Maybe we can get a little stock picking forum going here. At first I thought it wasn't appropriate for this site, then I thought whats more jewish then making money! Anyway I like to invest in small oil exploration companies. Right now I am a little slim on picks, as most of mine have recently reached the targets. I have two that have allready seen gains but I think still have room for more

FPPC: MAY 2005 $1.50
PLCE: MAR 2006 $50.00

If there are traders or dabblers on this site I will give an explination as to why I believe these two stocks have room to grow.

Won't enforce any stereotypes, will it?

Well deserved stereotype.

I need that puking smiley - Come oooooooon. There are many jews out there who are absolutely hopeless and not business minded at all, and only survive by the Grace of G-d.

Go long Google puts.

Take a look at the Forbes 400 richest people in the USA, Jews make up 15% of the list (If you count the families as one person Example: Waltons, mars)

PLCE looks pretty good. The thing that catches my attention however is that during their second quarter they have a big problem making money, I dont know if its post holiday syndrome or what. Still this is not a big problem being that in the second quarter they still had positive cash flow from operating activities. And in previous years second quarters it was a narrow loss. I think a small part of their success is due to the fact that operate most of their stores in the city area wheras Wal-mart is located a little further out not in the city. They have a pretty strong ballance sheet although they have spent about half their cash stockpile on something which i dont know, but probably on expansion of some sort. Another positive for this company is that they have not increased the shares outstanding. This means two things, 1. It doesnt dilute the earnings per share. 2. It shows that they have not had the need to raise more money rather any expansion they have had was the result of money made from operations.
One thing however is a problem i think it was three years ago earnings declined sharply before recovering the next few years. This could be the reult of a one time non-cash charge i dont know because i havent the time to go that deep into the company. But before anybody invests in this company they should find out the reason for that drop off in earnings. And the charts will support this. If you can follow up on this Real Adiel i would like to hear what you have to say.

Waltons cant be counted as one, because they each received their own portion of sams fortune.

That's my point it's one fortune inherited by four children and his wife

I see you are only looking at the balance sheet. The big drop off in earnings was because the managment lost focus on inventory controls and a line of clothing (Graffiti) that consumers didn't go for. They have since tightened their inventory controls and cleaned up their act in terms of managment.

The big news is:

1) Massive sales growth, an important indicator that they are healthy is same store sales growth in addition to their store expansion. 3rd quarter earnings were up 53% which means they are not cutting their margins to increase sales.

3) Babies R US & Gymboree have had sales go down or anemic sales growth over the last year or so. The market share seems to be going to PLCE.

2) They currently have 700+ stores and Disney just sold them all their stores (300+) This is a HUGE oppurtunity if they can pull it off. Expansions this size can sink businesses as well, but it seems they have a good managment team running the place. This also helps PLCE by getting a long term Disney licensing deal at favorable terms. Disney stores have the potential for higher margains as well. They have 45 Mil. on hand and plan on borowing 50 Million now and another 50 Million in a few years to redo the Disney stores.

The stock has a huge upside, if they can make Disney work the P/E of 25 looks like a mega bargain. Then again the downside is, if they botch Disney it will erases any profits from the core stores. The Risk/Reward ratio looks good to me.

I agree with your synopsis. I just hope, for your sake, that they dont get squeezed by walmart and the like. Just because they had 53% growth in earnings doesnt mean that they arent compromising their profit margin? (notice it is in question format)and also 4 years ago they enjoying margins of 7-8 percent why the drop off? (although i have noticed that they are improving in that regard)

I am not worried about Walmart, PLCE focuses on style something WalMart can never do. Think of PLCE as a cheaper GAP for kids. Usually when companies want to fuel growth, they slash margins. This almost always results in the same or weaker earnings. There were managment issues a couple of years ago, that was put behind them and they are making progress.

I forgot to mention EGSR they are having a good day today. they could hit a dollar in the next six months.

Have you noticed what my other pick is at today FPPC

http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=FPPC.OB&d=t

What sectors are you focused on? I have 60% of my portfolio in Energy mainly the big Oil stocks. CVX BP ect.

Do you guys do any strategy trading (long/short hedging, options [straddles,cal. spreads, etc.], converts arbitrage, maybe even futures)?

Or do you just go long on stocks based on fundamentals?

Stocks is more of a hobby for me so many of my stocks are long term. I also do technical trading. (I have been buying RCO at .02 and selling at .03 for weeks, I just can't get enough shares to make decent money) I buy high beta stocks and double down when I am under 10% eventually they come back up for me to make my 10% profit (High beta stocks I have been trading for years now TMTA, COVD, HYPD, DROOY, HEC) I also buy cycle stocks that go up and down though over a longer time period (AMD when they come out with a new processor, RMBS when they win a lawsuit). I short occasionally, but only when I don't believe in a company. I don't short on technical data. If I really believe in a company I will buy options, though not often (I currently have PLCE)

[quote=the Real Adiel,Nov 26 2004, 03:14 PM][quote=int,Nov 26 2004, 01:56 PM]Do you guys do any strategy trading (long/short hedging, options [straddles,cal. spreads, etc.], converts arbitrage, maybe even futures)?

Or do you just go long on stocks based on fundamentals?

[/quote]

Stocks is also more of a hobby for me. I am not old enough to start worrying about making a living so i do it because i like doing it. All of my trades are long on stocks, i dont do options or futures. Most of my stocks are long term. I trade in small to mid-cap stocks with the occasional Large cap in there. I am well diversified in technology retail pharma and biotechnology.

I dont do any day trading, its against my policy
I look for stocks that that have good growth potential and will hold them untill I see growth is slowing.
I love going against the analysts (i actually recommended apple when everyone was saying buy microsoft (just to toot my own horn a little bit))
Real look into FLSH its an Israeli company and i like its prospects, I want to hear what you think. This company took a little hit after they came out with their last quarterly report. I couldnt have disagreed more with the the way people treated this stock, but still looking for a second opinion.

I took a quick look, decent balance sheet. Lot's of cash no debt. The P/E is avg. for a technology company. I have never traded or researched this stock before so it's going to take me a week to fully research the company.

I do what I think will work. There are some beliefs I have about what will do well when. I go by those. For example, don't invest in KB toys or Toys R Us. The toy industry is going down, long term. Kids are so into electronic toys now, many people shop at radio shack or other electronic stores to find 'toys' for their kids instead of the traditional toy store.

[/quote]
I do what I think will work. There are some beliefs I have about what will do well when. I go by those. For example, don't invest in KB toys or Toys R Us. The toy industry is going down, long term. Kids are so into electronic toys now, many people shop at radio shack or other electronic stores to find 'toys' for their kids instead of the traditional toy store.

[/quote]
Peter Lynch style. dont forget however that he always looked at the fundamentals, not only what he thought "would work".

Of course. The fundamentals go without saying. I look at a lot of charts, do a lot of online research, and listen to shows like 'Real Money' on the radio.

I got 2 more socks that I am realy high on.
1. MVL- Marvel enterprises. I am sure you are all familiar with this one.
2. CDIC- Cardio Dynamics International. Good growth potential, large potential market dominated by this company so far. The only thing that gets me a little worried about this one is that is largely a one trick pony. But the good outshines the bad if you ask me.

What do you think about Miramax and the movie industry in general? I think it's on it's way up.

I dont know about miramax and I dont realy follow the movie industry, aside from Marvel. This company has become a licensing powerhouse and I still cant get over the fact that there is/was so much negative bias against this company. With A P/E of just 18 there is much more room to grow. Share buyback program, elimination of debt, blockbuster movies/dvd's on the horizon how can you not invest in this company. They have a history of being very conservative on their earnings estimates enabling them to far surpass expectations quarter after quarter. And this quarter will be no different, load up while you can.

The toy stores could easily adjust and carry all the electronic toys as well. I don't see that as a reason to ditch them. The real concern is Wal-Mart which is currently the number one toy retailer in America. I recently sold TOY, I have had it for a couple of years, hoping for a turnaround that never happened. The stock is up recently more because of the real estate play. I took advantage and sold out. Purchased at $13.00 2 years ago sold at $17.50 a few weeks ago. I got lucky, I really should have lost on this one it was a bad pick. They have a chance at a turnaround if they ditch toys and focus on Babies-R-us

MVL: I like it, Strong Buy.

I had some time to check into this stock, looks like a great pick. Two concerns:

1) Gross Margins shrunk big time. (seems like inventory mis-management)
2) Flash memory is very volatile.

I may pick up some shares

You can't rate the movie industry like other sectors. If people buy less computers, Intel & Cisco are down no matter how good the product is. If theater attendance is down 10% Pixar still is making buckets of money.

au contraire (please, somebody get this...)

I dont beleive it is that volatile anymore. There was a problem with inventory a while ago when there was an oversupply relative to the demand and that hurt margins. This past quarter they reported a very similar occurance where sales for the disk on key were flat compared to previous quarter leading some people to beleive that there was going to be another inventory problem. This is not a problem because I beleive that this is just a breather before sales pick up again and the company has said so that they expect strong 4th quarter sales of Disk on Key. Even if sales for the 4th quarter are flat again for Disk on Key, sales for Disk on Chip will more then make up for it just like what happened in the 3rd quarter. Disk on chip is the future of this company.

You mean it's more shock resistant then Hard Drive based memory. Am I reading too much into this joke.

Sound good, do you know how the profit margin compares to it's competitors? Who are it's competitors? I was under the impression that Sandisk dominates the market, with Intel a distant second. Seems like FLSH is bigger then Intel in Flash based memory.

Did you take a look at FPPC, I called it here on H.com a mere 4 days ago at $1.22 very proud of myself. http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=FPPC.OB&t=5d

Simply, flash memory is specifically designed to be "nonvolatile" -- i.e. it retains data even after power is no longer supplied -- as opposed to regular RAM, which is "volatile" in that it does not retain data once the computer is shut down.

Hard Disks retain data as well. It's not just Flash Memory.

I dont know all the companies that make flash memory, but i can tell you there are quite a few of them. The profit margin for this company is 6% and it says that for the industry it is only 2%. However I take that with a grain of salt because gross margin for the industry is nearly double that of Flsh and two because sndk and intc have a much higher profit margin than that of flsh. (Although you could refute both of these, the reason why flsh has a lower gross but a higher net could be because they do a good job when it comes to SGA expenses as well as no debt to pay off. The reason why those two companies have a higher net is because they have other businesses which are very profitable. So draw your own conclusions)The reason why I never brought up FPPC is because it is a penny stock and i dont realy spend time looking into penny stocks.

Another Israeli company: Given Imaging (givn)
This company I started following about a year ago and then I gradually lost interest for one reason or the other. However it is now back on my watch list as the FDA approved their leading product. This product is called camera in a pill. There is a procedure known endoscopy where they stick a tube down your throat with a camera at the end and take pictures of your esophagus. Now with this device there is no need for such an operation. All that has to be done is the patient swallows the pill and the camera takes all the pictures constantly shooting. The pictures are then transmitted to a pouch that the patient wears during the procedure. This whole process takes about 20 minutes. Very promissing product.
The stock trades at 34 dollars a share and they just started making money in the first quarter. The valuation is very high, but the ballance sheet is improving and there is no competition for the next 2 years!

In order for me to justify the incredible P/E I would have to be secure that they will hit 400 Mil in revenues in the next year or two. The risk on this stock is too high for me to bite. If I was a doctor I would be able to make a more educated decision.

consider it done!

I highly doubt it. 400 Million annual is 8 fold what they are doing now.

The only redeeming number I could find is GILD trading at 9 times projected 2005 sales. That's low for a small cap in this sector.

what i meant when i said consider it doen is that i am going to ask a close relative of mine who also happens to be a Professor of internal medicine if someone would know it would be him. As for Gild i researched it a while back and i thought it was ok. I dont think it means that much for gild.Gild is not a small cap, they have a market cap. of over 15 billion. Earnings growth is stalling and to have forward P/E of 30 isnt very cheap.

Gild was a typo, I meant GIVN

I am starting a stock of the month thread, i encourage anyone who follows the market to join with their picks.

Opinion needed - LTD had a share buyback a couple of days ago, at $29. That price was determined through a dutch auction. But the market price now is only $24.6

Some people expressed an opinion that people would not bid that high (out of fear of being underbid) unless they don't want to sell the stock at below $29 [i.e. they know something...]. Which makes this an indication to buy.

Agree/disagree?

Disagree, they had a special dividend of $1.23 which would acount for some of the drop. People were holding on to shares because they didn't want to lose the special dividend. It's possible the company overpaid by a dollar or more (The 52 week high was $27.89) and they just came out with dissapointing news. The stock will be dropping another 5% today. They generate lots of cash, and have a nice 2% annual dividend, I would pick up some shares at $23.00.

only one pick per person?

Per Month, keeps it simple.

Have you ever been to Marketocracy.com

Pretty cool, sure beats virtualstockexchange.com

I use it to test out different approaches. It has helped me alot, and they pay if you make the M100. Cost nothing to join.

It is a little unlikely that i should reach that plateau. But tell me is there a time limit that you have to reach it or not?

Check out ISRL, very interesting.

You get 10 funds to play with, there is no time limit. The way it works is they measure each of your funds by time frames

3 months
6 months
1 year
2 year
3 year

If any of your funds are in the top hundred in any of the above time frames they pay you roughly $100. There are over a hundred thousand funds so it's not easy to make the M100, however the site is valuable as a testing ground for any theories you want to test out.

I have a dividend only fund because I'm curious if these stocks beat out the rest of the markets through a bull and bear cycle

I have another fund with just alternative energy stocks for when oil goes over $70 a barrel.