Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Current events

Greenspan says "watch out for China inevitable meltdown" and the markets get rattled.
While I agree, Greenspan is pretty bad at anything beyond moving interest rates, and even that he messed up. He muffed the stock market bubble of the 90s. He muffed the dot.com implosion. He muffed the housing bubble. He even said 6 months ago that the housing meltdown was over.

Guy's an idiot. Sorry, but that's the truth.

Meanwhile, in my world, things are interesting
Oil services/equipment stocks are raging, although CLB took a hit. They got a downgrade. Now, I agree that CLB is not as stunning as it was: sales acceleration is slowing sequentially. Instead of a 20% bump each qarter, they are lurching along at 5%. that's a mere 60% year-over-year growth. But how can they be overpriced with a 26 P/E on 60% growth and 50% forward growth for the year? Oh well, guess I'm whining a bit.

My GLBL and IO have done very nicely lately. The rig companies (ESV, ATV, DO) all looking solid. MDR keeps chugging along.

High tech is really mixed right now. TRID is ready for a double down play in a few weeks. CTSH just looks worse and worse - I want to hang on for another earnings season but this is brutal. NUAN is looking great - hit a new high today before retreating. And UCTT is making a comeback. AMX is still cruising. I own T and I've been thinking about buying S. Have been since they were at $17. they're around $21 now.
SNDK and STX continue to show weakness, and so does MRVL - a company I think should be at $13 and it looks like it may do so.
I notice that NASDAQ slipped almost 0.5% today. Over the past month, the DOW has rocketed past the Nasdaq - growing 6% vs 2% for the NASDAQ. SIgnificance? Meaning? I don't know, but for the last year, they have traded within 2% of each other and suddenly a big gap has appeared. the last time the gap went beyond 2% was when th emarket cratered last summer. Either NASDAQ is lagging the DOW an dabout to run up OR it is the canary in the coal mine and it is signalling a pullback. Or it is struggling with the forces that are pushing up the DOW and the forces that typically walk away from high tech in the summer.

Biotech is also mixed. HOLX is crashing and burning. A 4 month low after crushing earnings. Hard not to whine here: they spent 6 months bouncing between 40 and 50 and they broke out hard, only to fall back. Interestingly enough, a lot of volume today.
IMA is picking up momentum and DIGE seems to be slowly moving up.
I still own ILMN and it's also coming back.

TIE continues its slide - looks like the buyout rumors disappointed. OCN and PWR looking good as does KSU.

I see that STX and SNDK

Monday, May 21, 2007

HOLX down on acquisition

http://money.cnn.com/2007/05/21/news/companies/hologic.reut/index.htm?source=yahoo_quote

HOLX is spending $6B to buy another company. They are using shares and some cash, and I think the shares may be dilutive but I don't know yet.

This reduces growth in the near term but may keep growth continuing for longer.