Financial Friday #7

This was a week ended on a huge down note for financials. A lot of the stocks I follow are financials which means absolutely nothing. The key is that you can make money in and up or down market. So long as the market is moving you can make money. Last week we saw a lot of consolidating in for Financials. With the major trend in the market being down I decided to take a short position.

I shorted 81 shared of Hartford Insurance Group (HIG) at $11/share Tuesday. I was able to cover at 1pm today at $5.96 a share for a profit of about $5/share. As John “Hannibal” Smith is fond of saying “I love it when a plan comes together”.

Now is a great time to buy there are some great deals out there and I am looking forward to riding the bounce next week. I am looking for BAC, HIG, ABK and MBI to rebound next week.



Current balance: $1272

Disclaimer: I am a dog. I am not responsible for any investment decisions you make. Come on if you are reading a dog’s ODD to get ideas for you portfolio you have issues. I do not recommend using any of the information to make any investment decisions. Basically I am not responsible for your money. Do what you want but I have no responsibility here. Come on I am a dog. I don’t think you can even sue a dog. The information provided on this site is not financial advice and I am not a financial professional. This is a journal that details my investments, strategy, and analysis for personal use. Feel free to read at your own risk

Financial Friday #6

Cognizant Technology solutions (CTSH) posted 4th quarter results on Friday. Generally earnings announcements are a crap shoot. However with the market being as down as it has been people are looking for a ray of sunshine. Cognizant is an outsourcer’s whose business model is largely a labor arbitrage play. As companies are down sizing and looking to cut costs IT outsourcing is an easier sell. CTSH also has many clients in the financial industry who have merged with other CTSH clients. This is actually a boom to CSTH since they need to now consolidate two companies systems. So where there were say 5 consultants are each client in order to consolidate they can add another 5 for the consolidation project and thus bill 15 consultants instead of 10.



The fact that one of their biggest competitiors Satyam Computer Services just admitted faking their financials for the last few quarters is also a plud for CSTH. Based on all this info I bought CTSH 42 shares@$19.56 on 2/11 and was able to sell at $21.30 right after the market had processed the earnings call on 2/13 making $73. Not really a huge gain this week but a pretty safe play all things considered.

Current balance: $894

Disclaimer: I am a dog. I am not responsible for any investment decisions you make. Come on if you are reading a dog’s ODD to get ideas for you portfolio you have issues. I do not recommend using any of the information to make any investment decisions. Basically I am not responsible for your money. Do what you want but I have no responsibility here. Come on I am a dog. I don’t think you can even sue a dog. The information provided on this site is not financial advice and I am not a financial professional. This is a journal that details my investments, strategy, and analysis for personal use. Feel free to read at your own risk

SnowFort 2.0 Protecting freedom

Lately I have been spending a lot of time on my Financial Friday posts. I spend tons of time watching the market and researching trying to figure out what to buy and when. Fortunately to this point I have been very successful. However Financial Fridays is only a part of my ODD. I instituted them to try and make my self update more and to track my performance as I enter the world of day trading.

Luckily for me I entered the market at a time of turmoil. This works well for me since there is so much flux that what may seem like a mistake on minute often turns into a move that looks like genius a day or two later.

Anyway today I am not going to talk about money. Nope This weekend my A and I built a snow fort. It actually started off as a snow tower. We were going to see how big of a snow tower we could actually make before it collapsed on it self. Conditions were really good and we got off to a great start. After about an hour of building we had were up to about 3 feet when our neighbors L and C came over.

L has been working with my A and I all winter building snow forts and is quite dedicated. In fact L has previously worked on snow fort 1.0 and 1.5. He is a great worker and has some great ideas. On Sunday his idea was to climb to the top of the tower and jump off. Apparently this is a good way to prove your tower is strong enough to hold a 60lb child. My A eventually decided that we should just turn the tower into one a corner of a fort. I am very proud of him. He made and adult decision and decided as fun as it would be to watch L jump off a 15ft snow tower that was probably not the best idea. It might also have something to do with the fact that L’s dad Mr. X is a lawyer and L and C informed us they had to stay in the front yard where their dad could see them.

I don’t what Mr. X thinks we have in our back yard but there is nothing scary back there. Really there is a bird feeder, some lawn furniture and that is about it. We keep this kid chipper in the basement behind the oil tank.

As we were working on the fort C decided to build a path from the driveway to the fort. This was a great idea since we needed a way to provision the fort. What good is a giant snow fort with out provisions? You don’t want to be stuck in your fort during a snow siege and have no provisions. If History can teach us anythingit is to properly provision you forts.

As the fort continued to grow more and more children from the neighborhood came over to help build the snow fort. We ended up with everyone on the street except Joey and his people being involved in the building. This makes things a little more complex since the rules of snow forts clearly state you can not attack anyone who was involved in the snow fort building. It is rough when you have a giant snow fort to project power into the neighborhood but no one to attack from the snowfort.

Fortunately my neighborhood has a build in villain in Mr. Mailbox. I still don’t get that guy. What is he getting in the mail that he needs this ridiculous mailbox for and why is he afraid of dogs. He is even afraid of Bailey the Bichon Frise. Being afraid of Bailey is like being afraid of a feather pillow. I don’ think there is anything less threatening than Bailey she looks like a fluffy cloud with a face.

As soon as the snow melts I am going to start walking on the grass in front of Mr. Mailboxe’s house. My A keeps saying it is not worth the effort and we should just walk in the street but we pay our taxes. We pay a lot of taxes and really use few town services so I am gonna walk on that grass. In fact from now on I am going to make it a point to pee on the grass in from of Mr. Mailboxes house. Why because I can. When your freedom is threatened you need to stand up and by god I am going to standup. In fact I am going to go one step further and raise my leg for freedom.

Financial Friday #5

This was another rough week for the financial sector. As you know I have been following BAC for a while. Well it took a dive this week hitting about $4 per share. I was shocked and amazed that it would take this kind of a fall although it is now tracking the financial sector as a whole.

I ended up putting up putting in a limit order to buy at $4 figuring if it triggers great if not no big deal, well it triggered and I ended up buying BAC at $3.99. I bought 134 shares and on Friday it was still going up but I followed my rule and sold just before market close Friday afternoon. I got out at $6.13/share. This was a good week. My A is actually still holding some BAC in his portfolio so hopefully it will continue to go up. I have advised him to sell it since I have a feeling it will start to drop sometime midweek.





Current balance: $821


Disclaimer: I am a dog. I am not responsible for any investment decisions you make. Come on if you are reading a dog’s ODD to get ideas for you portfolio you have issues. I do not recommend using any of the information to make any investment decisions. Basically I am not responsible for your money. Do what you want but I have no responsibility here. Come on I am a dog. I don’t think you can even sue a dog. The information provided on this site is not financial advice and I am not a financial professional. This is a journal that details my investments, strategy, and analysis for personal use. Feel free to read at your own risk

BBC Boycott

Dear BBC,

Generally I prefer to write positive letters but today I must bring to light an incident that occurred on my most recent trip to your Barktington location. I have long been a fan of the BBC and generally eat there about once a week. Anyway on Jan 25th at about 12:30 I sat down at the bar for lunch.

A few min passed and the bartender came over and asked what I wanted to drink. I ordered an Ithaca Apricot Wheat beer and some fish and chips. I love your fish and chips it is too bad you have cut back and started to use a lower quality fish. As I was sitting there drinking my beer, feeling all British and waiting for my fish and chips I noticed the bat tender goofing off with one of his friends at the bar. The next thing I noticed they were playing with a lighter, to me this was no big deal I had my beer and was feeling very British waiting for my fish and chips. Unfortunately they managed to catch a napkin on fire and in the process of trying to put it out an ash feel on my leather attaché case creating a small burn hole.

I talked to the bar tended and he apologized but was unwilling to pay for my case. I paid $500 for this case when I bought it and it has served me well through the years. I don’t remember the bar tenders name but something needs to be done about this. I am sorry but this is unacceptable.

OK I lied I never actually been to you restaurant. In fact I am a dog and you won’t allow me in. I am not even going to discuss how unfair that is right now. My reason from writing is that my A, that is the guy that feeds, me used to go there and would rave about how cool this one Bar tended Zach was. I always got a nice bag of leftovers when my A came home. One time I even got to sit in the car while my A went into eat. The car is kid of fun I get to turn up the radio and jam to the tunes when I am left alone in there. Come to think of it I get left alone a lot.

Recently I learned that Zach was fired over and email from a customer. I realize sometimes you have to let people go but come on over an email. How can you fire someone over an email especially someone who has worked in multiple locations and has been on staff for 5 years with no complaints? I don’t get it.

This seems very unfair and because of this I am instituting a boycott of the BBC. Yup that is right I am boycotting all BBC locations. I know what you are thinking. “Why do I care if a dog boycotts us?” Well let me tell you I am a very accomplished dog. I am a certified canine good citizen, I run the #1 dog blog (I call it an ODD) on the internet and I received 714 votes in an election in Baxter Iowa and those are just my most recent accomplishments. I would be happy to forward you my press kit if you are interested

I am going to tell all my Blog readers to also Boycott your restaurant. Feel free to take me lightly but when your 1st quarter earnings are down you will know why. Trust me I have a far reaching media presence. I have even been hired by companies such as Cisco and Microsoft to help advertise for them so this is no joke.

Anyway I would be willing to lift the boycott on the condition that you write an apology letter to Zach. I doubt he would be willing to take his job back that guy is a man of principle.

I hate to say it but it seems the BBC is more about the money than anything else. Why else would you fire good employees, cut back on food quality and remove the awesome lobster bisque from your menu. Even without the boycott it is getting harder and harder to find reasons to come to the BBC.

As an FYI the British are not exactly know for their great food so you are kind of starting in a hole why have you decided to digger a deeper on with this Zach firing episode.

Obviously you can’t believe every email you get. I believe the proof is in the fact that you just read and email from a dog. I wish you luck in the future based on you recent decision making it is obvious you are going to need it.

Please tell me there is a plan to turn things around over there.

Stephen

Financial Friday # 4

Anyway this week I traded Hartford Financial Services Group (HIG). HIG had been pounded by the financial sector issues however we were seeing a line of resitance around $15.39. I was able to buy 30 shares at 15.45 and was able to get out when I saw the trend heading downwards on Wednesday afternoon. I ended up selling at $17.70 making $68 for the week or a gain of 15% which is pretty good for a stock I only held for about a day. This week was a quick turn usually I like to hold things a little longer but all the indicators were saying HIG was a good play so I rolled the dice.

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Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose being capitally challenged I need to be much more aggressive than I would like to be. Being aggressive is fine as long as you take calculated risks. I have started backing all my plays with stop orders to limit my potential losses. Currently I am setting stops 20% below my purchase price to preserve capital in the event one of my plays does not work out.

Current balance: $541



Disclaimer: I am a dog. I am not responsible for any investment decisions you make. Come on if you are reading a dog’s ODD to get ideas for you portfolio you have issues. I do not recommend using any of the information to make any investment decisions. Basically I am not responsible for your money. Do what you want but I have no responsibility here. Come on I am a dog. I don’t think you can even sue a dog. The information provided on this site is not financial advice and I am not a financial professional. This is a journal that details my investments, strategy, and analysis for personal use. Feel free to read at your own risk