LiveRocket Week 15 Performance - Up 1%

A good week for the market and LR - a lot of excitement going into earnings season coupled with upgrades (OCN for example).

After Alcoa and GE's earnings release, I am feeling very positive about our investment in infrastructure linked stocks.

For the imminent US economic slowdown, we have OCN. The secret to OCN lies in their business model as a collection agency getting both a fee and a commission. Note in their last earning sstatement that business is booming as of 3 months ago:

474K contracts in 2006 vs 369K contracts in 2005. That is almost a 30% growth in business BEFORE the subprime crisis began. I anticipate a flood.

TRID is our weak link but I hope that the market will finally recognize that the growth is worth owning.

Big movers of the week: ATW (4%), MDR (8%), DIGE (4%), IMA (-4%), OCN (6%), KSU (6%), PCP (-4%)

HIGH TECH
AMX – A 2% move up. I want to see more as we go into earnings season. They are re-approaching their 52 week high.
CTSH – Up 0.7%. Its continued fall was halted by INFY. CTSH received a downgrade due to concerns over Indian labor cost increases. However, INFY showed that labor costs don't seem to dent performance (they beat expectations and were up 70% YoY).

NUAN – Up 1%.

PWR – Flat. They hit a 52 week high this week
TRID – Up 2.4%. They settled a lawsuit with MIPS. I had previously analyzed the lawsuit and reported that it was really a tactic to get TRID to license technology. I was 100% correct. http://liverocket.blogspot.com/search?q=mips

UCTT – Up 1% after a hard drop Tuesday.

OIL SERVICES/EQUIPMENT
ATW – Up 4%. Up every day regardless of the broader market.
CLB – Up 1.2%

ESV – Up 0.7%
MDR – Up 8%. The debt retirement I discussed this week really perked up interest.

BIOTECH
DIGE – Up 4.3% on no news. This is ~10% in 2 weeks.

HOLX – Down 0.7%. HOLX has a lot of momentum behind them

Look at this chart and you can see a pattern. HOLX rises ~8% and then pulls back for 2 weeks before moving up again to a new high (only the recent Feb/March pullback affected this pattern). If I'm right, then HOLX is about to make it's big run up past $63.

IMA – Down 4.3% because of the lingering Biosite bid.

OTHER
KSU – Up 5.7% and hit a new high.

OCN – Up 5.8%. No news.

PCP – Down 4%. Pull back after hitting a new high.

TIE – Down 2.5%. Meaningless to me in th eface of Alcoa's huge wins. But it still begs the question: why does TIE not get any benefit? Article after article points out the ongoing and impressive demand for titanium.

TIE is now the Rolls Royce engine supplier. And TIE is expanding production. Fundamentals are not just strong, they are improving. projections for annual earnings have been raised 8%. Its competition (RTI, ATI) keeps growing. TIE stays flattish. Yes, I'm frustrated. Very.

I am thinking of ditching CTSH and putting it into OCN.