The Proficient Investor

By now you must know who investing guru Jim Cramer is.  You have probably also heard his now famous (or is it infamous?) BOOYAH! on television.  What you probably haven’t seen is the line of T-Shirts I have designed that were inspired by Mr. Cramer.

You can buy shirts and other gifts featuring my bull artwork like the one you see in this post.  These shirts make great gifts and always inspire me to remember there is always a bull market somewhere to be found.

Let me know what you think of the designs and feel free to buy as many as you want!

Looks like we had a nice end of week rally.  EMC spiked 2.72 percent despite the announcement of the CEO planning the sale of 440,000 shares of company stock through the third and fourth quarters.

Stocks across the board seemed to rally after a rough week of ups and downs.

The Dow closed up 142.99 points, the NASDAQ was up 34.99 by the close.

In my portfolio, nearly all stocks were in positive territory ending a brutal decline over the summer so far.

Arch Coal (ACI) closed up 1.74% at $30.46.  Quiksilver (ZQK) closed up .38% or at $13.24 a share. Canadian mining company Crystallex (KRY) closed at $2.99 up .67%. Goldman Sachs which has been hammered of late ended the day up 1.26% at $179.73. Ameritrade (AMTD) which has been in merger talks with E*Trade rose 3.19% to close at $17.80 on the day.

Overall it looked like a good recovery for a major correction recently.  Talk on the street has been that this 10% correction we have seen may likely be over.  The bears of course feel this is just a stopping point for investors to catch their breath.

The rally may have been in no small part due to the data from the Commerce Department stating new home sales were up an unexpected 2.8%.  As we are all aware, the recent credit crunch and subsequent meltdown in the sub-prime sector sent the market reeling and closed numerous hedge-funds and institutional players leaving the individual investor hanging out to dry.

What’s an investor to do in these volitile times?  Buy and Homework, Cramer says and put your money into solid performers like Apple (AAPL).

I decided I didn’t like the plain-jane look of the previous theme I was using and reverted to an old one that not only seemed to convert adsense well, but also just looks nice.  Green is the color of money anyway and that’s what this blog is all about.

Let me know what you think of the new theme.  Feel free to comment.

One thing you probably notice right away is the sheer lack of overwhelming ads.  In order to make the site more pleasing, I am going with only a few ads.  If you would like to secure ad space, click on the Advertise link above where you can find all the details about advertising on this site.

Jim Cramer just can’t seem to win. Bears hate him because when he’s right it usually means it cost them thousands. Analysts hate him because they think he’s reckless and the Fed hates him because he was doggone right about the discount rate needing adjustment. What happened 3 days later? The Fed came in and dropped rates by 50 basis points from 5.75 to 5.25 thus stemming an open wound on Wall Street that has had sub-prime lenders running for the hills.

Then comes this article from Barron’s slamming Cramer’s Mad Money show which airs on CNBC nightly.

The article effectively says that over the last 2 years, Jim Cramer’s picks have failed to outperform the market compared to the S&P 500 and DOW at only 12% gain while the S&P 500 and DOW gained 16% and 22% respectively.

My problem with the article is the kind of research that was done for it and the wholly negative slant it takes against Jim Cramer’s Mad Money show. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the past few weeks, online brokerages E*Trade and Ameritrade have been discussing a possible merger sending share of E*Trade up nearly 7% on Tuesday.

The merger is valued at $20 billion and would create a combined 11 million accounts. TD Bank which is the banking arm of TD Ameritrade opposes the merger citing uncertainty in what control it will have post-merger.  The big concern here is E*Trade’s mortgage portfolio which may be negatively impacted due to the sub-prime problems that have surfaced for other financial institutions lately.

I think this merger is an excellent idea and would create a much stronger platform for both companies to compete in the online brokerage and banking sectors.  The merger could mean great news for consumers as well which might lead to cheaper trades which ultimately leads to more trading by individuals because they wouldn’t be paying as much in commissions.

Both E*Trade and Ameritrade are down 30% and 20% respectively over the past month.  Shares of Ameritrade gained 1.6% in Tuesday trading.

Amedia Networks (OTCBB:AANI) announced Q2 2007 results today. Amedia makes home gateway equipment designed to handle voice, video and data simultaneously.

President, CEO and Director Frank Galuppo had this to say, “Our first quarter resulted in our first significant revenue achievement of $234,400. And now, during our second quarter, as part of our redefined corporate strategy, we received a $200,000 advance on a production fee payable on gateway units produced under the new license agreement with Motorola.”

Amedia continues to work with Motorolla producing the equipment but has been more focused on their software which is crucial to achieving the speeds the gateway hardware can achieve.

AANI closed at $.28 down $.08

Global 1 Investment Holding Corp released their quarterly report and announced the creation of a blog using Google’s Blogger.com website.  The blog is now the main outlet for information regarding the company.

Global 1 Investment Holding Corp trades on the OTCBB market but has plans to move the NASDAQ after securing funding and initiating their overseas strategies.

The latest filing of form 8-K/A states a change in accounting firms from KBL, LLP to Norman H. Ross, PC.

Read the full filing

Global 1 Investment Holding Blog

Blockbuster Inc. (BBI) announced today it was buying the online movie download service Movielink.  Movielink was created by 5 studios in 2002 but has struggled to gain popularity primarily because the software is only available on systems running Microsoft Windows.

Blockbuster feels this is a move in the right direction to compete with Netflix (NFLX) and it’s online service called Watch Now.

Watch Now allows Netflix users to watch movies directly through an internet browser and includes an hour for each dollar you pay for the service.  For example if you are on the $17.99 plan you are allowed 17 hours of viewing time using Watch Now.

While I have used Movielink in the past, I think Netflix’s service has better quality and a much broader library as well as being able to watch the movies much quicker.  I think the next move for Netflix is to buy GameFly.  If Netflix owned that service they would be able to offer much more than just DVD rentals and be able to diversify their offerings which will make them much more competitive with Blockbuster.

Shares of Ford Motor Co. fell $.34 cents today after the company announced a recall of up to 3.6 million vehicles. The recall was issued over a switch that deactivates cruise control which can overheat, smoke or even burn.

Bad news for a stock that has been struggling for over a year. They have been going in the right direction for some time now and investors were beginning to get on board once again, however with this turn of events it’s going to set the company back quite a bit.

From the Reuters article: “The Ford vehicles being recalled are F-Series and Ranger pickup trucks, Explorer, Bronco and Mountaineer SUVs, Econoline vans and some Crown Victoria, Town Car, Grand Marquis, Capri, Mark VII and Taurus Sho cars with model years ranging from 1992 to 2004, depending upon the particular vehicle. ”

These are older models and the new models from 2005-2008 are likely unaffected.

Read More Here