Thursday, February 15, 2007

Server Unavailable

Server Unavailable



That's the message I got more than once today from Myspace. Hopefully this answers any questions about why I still blog at blogspot.com. I got that message in the middle of creating a post and lost that post. I was actually saving the "draft" before I finalized it. When I save a draft at blogspot, at least I have the draft if something goes wrong, which happens a lot less than it used to happen. By the way, something similar occurred when I was first writing this explanation at Myspace. So, they lost my stuff twice. Good site, needs work with respect to blogging. Will this matter to the stock price of their parent company?


Click on the tile of today's post to see a good book.

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Oh, spend some time enjoying Natalie Merchant's music:

http://www.nataliemerchant.com/

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

We Sold BLDR & Bought VALU

I locked up more profit yesterday. We would still buy BLDR if we were starting today. One thing for sure, watching CNBC is not the same as watching the market with your money in it. That's a good reason to have good reasons for what you do, no matter what strategy you choose.

We made 18.49% from August 31st, 2006 to February 12, 2007. August has 31 days, but since we are starting on the 31st, we notice that 30 days later is September 30th which has only 30 days. 30 + 31 + 30 + 31 +31 +12 days in February equals 165 days. 365 divided by 165 equals 2.21. 2.21 times 18.49% equals 40.86% annualized. That's nice.

Here's the BLDR summary from Finance.Google.com:

Builders FirstSource, Inc. is a supplier and a fast-growing manufacturer of structural and related building products for residential new construction in the United States. The products offered include its factory-built roof and floor trusses, wall panels and stairs, as well as engineered wood products. It also manufactures custom millwork and trim that it markets under the Synboard brand name. In addition, it supplies customers with an offering of professional grade building products, such as dimensional lumber and lumber sheet goods, various window, door and millwork lines, as well as cabinets, roofing and gypsum wallboard. The building products and services are grouped into five product categories: prefabricated components, windows & doors, lumber & lumber sheet goods, millwork, and other building products & services. Its full range of construction-related services includes professional installation, turn-key framing and shell construction, and spans all its product categories.

Summary For VALU:

Value Line, Inc. is engaged in producing investment-related periodical publications through its wholly owned subsidiary, Value Line Publishing, Inc. (VLP), and providing investment advisory services to mutual funds, institutions and individual clients. VLP publishes in both print and electronic formats The Value Line Investment Survey, a periodical investment services, as well as The Value Line Investment Survey - Small and Mid-Cap Edition, The Value Line 600, Value Line Select, The Value Line Mutual Fund Survey, The Value Line No-Load Fund Advisor, The Value Line Special Situations Service, The Value Line Options Survey and The Value Line Convertibles Survey. VLP also provides current and historical financial databases in standard computer formats and markets investment analysis software, The Value Line Investment Analyzer, Value Line ETF Survey, Mutual Fund Survey for Windows, Value Line Daily Options Survey, Value Line Electronic Convertibles and Value Line Research Center.

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Business Owner Investment

Thursday, February 08, 2007

Pacer Downside Surprise

I was just thinking how Pacer Global Logistics (PACR) has steadily risen since we bought it early September. No huge gains in single days or weeks. No huge swings. Just a hard working stock. Logistics is not an exciting enterprise to most people, yet profit is there for the diligent. Then today. If the opening holds, we'll lose around 75% of our gains today. Whew. Pacer still makes the list of stocks we would buy today. A couple analysts downgraded the stock.

Below you'll find links to Yahoo's Upgrades and Downgrades History for Pacer as well as the Pacer Global Logistics homepage. Click on the title of today's post to see the Wikipedia entry for Logistics.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ud?s=PACR

http://www.pacerglobal.com/

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Business Owner Investment

Monday, February 05, 2007

Timberland Looks Like A Great Place To Work

Timberland (TBL) gives employees the opportunity to volunteer and get paid for it. If you check out their benefits page, you might want to apply to work there. Check it out by clicking on the title of today's post.

We bought Timberland in April and the stock took a dive within weeks as did the rest of the market, except we're still down almost 12% in this stock. We're grateful to be there compared to where the stock was, and I'm guessing that we have a 75% chance of selling it for a loss in a couple months. We'll see...

I want to urge those who haven't joined the music technology revolution to buy a Zune. I'm enjoying the heck out of it. The Blasters sound great on my computer right now [!] and so does Mozart, Talking Heads, The Jam and The Clash and Lone Justice and Oingo Boingo and Beethoven and Johnny Cash and Social Distortion, Wall of Voodoo, Norah Jones, X, Roger Miller, various composers, Los Lobos, George Winston, Jon Anderson...it's truly fun to keep saying, "Oh, yeah. I almost forgot about them!' And it only crashes as often as other Microsoft stuff.





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Business Owner Investment

Friday, February 02, 2007

Checking On Nathan's Famous A Bit

I wrote a bit about NathansFamous.com at Helium. Lots of people have loved their food for a long time. It's not a deep examination, just a cursory glance.


http://www.helium.com/tm/128085

Thanks to Paul in Carlsbad, California for mentioning that you cannot view the portfolios I created on Google. I'm looking into a solution.



Click on the title of today's post to visit a financial website.
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Business Owner Investment

I'm Puzzled By IUSA Investors

Click on the title of today's post for the InfoUSA report titled:

infoUSA Reports Record Fourth Quarterand FY2006 Results

I'll be conservative and say that this report looks very good to me. I have not been over it with a fine tooth comb, but what I have read tells me a great story. Maybe things will change after the call. This is from the report:

The Company will host its fourth quarter conference call on February 2, 2007 at 4:00 pm Eastern time. To access the conference call, please dial 800-901-5231 (international 617-786-2961), passcode 12202388, approximately 10 minutes prior to the start of the call. A replay of the call will be available from 7:00 pm Eastern time, February 2, 2007 through midnight Eastern Time, February 9, 2007. The replay number is 888-286-8010 (international 617-801-6888), passcode 19850423. A live webcast of the conference call will be available at the Company’s Investor Relations web site, http://ir.infousa.com.




As of this minute, IUSA is down 14%. I'm still puzzled.

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Business Owner Investment

Thursday, February 01, 2007

Will The Super Bowl Help InfoUSA?

I know that some people make up scenarios to illustrate a point, but this actually happened to me a few minutes ago. I got the mail and noticed that an envelope addressed to me and Cannon Business Institute said "See our Super Bowl Commercial February 4, 2007 YES! It's true...we will be on the Super Bowl. Special Offer Inside. SNEAK PREVIEW - Salesgenie.com/tv".

I thought I recognized Salesgenie.com and when I looked it up I found that I was right. Salesgenie.com is part of InfoUSA (IUSA) and we own the stock and it's currently up around 40% for us. Click on the title of today's post to visit InfoUSA.com or click below for the site on the envelope in my mailbox.

http://www.Salesgenie.com/tv

There's a brief preview of the commercial that they are broadcasting during the Super Bowl. I think this will help the stock a lot. However, I just saw a report today on how overpriced Super Bowl commercial time is given the alternatives like the internet. With InfoUSA using snail mail, the internet and television combined, maybe this will be huge for them. I wouldn't mind if the stock went up another 40%.



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Business Owner Investment

We Sold CECO And Bought AVR

I decided to take some profits yesterday by selling Career Education Corporation (CECO) for a 50.8% return and this morning we bought Aventine Renewable Energy Holdings (AVR) with a majority of the proceeds. We bought on August 29th, 2006 and sold on January 31st, 2007.

August has 31 days, September 30, October 31, November 30, December 31, so 31 + 30 + 31 + 30 + 31 = 153 plus 2 days from the 29th of January to the 31st is 155 days. 365 days divided by 155 days equals 2.3548. I included the extra digits for the real sticklers. 2.3548 times 50.8 equals an annual rate of return of 119.6238%. Really, really cool return.

By the way, it's possible that I'm making some kind of obvious mistake and people who calculate this sort of thing all the time could catch it. I'm open to someone correcting me here. I enjoy math and created this scheme of calculation on my own.

Also, I don't have anything against Career Education Corporation. I have seen a few of our stocks up by 30 or 40% or more and then fall back dramatically. I just wanted to take some profits and reinvest some of the profits in something else. If we were starting today, we might choose CECO. Amazingly, it still fits the criteria after its recent runup.

Click on the title of today's post to view the Career Education graph at Google Finance. Click below to view the Aventine Renewable Energy Holdings graph.

http://finance.google.com/finance?q=avr


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Business Owner Investment