Dronamraju Ravi Prakash

It pains me to see some highly paid, promoted, column writing analyst, cannot even get some basic comparisions of stock right. In the world of money, there are a lot of folks like this. That is the reason why Motley Fool and TheStreet.com sites stand out. I may disagree with their judgement, outlook on the market/stock, but their analysis is always based on solid numbers and proper evaluation.

I came across this article by bambi francisco titled 'getting google religion'. Her first point is about how there are still a few non-believers among analysts. Ofcourse, she sees these non-believers as "buyers to be had". I don't agree with this sentiment that the "bears" push the stock up. I think it is more likely that the bears help creating a floor. In anycase, i'll let this point go.

Talking to chuck, I am convinced about the opportunity AMD has in the market. The stock looks like it has appreciated significantly in the last 4 months, as the entire world woke up to the market opportunities. AMD has been up close to 100% in the last 3 months.

Is there any more upside to this ? How do we play this stock?

I see that market position is going to take a while to change. Intel is not going to get their 64bit act together and they are not going to get their multi-core strategy in place. AMD is positioned well here over the next year or 2, as the adoption of AMD for small servers increases.
There is easily an upside of 50% in the stock, over the next year.

I looked up AMD LEAPS and they look attractive. I got into Jan 06 22.5 calls @ $3.70. The upside should result in ~100-200% returns on investment. However, i am risking the whole investment and downside is bigger as well..

Let's see. This one seems easy to me - right now.

NTAP came out with earnings report yesterday. Overall the earnings were strong, but not blow out numbers. The earnings release yesterday had very positive outlook for growth (7-9% sequential) for next quarter. Compare that to last quarter where sequential growth was 5%. They are talking about 50-100% acceleration. Is the enterprise market back?
Glad i held on NTAP and didn't get rid of it like DELL. By the way, HPQ also had solid numbers yesterday and that adds to NTAP outlook statement as well, in pushing the stock up by nearly 20%.

Within 6 months of IPO, several lock-ups will be lifted on GOOG insiders, so they can sell shares freely. Yesterday was one such date where 39.7M shares became "unlocked"
GOOG shares are trading down ~12$ today. I took a look at the volume of shares traded. The volume is not unusual for google stock - ~13M shares traded by 1pm PST.
I wonder how much of the downward movement is selling pressure from insiders selling "all" their 39.7M shares and how much of it is profit taking and other market pressures. The news articles are quick to put up a headline that lock up expiration (which means insiders selling their stock) is the primary reason for the stock to be down. Well, why isn't the volume higher than normal?

In any case, my personal belief is that the float is going to change on paper. However, given the market cap of the company and the interest in this stock by several funds, demand is going to far outpace the supply coming on to the market.
As i said in another post, it is extremely hard to find companies growing at a reasonable clip in this market. Search space is unique to be have secular growth to support two strong high growth companies.

Here's another stock like DELL that i bought early on, hoping that the turn around in job market will pay off. It's been 8-9 months since i bought MNST and i am still break even.

So, I sold my position in MNST today. Given what happened with DELL, folks might be wise to be buy some MNST

Leave it to me for timing this impeccably. After holding DELL for one full year, 2 weeks back i decided that dell was going no where. I sold the stock for a modest profit/loss, probably break even.
Dell came out with a decent earnings report, but a strong outlook for 3q (dell's 3q - i never got why companies don't align their quarters to calendar quarters... but that's another rant). This pulled up dell stock to $39.94. I sold my dell stock for $35.01 :(

Not just dell is up.. looks like Dell is pulling up AMD strongly as well. chuckakung told me a lot about AMD and he bought it at a good price. Good pick Chuck!

The presidential election was definitely decisive. The markets reacted favorably, but i wouldn't call it a rally. It had me wondering what is the reason for market being relatively flat. Don't get me wrong, overall the market is very strong, BUT, there was a small rally.

I was thinking if we should blame the upcoming fed meeting. But i think a 0.25% rate increase is baked into the market for a while and that shouldn't be what's holding the broader indices back.

Is it profit taking? Or do people still did not hear any compelling growth stories to invest in?

Is it strength or resistance? The last time nasdaq was above 2000 was in july and i made a call that the market was heading up. It fell 20% from that peak, before coming back to 2000.

The next two months are in balance, and the critical factor that tilts the balance either way is the presidential election.

Go Vote

AMZN -15%
CSCO -12%
GOOG +79%
JNPR +2%
MNST -3.4%
NTAP +30%
OSTK +95%
PRZ +16%
RHAT -30%
SEAC +14%

------------------------------------
Overall +33% Year to date on these positions.

I have held couple of other positions through the year.
DELL 0%
MAMA 10%
AAPL leaps 500%
NFLX 120%

The overall gain of 33% donot include above gains.

so i talked about PRZ and ISSX last week. PRZ was at 2.14 at that time, and ISSX was ~20$. Both of them are doing well (thanks to a nasdaq rally). PRZ is up about 16% and ISSX is up almost 10%.
The regretful thing is that i didn't buy ISSX. I bought few shares of PRZ @ 2.14. May be there's still some time to buy ISSX