Friday, July 20, 2007

Just a handful float in stormy weather

Hmmm ... A- list ... not good today.

Amazon down 2.3%. Baidu down 4.3%. Crocs down 1.5%. Foster Wheeler down less than 1%. Google down 5.1%. Spartan Motors down 3%. RIMM down 1.6%.

The only A- in the green? Who else? Apple, up 2.6% to an all-time high of $143.75. Incredible. Maybe insane. But AAPL moves up on an overall down, down, down day in the market. Apple traded on its highest volume since July 10. Quite bullish.

Just 18 days ago, Apple traded at $119 intra-day. Now, while profit-takers empty out their positions in almost all other stocks, Apple just keeps climbing. It's 50 points higher now than it was when I bought it a few months ago. Too bad I sold it at $92. Yeah. Lesson learned. Stick to the gameplan.

Getting back in at $122 (far smaller position) is no consolation. I knew the facts about Apple. I understood the risks. The positives outweighed the risks by far. I sold out to get more shares of another company. So I learned two lessons in that foolish sale: 1. stick to the gameplan, 2. don't let go of a winner before it can run. A third lesson? Be diversified.

The B+ list doesn't look much better today. Twelve of the 16 stocks were down. Nintendo, which operates in a universe of its own, was up 3% to $53.75. I could guess that NTDOY.PK will wind up at $70 or even $80 by year's end. But I won't. I just want more shares before the PPS takes off again.

Focus Media ended a six-day skid, gaining 2.7% to $45.21. Volume didn't match yesterday's massive selloff (7.8 million shares), but it was significant at 6.1 million shares. Now if only the Co can hurry up and get this earnings delay over with.

The other two B+ stocks to stay above water were Flowserve (FLS) and CNOOC (CEO). Both are oil plays that continue to thrive in the current market. FLS is up a mere 13% since it caught my eye, but CEO is up a whopping 56%.

Disclaimer: Pupule Paul is long BIDU, CROX, AAPLE, NTDOY.PK and FMCN.

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