sold some long held QQQQ and bought some FXI and IIH

12/5/2006 3:27:10 PM

Why are you selling it? I bought some back when it was QQQ.

12/5/2006 3:30:53 PM

which one is IIH?

VWO (Vanguard Emerging Market Fund) has been growing steadily for me all year now

[Edited on December 5, 2006 at 3:33 PM. Reason : .]

12/5/2006 3:31:46 PM

^^ same here - don't worry i still have a bunch left

^ Internet Infrastructure

^ yeah VWO is decent.

i'm heavy on the EW's, for example EWZ, EYY, EWO - pimpin all over the world




[Edited on December 5, 2006 at 3:50 PM. Reason : [Edited on December 5, 2006 at 3:50 PM. Reason : ]]

12/5/2006 3:48:22 PM

Sorry to jump into the thread but I do have one question for you.

Why IIH?

12/5/2006 4:12:19 PM

^^ ahhhh, i forgot about EWZ

think i'll be selling some puts on that one

12/5/2006 4:15:31 PM

I had a decent day today--back up above the level of when the market dropped a bit several days ago and I lost ~4%.

12/5/2006 5:09:29 PM

TIE is still having a nice run-up. *crosses fingers*

12/6/2006 4:11:00 AM

about IIH

its come a long way since its crash severall years ago.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=IIH&t=my

despite trading at a high price/earnings and high price/sales of its held companies, its trading at a less than one multiple of price/cash flow of its held companies. that plus its performance this year makes it solely a momentum play.

i haven't compared its assets/held companies then versus now, and i'm going to reevaluate it near the end of December and see if it has any potential beyond the short term.

i wouldn't necessarily recommend it to anybody, and anybody who gets in should either be in it for the long haul, or have very defined goals of what they want from it - ie 10% in a few months and then your done.

12/6/2006 10:12:53 AM

Interesting article about do it yourself investors.

http://bankrate.com/brm/news/BoomerBucks/20061206_investment_advice_a1.asp

12/6/2006 10:31:59 AM

owning BIDU is like having a girl that gives really really good head - - it feels great, but you're afraid she might have gotten good through practice on enough guys to get the herp

12/6/2006 4:24:22 PM

I'm saddened--TRID going down $1 has offset AKAM going up $3, since I have 3x as much TRID as AKAM.

12/7/2006 12:51:57 PM

glad i held on to that AKAM

12/7/2006 2:06:22 PM

Anyone thinking of throwing some money at the Heely's (HLYS) IPO?

12/7/2006 3:27:26 PM

no, it has the word 'heel' in it...just kidding, what is it?

12/7/2006 3:52:04 PM

They're the company that make those shoes with wheels in the heel. Apparently they're a big-ticket item this Christmas.

12/7/2006 3:59:14 PM

So Wall Street beat TRID down 6%. Now, let's be serious. Will the MIPS lawsuit cost TRID 6% of it's earnings? That would be considered an excessive royalty by any stretch of the imagination, and that's assuming that 100% of TRID products must pay a royalty. No, this is typical over-reaction (aka buy opportunity).

Everywhere I go, people are buying flat panel TVs. Even the news reports show strong sales of these TVs. TRID hsa no debt, tons of cash. It is beating competitors everywhere. Its customers are growing by leaps and bounds. High growth, high margins.

And it's one other thing. It's a sign of continuing Wall Street negative sentiment towards TRID.
It's been almost 3 quarters since Wall Street showed any interest in TRID despite mammoth growth. Im going to get back in on TRID shortly and patiently wait for Wall Street to stop shitting on TRID and start rewarding them for stellar growth.

Perhaps that will start after Best Buy releases earnings....

12/7/2006 5:36:16 PM

note to self: take a look at TRID


...tomorrow may show i made a timing error in judgement - Japan GDP revised down, may hurt FXI

12/7/2006 10:17:27 PM

Trident relieves chief accountant of duties
http://biz.yahoo.com/bizj/061208/1387955.html?.v=1

hopefully TRID can put the options backdating issues/perceptions behind them now.

12/8/2006 10:00:20 AM

Hmm I'm thinking of picking up another 50 shares of TRID.

12/8/2006 11:18:46 AM

i don't know the sector too well, but isn't the consumer electronics space a bloodbath? it seems its already highly competitive, and a new entrant could come in an shake things up more.

even with that, it may be a good seasonal play - i know i'll be getting a new tv soon (and maybe a laptop too)

...i guess the period of time before the bloodbath/price wars turn into margin pressure that eventually leads the OEM to lose some pricing power, is when this stock will see some good times

[Edited on December 8, 2006 at 11:47 AM. Reason : ]

12/8/2006 11:28:43 AM

the other thing i'm seeing is that TRID is making inefficient use of its balance sheet

long story short, it is a good thing for us, albeit a speculative move if one were to buy a stock because of it.

it seems the company is earning a bit above 10% on interest from its cash in the bank. that's too much for a company that's supposed to be growing. its not all their fault though. its been a defensive strategy many semiconductor & equipment companies use as a result of the bubble burst earlier in the decade, that's bound to change.

a couple of things can happen that can move the stock up anywhere from 10-20%

* can repurchase shares with the cash that they should currently be using to grow

* can lower what we call "Weighted Average Cost of Capital" - also a long story, involves taking on debt, lowering asset beta, and ultimately using 'less risky' cash to grow the business


*or, because of a combination of the above two points, they become a target of a private equity/leveraged buyout. in that case, the returns can be 20% or more. i'm thinking this might be the real reason the CEO got canned. maybe he didn't want some raiders coming in and putting the company at risk for short term share price gain.

[Edited on December 8, 2006 at 12:00 PM. Reason : ]

12/8/2006 11:35:52 AM

HLYS opened up 60% today. Too bad I couldn't get in on it before it opened.
Just got 50 shares of TRID at $20.35.

12/8/2006 3:03:32 PM

^I'm a newbie.. so pardon my ignorance.. how do you get stocks at their IPO value? HLYS is doing real good.

12/8/2006 3:07:48 PM

Investors who get in on IPOs generally are affiliated with the company, are investment companies, or know someone.

12/8/2006 3:11:27 PM

or if you've been doing business with a house (almost always a full service broker) for a long time or you invest a lot of $ with them, they let you get in at the IPO price to keep you a satisfied customer

12/8/2006 5:13:05 PM

My roommate told me that an 85 year old woman came in this week asking about some Mobile (now part of Exxon-Mobile) stock vouchers that she had found in her attic.

Her husband had bought 2200 shares at various times during the 60s for $600.

Turns out she was sitting on $8.5 million.

12/8/2006 5:33:41 PM

gotta be nice to be her kids

12/8/2006 6:09:39 PM

she was just going to use them as stocking stuffers for her grandkids but decided to check out the value first

that woulda been nice

12/8/2006 6:19:27 PM

eh, they woulda had to pay gift tax on them though.


This way they can just inherit them without paying the tax, right?

12/8/2006 6:31:01 PM

i have no idea

i could imagine a few different scenarios with that

12/8/2006 6:35:43 PM

Luckily stories like that actually do happen to real people, not just the ones you read about online.

Personally I hate those stories--"If you invested $5,000 in Coke 50 years ago you'd be worth zillions today!!"
Well you know what? I didn't fucking invest that much money back then, and I sure as hell don't want to wait 50 years to be rich. I want it NOW! Later is great too, but having it in 50 years sure as hell won't help me now.
</rant>

12/9/2006 2:00:48 AM

^ Thats why I just sell blow.

12/9/2006 10:52:59 AM

Quote :

"So Wall Street beat TRID down 6%. Now, let's be serious. Will the MIPS lawsuit cost TRID 6% of it's earnings? That would be considered an excessive royalty by any stretch of the imagination, and that's assuming that 100% of TRID products must pay a royalty. No, this is typical over-reaction (aka buy opportunity)."

Not to be argumentative, but the assumption you are making is that TRID was not over-valued before the announcement of the MIPS lawsuit and that the 6% correction was deserved due to other factors.

12/9/2006 1:01:33 PM

damn, any of yall own ibm in 1987? shit went down to 41 in 1993.

12/9/2006 4:08:39 PM

^ [old]
drunknloaded....
Big deal that it dropped so much. 6 years later it spiked from ~10 to ~130, adjusted for splits. I don't see what you're trying to point out.

Instead of coming in here and saying totally random shit that means nothing, either ask a question or do some research. Your posts here are useless.

12/9/2006 5:21:21 PM

picked up some TRID friday - my investment thesis there is that it might be a PE buyout candidate - not because LCD's are awesome.

i'm not sure how heavily Trident is in LCDs vs other television technology, but DLP projection TVs are kicking everything elses asses on quality of picture. being able to hang your tv on the fireplace or simply having that slick look is a ancillary benefit at best (to me atleast). plasmas currently straight up suck as far as my eyes can tell.

quality of pic is the core asset benefit; so i hope the company can either get on the DLP bandwagon or have some way to play it, or make LCDs with a better picture.

12/9/2006 8:22:48 PM

so on average how many stocks do yall have in your mutual funds?

12/10/2006 2:28:20 AM

couldn't tell you b/c there are so many

12/10/2006 2:31:39 AM

yeah i've learned a shit ton about investing in the past 2 days watching my bus 225 lectures

he kept saying 50 or 100, i guess cause they are nice round numbers, so i was seeing if that was like an average thing for all mutual funds or whether its one of those things that can vary significantly from person to person

12/10/2006 2:43:57 AM

I am looking for a fair no-load mutual G+I mutual fund to help with saving for a house in the next few years. Anybody have any suggestions? I'm not familiar with many of the no-loads.

12/11/2006 1:11:48 PM

my love of ETFs has led me to not invest in mutual funds outside of my 401k

12/11/2006 1:18:34 PM

^ Definitely. ETFs > Mutual funds. Especially for the intended purpose.

Quote :

"quality of pic is the core asset benefit; so i hope the company can either get on the DLP bandwagon or have some way to play it, or make LCDs with a better picture."

You'll be hard pressed to find a large enough percentage of people who can distinguish between the quality of LCD vs. DLP to give DLP a competitive advantage over LCD. Personal preferences aside, the smaller footprint of flat panel LCD TVs is a competitive advantage.

[Edited on December 11, 2006 at 1:24 PM. Reason : asgh]

12/11/2006 1:23:57 PM

Not much happened in my portfolio today. Anyone have anything to report?

12/11/2006 6:37:49 PM

^^ yeah, its just me. i'd take the function of DLP over the form of flat panel as a tradeoff any day - getting both would be ideal though.

12/11/2006 10:22:52 PM

i really want to get a fucking roth ira

12/12/2006 6:17:01 AM

do most of you guys use online services to process your trades?

if so, which ones do you suggest? any minimum investment required?

i want to start dumping a fair amount into etfs as a simple temp. solution with no research required in order to start a house fund.

12/12/2006 8:44:55 AM

So, why don't you go get a roth ira???

I use UBS mainly but as far as online services go, I've used tdwaterhouse and scottrade.

12/12/2006 9:15:06 AM

Quote :

"So, why don't you go get a roth ira???"

an interesting point. heres the current plan:

im currently trying to go frontheavy as possible on 401k contributions, with a roth opening in jan. of 2008.

this is due to the fact that im facing a changing contribution percentage as we get rid of a pension plan and go towards a contributed+matching plan in the 401k.

essentially, im maxing out the 401k (to 15k/yr) right now, but with the higher contribution comming it more than pays for maxing out a roth, with essentially less expendature out of my pocket for right now. by not having to put that extra amount to hit the 401k cap, i can cap a roth as well with the same amount saved basically.

however, going this heavy this early has kind of put a damper on savings towards a downpayment on a house.

ive got the liquid investments i could get to as an emergency fund, but id like to keep that secure and seperate.

i know many of you would advocate towards taking a good bit of that amount needed to max the 401k and using it in other investments across the market, but i dont have the time or patience to learn the market, and am fortuante enought hat my 401k allows for index fund investing. so i have a pretty decent amount going towards index funds, with various other diversified mutuals.

Part of me wants to knock down the contribution rate and put a good bit to half of that into a house fund, along with another 10k or so per year, then look to purchase around feb. '08 depending ont he market, and if it looks like ill still be in this area or not. renting is just such an absurd proposition.


i also dont really like the concept of borrowing against or taking out funds in retirement accounts for various reasons, but i havent done a ton of research into that aspect.

12/12/2006 10:00:52 AM

All good points, although I was actually referring to the post before yours when I made the comment.

In case you didn't know, the roth contribution can count towards the previous year up until April 15th.

Good idea to go frontheavy. I'm doing the same thing.

I'd be very happy about them getting rid of the pension plan now instead of 20 years from now.

Unless your 401K plan really sucks I would not advocate towards taking a good bit of that amount needed to max the 401k and using it in other investments across the market.

If plan on looking in Feb 2008, I would definately keep the liquid assets seperate in one of those 5% money market accounts until you are ready to buy.

12/12/2006 10:09:10 AM