Investment "Logic"

A difficult week has passed, as averages and my portfolio suffered.  Key factors were related to heavily mixed earnings results, the behavior of oil and 10-year US Treasuries, as well as the economist-types throwing fits regarding the Fed speaking about patience before raising rates as they were expected to do (wooooh, no, not that!). The Fed, was a non-news event, and typically is.  While there's a chance of a short-term move, I can't say I've seen a lot of long-term impact from them for awhile.  Watch them, understand impacts if messages change, and then react to that - not the news itself.  I also learned last year that you shouldn't predict rates, so I'm trying not to.  I'd rather react to rate changes than be worried about trying to beat them to it.  Oil has been an on-going event for some time now, so nothing is all too new there.  Earnings reports, though not directly impacting my portfolio, did impact it indirectly.  A lot of international compani

After a relatively calm week for my portfolio, things seem to have started to ramp up some going into this weekend.  On Friday, Honeywell posted solid fourth quarter results.  Additionally, tensions between Ukraine and Russian rebels has intensified - and continue to intensify through the weekend.  Yesterday, NPS Pharmaceuticals received approval for distribution of their drug Natpara with no surprises to what label restrictions there will be or other actions required. Looking ahead, it may be the busiest week of earnings season for the market as a whole, however, there's nothing in particular going on in my portfolio.  During times like this, it's best to sit back, watch what's going on, how the market reacts, and jump if you find opportunities to take advantage of - including protecting yourself from impending dangers, if they get worse.   Notes: Stock Ratings: 1 = buy at current stock prices, 2 = buy on a 5-10% dip in stock price, 3 = sell on a 5-10% increase in

Notes: Stock Ratings: 1 = buy at current stock prices, 2 = buy on a 5-10% dip in stock price, 3 = sell on a 5-10% increase in stock price, 4 = sell at current stock prices to raise cash.  Ratings are based upon 12-18 month outlook on stock direction and not necessarily related to moves I make due to financial positioning. On Friday, Honeywell announced their fourth quarter and fiscal 2014 annual earnings.  Earnings came in at $1.43 for the quarter, which beat estimates by a penny and revenues were higher than the $10.2B expected, coming in at $10.45B.  Margins grew by 9% and net profit rose 15% verses their results a year ago.  On the year, earnings came in at $5.56, beating consensus and their own high end of the range by a penny (and my estimates by 2 cents).  Revenues also beat the provided range coming in at $40.4B.  This gave EPS a 12% gain compared to 2013.  All exceptionally solid results, showing yet again how this management sets reasonable goals to the risks they see

Notes: Stock Ratings: 1 = buy at current stock prices, 2 = buy on a 5-10% dip in stock price, 3 = sell on a 5-10% increase in stock price, 4 = sell at current stock prices to raise cash.  Ratings are based upon 12-18 month outlook on stock direction and not necessarily related to moves I make due to financial positioning. As I stated when the sale of NPS Pharma was closed, I have been looking for a new speculative stock to get myself into.The stock that most interests me at this time is Isis Pharmaceuticals.  Isis is a small biotech company (market cap of ) whose focus is discover and develop antisense drugs with a primary focus on rare and severe conditions.  That's a bit of a mouthful so, to clarify, antisense therapies are those that take advantage of the human genome sequencing that has been done.  It takes certain genetic sequences that are known to cause conditions or be related to problematic cellular activities, and then uses that knowledge to create part of the nu

A lot has happened in the last week, both for my portfolio and the market overall.  The market suffered all week except Friday as oil price drops, Treasury rate drops, economic data, and suprise announcements in the currency space put the market in a state of unease.  There were also some big biotech deals, to which one of my holdings was a participant in.  Finally, earnings season has begun with almost all of the institutional banks announcing with most of them disappointing.  Yes, this includes Citigroup, which my calendar planning software failed to notify me on.  All of this news and activity is putting a lot of pressure on stocks.  People are panicking and running, or hedge funds are being forced to raise money.  Additionally, the biotech sector has been running huge on the merger and buyout deals as well as with all of the positive news that was coming out of the JP Morgan Healthcare conference that occurred this week.  With that news done, we may see things take a breathe

Notes: Stock Ratings: 1 = buy at current stock prices, 2 = buy on a 5-10% dip in stock price, 3 = sell on a 5-10% increase in stock price, 4 = sell at current stock prices to raise cash.  Ratings are based upon 12-18 month outlook on stock direction and not necessarily related to moves I make due to financial positioning. My apologies, but it seems the software I've been relying on to track stock events is failing me.  As such, I wasn't aware of Citigroup's fourth quarter conference call until Wednesday night and wasn't able to include the pre-analysis during my weekly summary as I normally would.  Regardless, Citi announced fourth quarter and fully year 2014 financial results today.  Fourth quarter earnings came in at $0.06.  This was far below expectations of $0.09. Revenues also missed expectations with results of $17.8B vs. the expected $18.5B.  While much of this downside is related to the $3.5B in write downs for legal expenses, which were announced in De

Notes: Stock Ratings: 1 = buy at current stock prices, 2 = buy on a 5-10% dip in stock price, 3 = sell on a 5-10% increase in stock price, 4 = sell at current stock prices to raise cash.  Ratings are based upon 12-18 month outlook on stock direction and not necessarily related to moves I make due to financial positioning. I have sold the remaining lot of shares I owned of Encana at $13 and took a significant loss.  This has been a tough stock the entire time I've owned it and I made a lot of novice moves in the process.  While the stock has some potential for short-term gains, I feel it's more appropriate to take the cash when the stock was up over 2% and prepare myself for next moves while the market is behaving erratically.  This also reduces my energy position, which for the time being, aligns with my overall expectations of the markets.  With oil still struggling to find a bottom, I anticipate it will be awhile before it will be beneficial to have a large position

Notes: Stock Ratings: 1 = buy at current stock prices, 2 = buy on a 5-10% dip in stock price, 3 = sell on a 5-10% increase in stock price, 4 = sell at current stock prices to raise cash.  Ratings are based upon 12-18 month outlook on stock direction and not necessarily related to moves I make due to financial positioning. It was announced today that NPS Pharmaceuticals has agreed to terms to allow Shire PLC to buy them out in an all cash deal.  Shire will pay $5.2B or $46 per share for the acquisition. As I stated in my summary, NPSP has put themself up for sale earlier this week and bidding was to close on Friday.  There have been rumors regarding the potential sale since mid-December and this price is about $1Billion more than what has been getting rumored.  We will need to see how the market reacts tomorrow to see if/how people are speculating the stock.  I get the feeling there won't be other companies that try to come in for a bidding war - even if Natpara gets approv

So the holidays are past us and it's time to get into the swing of my portfolio routine.  The year has started out a little on the volatile side of things.  The expected "Santa Claus Rally" was a complete flop this year as the last 5 days of 2014 and first 5 days of 2015 were met with more losses than gains in the S&P 500.  Oil continues its painful descent as it's reached new multi-year lows and related companies slowly begin to slash dividends and production forecasts.  Likewise, retail and restaurant companies have seen continued interest as we continue to get evidence that consumers continue their recent strength.  Finally, we received a jobs report today which stated that the country grew more jobs in December than people expected (250k vs. 240k), however, wages were down.  Apparently this was something people wanted to get concerned with, however, I'm not.  While it's not great for individuals that wages aren't growing, it's great for st

Notes: Stock Ratings: 1 = buy at current stock prices, 2 = buy on a 5-10% dip in stock price, 3 = sell on a 5-10% increase in stock price, 4 = sell at current stock prices to raise cash.  Ratings are based upon 12-18 month outlook on stock direction and not necessarily related to moves I make due to financial positioning. I have sold just over 40% of my holding in NPS Pharmaceuticals today at a price of $42.  The stock has sky-rocketed over 17% since its closing price on December 31 and 37.6% since December 17.  The move started on rumors regarding buyout interest increasing again and has subsequently been meet by NPSP working with Goldman Sachs to put itself up for sale and ask for initial bids - which will be completed tomorrow.  You take the dramatic move along with the sudden sale of the company and I feel it's important to take out my cost bases near its all-time highs.  The stock has surpassed $42 a couple times so far only to be quickly brought back down.  The $42 p

Notes: Stock Ratings: 1 = buy at current stock prices, 2 = buy on a 5-10% dip in stock price, 3 = sell on a 5-10% increase in stock price, 4 = sell at current stock prices to raise cash.  Ratings are based upon 12-18 month outlook on stock direction and not necessarily related to moves I make due to financial positioning. Begin Text Here I wanted to take some time to overview my portfolios performance for 2014, then have a brief conversation regarding the holdings I currently have and my future plans as I get a clean slate to start anew and attempt to outperform the performance of the S&P 500 index.  Before I begin, I want to establish some common thoughts throughout this post.  First all gain/loss percentages discussed are based upon either feedback from my portfolio tracking software or by pulling up tickers on the Google Finance web page and looking at 1 year charts as of Jan 1 2015.  Numbers I state have the chance of being off a few percentage points compared to real