Random Personal Portfolio Musing

I'm thoroughly confused at this moment. There is no clear signal on whether I should be bullish or bearish right now and it's obvious a lot of people feel this way from the way the market has been behaving today. At least we have some sign of stability now after the sell off on Friday. It appear a lot of people are still testing the water before jumping in.

If you want an example of hitting it out of the park, just listen to AAPL's conference call and their numbers. It is just so sick. I don't know if I'd chase it here near the low 180's... actually I probably would as I could see this thing go easily to 200 and potentially 250 or 300. An 80/30 risk-reward ratio. I think I do like it. A lot of people are going to be scared to buy AAPL here, which is fine and logical but those people remind me of my mother... they make me sick. No stock price is too high to buy or too low to short.

AT&T reports tomorrow morning... I'm very interested to see how the iPhone sales number affects them.

People might be bearish on RIMM after the AAPL numbers. I don't believe that's the case. Blackberry's and iPhone are two different markets and I don't think they really compete with each other THAT much. If RIMM dips to the 110 I'd consider going long.

What I was really more interested in was the PC sales figure. AAPL is selling more Mac's but how much more relatively to the overall market. I need to figure out a way to track that. All the PC makers are doing pretty good, ex: HPQ. To me, it matters less that it went up, it matters more that it went up relatively more to other Windows OS PC's, which means Mac's are stealing market share. Plus the profit margin in those are higher, too, I think.

I've been looking at this RIO for a while now. I actually traded it at 32 after a downgrade on valuation... stupid Wall Street analysts. I longed it and it went to 36, so I adjusted my stops. I was going to get out at 38 if it hits new highs and I put in a stop at 34 to lock in my profit. The stock did pull back and my stop got hit, which at first kind of pissed me off b/c it traded back to 36 but I kept telling myself that I need to follow my rules. It's trading around 32.5 now. I would probably long it again if it comes back down to 32. The mining industry is still good and I haven't seen any visual confirmations of the contrary yet.

Now the most interesting stock... UA. It is definitely a growth stock by my definition and therefore it means high volatility. I would watch this with DKS and listen to the conference calls. Ideally I think I'd wait after the earning reports come out but I put a limit order in for UA @ 55 thinking that it's low enough and it wouldn't be hit and if it did it'd be near the support and I wouldn't mind too much. Well, son of a bitch, I forgot about this order and it got filled yesterday... when I could've got at least a point maybe 2 below where I got filled. Today's rally while the market is a good sign though. It means someone out there do believe that this is oversold and people are buying, even when the futures are signaling down. I have to be very careful though. If it gets to 52, or 51 I would be looking to get out. People are bearish on this because of the warm September we've had and UA typically makes a higher margin on its coldgear apparel rather than the heatgear. I'm thinking that's a non-factor at this point. I believe this is a trend breaker (and there's lots of people that believe that)... all the young kids that play football, lacrosse, etc are wearing UA gears. It's becoming a fashion statement much like Nike basketball shoes.

Speaking of NKE, I like NKE as well. I have this untested theory that NKE rises during basketball season and then cools off after the NBA finals. Maybe? Haven't really tested this. I'm just eyeballing the charts right now.

NYX... man, that stock I think is dead. Hopefully it delivers a blow out quarter and the volatility picks up. It went up last Thursday on news that it will be added to the S&P 500 index. Because of that, people that track the index would have to buy it. It has not done much since then. It was hard to gauge it with last Friday's sell off but today it's kind of clear that this thing has no steam, no momentum. I'd wait and see to decide what direction to go on this...