Visa

Just waiting for earnings Jul 30 for Visa.

Really quick, I think the expectation of beating analyst expectations is already priced into the the current price. So earnings will have beat by a whole lot to see rise in stock prices. Unfortunaltely I do not have any kind of hedge or back up plan. I'm expecting Visa to blow away earnings, settled around the 80's otherwise it might be a while before it gets there.


Edit: So Visa beat earnings and raised guidance. But on the next day after earnings the stock droped. It could be because of MA preformance, the GDP, slight rise in oil, or some other bad news. But I seen stocks drop after good earnings, it seems to happen occasionlly from my experience. So I'm looking for it to close higher on Friday.


If anybody could leave a comment explaining why sometimes stocks drop after good earnings that would be cool. thx

Google.com

Just surfing around found different Google's

http://www.pinkgoogle.com/

http://www.scenegoogle.com/

http://www.google.ie/

http://www.google.com/ig

Vix

Might be useful in current market. Got this from Charles Schwab.

The VIX is a daily measurement of expected volatility in the S&P 500. Low numbers reflect the expectations of little volatility and signal complacency in the stock market while larger numbers reflect the expectation of increased volatility and signal increasing levels of worry amongst traders and investors. Although the VIX actually measures volatility, it is widely accepted as a gauge of fear and greed due to the strong correlation between volatility and sentiment.

In general terms, a VIX in the mid-teens is a sign that there may be too much bullishness in the market. However, most VIX followers use it only to detect excessive amounts of fear that may indicate a short-term market bottom. A VIX over 30 begins to raise eyebrows as a sign of fear in the market and it becomes more significant if it gets between 35-40. Once the VIX rises above 30, look to see where the VIX peaked at the most recent market bottom as a number that may signify a capitulation point. For example, the VIX spiked to 37.57 in January and 35.60 in March. Observers have been looking for a return to those levels for a sign of capitulation and a tradable market bottom. As VIX only reached 30.81 this month, many VIX followers were both faked out and disappointed when the market began to rally sharply 10 days ago without a clearer sign of a selling wash-out.

The key to remember with VIX is that it has no hard and fast number to serve as a signal as do other indicators such as the Investors Intelligence numbers discussed in this space last week. With VIX, it's more about the range. On most days, VIX may better serve as guide to analyzing current market conditions as it is often the direction in which the VIX is moving that offers a hint as to the underlying market psychology. Unless and until VIX crosses into the 30s, it need not be on your investment radar.

by Mark Huard

Rip Michael Bologna

Mike, we went to elementary school and middle school together. You were a cool guy. Your family were very involved in the Rooftop community. I remember you were pretty athletic, and had a good game of basketball. Had some fun times with you. I'm shocked that something like this happened to you and your family. I'm praying for you and them. Rest in peace.

Edit: Two fund have been set up for the surviving children of Anthony Bologna, the father who was killed in a shooting in San Francisco's Excelsior District that also claimed the lives of his two sons, Michael, 20, and Matthew, 16. The first fund is a trust fund set up by the victim's family:

Anthony Bologna Children's Fund
Washington Mutual Bank
845 Laurel St.
San Carlos, CA 94070A

second fund has been set up by the victim's employer, Draeger's Market. Donations can be sent to:

Anthony Bologna Memorial Fund
Comerica Bank
350 Lytton Ave.
Palo Alto, CA 94301


Edit2:

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-me-sanctuary26-2008jul26,0,3980668.story








http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/24/MNS011DN2V.DTL

Amazon earnings

Ok, Amazon earnings came out:

Amazon Inc reports Q2 EPS of $0.37, 11 cents
better than the analyst estimate of $0.26. Revenues for the quarter
were $4.06 billion, versus the consensus of $3.96 billion.





So why do I care, I don't own Amazon, but....
















Wonder how much of Amazon's online transactions were made using a Visa card??

(find out July 30 earnings report)
http://www.covestor.com/mbr/wong55





Visa- Everywhere you want to be

*Yeah everywhere, hello kitty and even in the World of Warcraft

Market is too crazy, I need a break. So I'm posting pics of home: San Francisco.












The neighborhoods...















Sunset district and Muni tracks






























New building S.F

The Dark Knight

hahahaha, I own stock in Time Warner (TWX) and IMAX!!!. Still haven't seen it yet, but it comes out in Japan next week.

"DARK KNIGHT" RECORDS THUS FAR (IN ORDER OF OCCURRENCE):

1 - LARGEST NUMBER OF OPENING THEATRES WITH 4,366 (MORE THAN THE 4,362 DEBUT THEATRES OF "PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END IN 2007).

2 - BIGGEST MIDNIGHT PREVIEW GROSS WITH $18.489 MILLION IN 3,040 THEATRES (THIS BEATS "STAR WARS EPISODE III: REVENGE OF THE SITH" AND ITS $16.9 MILLION IN 2,915 THEATRES IN 2005).



3 - BIGGEST IMAX MIDNIGHT PREVIEWS SET AN NEW RECORD WITH $640,000 (THIS AMOUNT WAS APPROPRIATELY INCLUDED IN THE $18.489 MILLION PREVIEW NUMBER).

4 - BIGGEST SINGLE-DAY GROSS IN BOX-OFFICE HISTORY WITH $67.850 MILLION (THIS BESTS THE $59,841,919 SET BY "SPIDER-MAN 3" IN 2007).

5 - BIGGEST OPENING WEEKEND GROSS IN BOX-OFFICE HISTORY WITH $155.340 MILLION (THIS BESTS THE $151,116,516 SET BY "SPIDER-MAN 3" IN 2007).

6 - BIGGEST OPENING WEEKEND GROSS FOR AN IMAX RELEASE IN BOX-OFFICE HISTORY WITH $6,214,061 MILLION IN 94 THEATRES ($66,107 PER-THEATRE!) (THIS BESTS THE $4.7 MILLION SET BY "SPIDER-MAN 3" IN 2007) - IMAX SHOWING AT FULL CAPACITY $1.9 MILLION ON SATURDAY ALONE.

Google Analytics-tracking your visits

Ok, its a little late post, but its been about 2 months I had this blog up. I'm using Google Analytics, to track how many people visit. So as of July 20 I have 324 different ppl come thru my blog. Most of hits were from the U.S and Japan. In the U.S most visits came from California and New York. In California a lot of the visits came from San Francisco (my home city)!!

Some other interesting places I got hits from are Canada, U.K, Singapore, Malaysia, Germany, Turkey, Thailand, Peru, Vietnam, Spain, Chile, Netherlands, Guatemala, France Brazil, Sweden, Italy, India.

So, Thank you for stopping by,
look on the right and click on my links, or read older posts.

Analysis of current assets July 18th

As of July 18th my current holdings are BAC, IMAX, TWX, and V.

http://www.covestor.com/mbr/wong55

Holdings

IMAX 35.4% V 34.7% TWX 20.6% BAC 9.3%

Rationales:

TWX- Time Warner owns Warner Bros studio. Which made the big film the Batman Dark Knight. Hopefully this movies pulls in over 100 million over the weekend. However TWX market cap is 52.60B, so this might not move the stock up too much considering that the movie is a small part of revenue that Time Warner make all together. Expecting a small boost. Probably sell on next week around weds.

IMAX- Dark Knight was shot with some Imax cameras. Just a few scenes. It is also going to shown in Imax theaters. The review for the movie is already good and tickets are being sold out. Has a smaller market cap of 335M so the jump in stock price should be bigger. Looking to sell next week.

BAC and Financial sector- Bought this a while ago around 25. Was going to cost average down, but it jumped back too soon. Was planing to hold long term. This weeks SEC announcements of stopping a few shorts in the finacial sector, plus Wells Fargo announcement of raising dividend, help stock prices. (plus lower gas, and other good earnings).

However the financial sector seems to be going from oversold to now overbought. Citigroups loss of 2.5 billion, while under analyst expectations, is still bad and shows that the Financial problems are not yet over. BAC Q2 EPS is on July 21st Monday. So depending on the report, might add additional shares, but considering buying a short ETF on financials.

V- Visa. I don't know whats happening with this stock. It's hard enough just trying to make sense of it. My original plan was to hold this stock long term. But I don't think I'm that kind of investor/trader. Its volatility is hard to stomach and painful to hold. It pretty much goes up and down with the Dow. There's not enough data out, charts don't have enough history on them. It's hard to evaluate this stock.

Going to hold out for a few more weeks until Jul 30th earnings release. And maybe a little more until Aug 8th the start of the Olympics (Visa is a sponsor). Then I'm going to consider letting go of this stock for good. It has a good possibility to pop on the next earnings report and Olympics. It's too much of a heartache to keep...




The Market. What a crazy week it's been with the some stocks like BAC rising more than 20% this week. Oil going down to 130. Mixed earnings reports. The week ended with the bulls up. But is this another head fake? The market seemed oversold a last few weeks, and now it seems over bought. We'll see where the market is heading next week as the following earnings come out:

Apple (AAPL),
Bank of America (BAC), Merck (MRK) and Texas Instruments (TXN) on Monday; Caterpillar (CAT), DuPont (DD) Halliburton (HAL), Lockheed Martin (LMT), Norfolk Southern (NSC), United Parcel Service (UPS), and Yahoo! (YHOO) on Tuesday; Anheuser Busch (BUD), AT&T (T), Boeing (BA), ConocoPhillips( COP), McDonald's (MCD), PepsiCo (PEP), Phillip Morris International (PM) and Travelers (TRV) on Wednesday; 3M (MMM), Bristol Myers (BMY), Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNI), Dow Chemical (DOW), Eli Lilly (LLY), Potash (POT),and Raytheon (RTN) on Thursday; and Arch Coal (ACI), Black & Decker (BDK), Fortune Brands (FO) and Netflix (NFLX) on Friday.



http://www.covestor.com/mbr/wong55

BAC story from google forums

Here's a story from the google forums on BAC. This guy kept cost averaging down even in all that fear last week!!!! Yesterdays boost helped put him over.

inspirational...

From:		ad...@constantstock.com - view profile
Date:		Thurs, Jul 17 2008 3:31 am
Email:		ad...@constantstock.com

Rating:		(2 users)
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Reply | Reply to Author | Forward | Print | Individual Message | Report Abuse | Find messages by this author

For ages now, I have watched this stock drop and my money supply dry.
At 36, I bought some. At 33, I bought more. At 27, I invested some
reserve money. At 22, I got out my emergency money to buy BAC.

At 20, I put it all I got. At 19, I got a part of my student loan and
some over-margin to buy more.

As of today, I Am proud to say I turned a 37,000$ loss into a 13,000$
gain. As for what patience DOES pay.

And no, I am not reselling my 20,000+ shares.

stupid SEC limiting shorts

Okay so Monday didn't get my shorts ETFs. Chased it for a long time too. Tuesday finally got into DXD, to short the market. Now I read that the SEC is limiting short sales on 19 financial firms. U guys suck. Just when I'm just got into shorting it (a bit late), but now people are whining because they're losing money and start blaming shorters.

Anyways looking to put some money in Time Warner before the new batman movie comes out. So probably sometime on thurs or fri.



Reference:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/25698166/site/14081545/

crash and burn (financials)?!?

So over the weekend I read the news and see that IndyMac closed, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are gonna be bailed out by the feds. I think this news happened after the market closed. I'am in a really bad position with V and BAC as a long position. So Monday morning I'am gonna hedge my position by putting money in an ultra short financial etf. Makes sense, since I'am expecting financials to crash and burn on Monday. Gonna use some of my margin too.

Track my progress on http://www.covestor.com/mbr/wong55


Edit: ok 10 mins before market opening. Reading more headlines, seems like market sentiment changed. So feds helping out is a good thing?!? Gonna have to put a hold on buying that short ETF. k back to hw

Edit2: so I took out the market order and placed a limit order on the SKF. While I was up late doing Hw, market sentiment changed. Ended trying to chase it with a limit order. keep raising it for about a half hour before I gave up. Wanted it to dip to 175 and I keep my limit order around there. But I didn't get it. I think I gotta stick with my orignal assesment next time and get it at market price when it opened.

Life in the military-colors

Life has really changed since I joined the military. Even some small stuff, that I don't notice anymore. For example when the Flag (national colors) gets pulled up the flag pole at 8am every morning, a short version of the national anthem is played, and everybody in uniform (outdoors) snaps to attention and salutes toward the anthem and the rising flag. Vehicles, civilians stop, and everything comes to a standstill, showing respect to the flag as it gets raised. Its a good way to start off the day!!

Same thing happens when they take down the Flag. But they play some other music, I think it's called taps.


Edit: Just added some links on the right hand side, link to my portfolio, and some other things I wrote about investing.

gut feeling

Got a sick feeling in my stomach with todays (Jul 7th) big sell off in the market. Ouch, down a few percents.

Edit: OK, so that gut feeling was gone after using the toilet. That and I realize that I have a good portion of portfolio still in cash, and todays drop was very minor in my overall portfolio. (although I think it probably drop more during this earnings week). Gonna to have to stop looking at the ticker daily now,
maybe in a couple of months.

Edit2: ok cool, it went back up.(Jul 8th) iono its hard stomaching this roller coaster ride this past few months. Up a few grand, down a few grand, up, down, up............

Japan

The other day I went to an offbase stationary/Arts and Crafts store nearby camp Foster. To pick up some school supplies. They had some pretty neat things there. Got a really cool pen (shown on the left). Was looking for a 3 ring binder... But found out that Japanese people only use a 2 ring binders!! Thats too bad because they had some pretty cool looking binders.

Metal Gear Solid 4

Just finished playing Metal Gear Solid 4. It was one of the best games I ever played so far. Half way thru, I forgot it was a game, it seemed more like a movie. An interactive movie! My favorite part was Act 3 with big mama, and the motorcycle chase part, ending the scene with Liquid disabling everyone's weapon and escaping!

Anyways I hope market sentiment gets better after the 4th of July. Down some after the sell offs on Friday. Hopefully traders, and investor took the time this weekend to relax, and rethink things. Good thing the market has a short term memory, just watch... bounce back on Monday. or not...