10JAN08 – A duo of Dinariusites were seated at lunch today stabbing at our new iPhones which have a Stock Market button on the Main Menu. We were suddenly jolted to MAY07 when we laid out some stocks that magazines said we should pay attention to! We shared that information with you on a strange page here and promptly stopped reporting. Our intention was to hold 100 stocks of six companies for six months and cash out at the New Year. Oh what a difference 10 days make!

We took Kiplinger’s Personal Finance and the rise of Apple quite well as did a lot of other people. We pretended to have $71,129.00 to throw at this excersize and wound up with a funny current situation – a market approaching recession. Analysts, who have been claiming the second fall of tech stocks for years now, are claiming that the Second Quarter of 2008 will see a devastating slump. The housing industry is tripping all over itself – you should see the FIVE YEAR graph for Washington Mutual WM on the NYSE. But certain stocks seem immune to most movement.

The six stocks we stuck in our pretend portfolio were both big and small. AAPL – Apple Computers; GOOG – Google; LLTC – Linear Technology; EBAY; ZBRA – Zebra Technologies, and; CTXS which is Citrix Systems.

Our personal favorite was ZBRA, the maker of bar code printers. We got burned, bought in at $37.34 and sold today for $31.94 losing about 560 bucks after so long. Had we remembered to pull out at the New Year mark, the share was at $34.70 cushioning our loss by about 300 bucks. This ten day “OUCH” trend was portfolio-wide.

Stock, bought in, New Year, 10JAN08, difference;
AAPL, $100, $198, $177.46, $22;
GOOG, $470, $690, $648, $42;
LLTC, $37.45, $31.50, $28.28, $3;
EBAY, $34, $33, $30.14, $3;
ZBRA, $37.34, $34.2, $31.94, $2;
CTXS, $32.50, $37.25, $35.51, $2;
Since a hundred stocks were bought of each symbol above, the combined loss in the last week and a half roughly adds up to $740 which is easily two car payments on the cheap truck!

The portfolio value as of today was roughly $95,133 which is $24,004 profit or about a 34% return. That’s better than just about anything out there and it’s all thanks to the two heavyweights, APPL (which nearly doubled) and GOOG. Only the Citrix maintained composure in a market that was falling and falling. The other, “affordable” thrity-dollar stocks suffered horribly and are near 52-week lows.

Since utter despair isn’t forecast for another six months or so, share holders most likely won’t let these low stocks dip below their 52-week lows because, by one thought, they’re not supposed to yet. There is no formula to the market. There is no secret bunch of numbers that everyone knows. You observe it, find it’s general behavior and play what money you can afford and see if your observations are right; you more or less play the market against itself. Maybe.

Since our hunch is that people won’t stand for the market falling too low before its time, we’re knocking our play money down to $10,000 and picking again! Before we tell you what we’re getting, check this out. Analysts always describe the rise before the fall. There’s been no rise; just a fall. This signals to flighty investors that this fall isn’t the fall. So the rise is coming. Get it? All our thirty-dollar losers are even more so now: 37 became 30, 34 became 31. If you didn’t look at the FIVE YEAR for WM, Washington Mutual fell from $45 to $10.73 in a YEAR after hovering at 35 to 50 for FIVE YEARS straight. Ouch.

We’ve included 100 shares of WaMu’s $14.63 per share stock in our new bunch. We’ll generate a $10,000 Tech Bunch and get back to you shortly.

We don’t really invest. It seems that if we could, we would do well. If you have $10,000 to burn and lose forever, you can follow along; we don’t recommend it. It’s fun and it borders on knowledge – so it fits.