numerous restaurant deals originally from Restaurant.com but recently I look more and more to Scoutmob, which doesn’t require me to buy anything first and often offers free lunches! Yelp offers daily deals on restaurants too. And I’ve used a couple of travel/hotel deals which were great.
For a sample of what might be offered, here’s what appeared in my inbox this morning:
Isn't It Better to Eat For Less?
$25 for locksmith service
$40 for five fitness classes
$10 for $20 worth of fare at a restuarant
$75 for teeth whitening procedure
$249 for energy saving packet including door and window sealing
How do I get such a large sample mailed to me? Do I subscribe to all of these sites? No I use a deal aggregator called DealGator, which customizes the deals for each city. It makes it easy for me to scan the deals and see if anything good pops up all in one email. I’m sure there are other deal aggregators and I’d recommend using one if you want to know what’s being offered without 12-15 extra emails each day. And it also saves your email from being listed with 15 more companies (though I’m sure it gets shared somewhere anyway).
A word of caution – some of the above are newer and a few have complaints listed on the web. I don’t know how legitimate the complaints are but be cautious about using these sites. Again, Scoutmob is great because they don’t ask me to pay for anything upfront. I’ve also personally used Groupon, LivingSocial and BuyWithMe without issues.
More Internal Pain
By Chris Grande · Comments (0)I mentioned yesterday seeing breakouts crumble even though the overall market crept up. I also made the point that things “felt” like 2007 when the market crawled up but internally felt sick.
More evidence today of that. Breakouts were crushed, some stocks that merely met expectations got slapped (eg RVBD) and Peter Brandt who runs an excellent trading blog pointed out that the Baltic Dry Index (the shipping index) was making new lows- something that shouldn’t be happening in an expanding global economy. The market popped for ONE day after Bernanke spoke, which is much less reaction than the 6 month rally we got the last time he pledged big action. However, I will hypothesize that just his words won’t move markets much. I think people want to see OVERT Fed action. But I could be wrong and my judgement could be too quick.
Gold stocks followed on a bit day with gains that were “tame” compared to yesterday’s fireworks. Tech didn’t look so good and some companies Read More→