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Well, It's been 3 days since I suggested you grab some stocks, let's see how they've done:

$BKS - Barnes and Noble (which I've been spelling Nobel for forever incorrectly) is up a whopping 12.72% in 3 days.  The stock is way undervalued and the company announced it's for sale because of that.  Good things could happen for BKS.  They need to do something to get iPad customers to buy their books or make a deal with Apple or something.  In any event, they have great real estate.

$HD - Home Depot is down 0.95%.  I can live with that for 3 days.

$K - Kellogs is up 1.41%.  Just to put it in perspective, in 3 days I made from Kellogs what 6 months gives you in CD's or a year gives you in your bank savings account.

$WWE - World Wrestling Entertainment is up 2.28%.  WWE is in a bit of a creative funk and needs to create new, breakout stars.  Jericho on ABC TV hosting a game show will help WWE and Stone Cold had a movie coming out this week, but long-term they need a new Rock or Stone Cold to really get the company pumpin again.  They did announce a $0.36 a share dividend, which is nice.  That's free money my friends.  Dividends rule.

Invest in peace...

You'd be up a lot.  +$1.52.  Not bad for one day.

$BKS      +0.85
$WWE    +0.20
$K           -0.05
$JNJ       +0.63
$HD        -0.11

Also, the stocks I already owned did amazingly well, up $7.72 on the day:

$AAPL      +4.60
$BRK.B    +1.80
$KO         +1.30
$SIRI        +0.02

Total of $9.24 in gains per share today.  That kicks major butt in my book.  The more shares you owned in the companies I had, the more profit you'd be sitting on this afternoon.

Invest in peace...

So, $BP.L, the oil company that destroyed the ocean, has seen their stock tank, down over $250 from it's year high.  Is it a good buy?  Probably.  Once they get the gulf cleaned up and pay everyone off, they'll continue to make more money than they can count.  The question is, do you want to support a company that has done shitty stuff?  I for one don't, but that's my person opinion.  I also don't buy Alcohol or Tobacco companies because I don't drink or smoke and think both are a huge waste of peoples time and money and health, but again, that's just me.  I also don't short stocks because I don't want to bet against people who are having a rough time. 

With all that said, is BP.L a good buy?  I would say it probably is and if you have enough money to buy a large quantity of shares, you could make a bundle, but at $405 a share, it has the same problem Google ($GOOG) has, which is you can't buy enough shares to make the large jumps it makes worth the risk.  If you bought 10 shares, that's $4050, even if it goes up $200, you made $2000.  Not a bad payout, but do you want to risk $4050 to possibly make $2000?  Not so sure.  For $4050 you could buy 120 shares of Disney and it would only have to go up to $50.41 to get the same profit, AND you'd have less risk, AND you'd be able to sell some shares to grab out profit and lower your taxes on the gains.  So, I wouldn't do it, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't.

Invest in peace...

Ok, it's Sunday night, so tonight I do my trading.  I'm standing pat on the stocks I currently own ($AAPL, $BRK.B, $KO and $SIRI) and I'm adding some positions:

Note, all of these stocks are currently below their 50 and 200 day moving averages and all of these stocks have a name monopoly.

$BKS - Barnes and Nobel - All over the place as far as stores go.  Selling books, even on the iPad and they just released a cheaper Kindle.
$WWE - World Wrestling Entertainment - Always a great company, no competition at all.  Money coming out their butts and they pay a dividend.  Works for me.
$K - Kellogs - They're grrrrrrrrrrrrreat!  Even when people have no money, they buy cereal.
$JNJ - Johnson and Johnson - People gotta buy the staples and they makes tons of them.
$HD - Home Depot - This is a short term risky one, however they dropped quite aways from their averages for no good reason and with winter coming, people will need to repair damage to their homes to stay warm.  I like Home Depot better than Lowes, so I went with them, but Lowes is also in the toilet at the moment.  Home Depot also has the higher high in the past year, so I went with them. 

Invest in peace...

So, yesterday I sold off on a lot of stocks.  I had $0.35 trailing stops on anything unimportant and they all sold off, putting me at about 20% cash right now.  Today the stocks I did keep are all up, (AAPL, BRK-B, KO, etc...)

So, as you all saw, last week the stock took a horrible dive.  Is it the sign of a crash coming?  Dunno.  Is it just a usual dip where things will bounce right back tomorrow?  Don't know that either.

What I do know is that it brought down a lot of good stocks into a better purchasing range.  In order to buy those good stocks at a discount, you need cash, so now might be a good time to set up some trailing stops on the stocks you don't care so much about and get some cash out to buy better stocks if the market continues to dip.

I set $0.35 trailing stops on quite a few stocks.  If they go up, great!  If not, I'll have extra cash to buy better stocks tomorrow or in the near future.

I think something that is really difficult for investors is the fact that you can dump a stock and just buy it right back.  Sometimes we hold on to things way too long *cough Microsoft ($MSFT) cough* when it's not doing much good for us.

Or, we hold something well after it's made a great run, hoping it will continue that way forever.

Realistically, what you want to do is take short run after short run and take your profit to get more shares of something good.  Now could be a good time to get out of the dogs and get some profit from your runners and try to hoard up some cash in case the drops continue, where the real sale prices will be.  You'll be able to grab more shares at a better price and you'll be better off.

The worst thing that can happen is the market goes up and you have a ton of cash and some of your best stocks move up.  Is that so bad?

Invest in peace...

So, looking at my watch list tonight some pretty good stocks came up on my sale list.  (These stocks are below their 50 and 200 day moving averages right now.)  These include:

Amgen (AMGN)
Barnes & Noble (BKS)
Walmart (WMT)
Costco (COST)
Electronic Arts (ERTS)
Coca Cola (KO)
Microsoft (MSFT)

If you have some cash laying around and a long-term trading mentality, even shorter term really, these could be good stocks to look into purchasing before Monday morning, (even though it looks like the market is going to take a dip lower Monday, but we'll see.) 

Have to make your decisions based on what you know, not what you think the market will do. All of these companies are great companies.  I'd invest in Walmart, Costco and Coke before the others though.  That's just my opinion.

Invest in peace...

$$ wow, all those people who panicked after the drop last Thursday and sold are kicking themselves today, aren't they? As I always say, drops are a short-term blip in a longterm traders portfolio. Don't over react to things that are only temporary. I seriously considered dumping some stocks for about 3 seconds. Then I just held tight. That's what you should have done too. Or bought on the drop.

Invest in peace...