Stocks Thoughts

Although I have to admit that I haven't followed the stock market in a while, school has been chipping away my free time. But, I'm starting to see some results to my stock market "gamble". One of my biggest gainers is Altria, I spotted this stock using what I thought was fundamental analysis: Good Yield, Low P/E and a Good business (it's hard to stop smoking...).

Bought at: $47.47
Priced at: $71.90

% Change of : 51%!

Another Big winner for me is ACP:
I found out about this company through sec.gov, I was looking around for equities that Mr. Icahn owned. When i found out that he owned more than 80% of the company, I took a deeper look into the company. Although it's called American Real Estate Partners, its name could be misleading because it actually extends a little further than that. It owns Sands Casino (gaming business) and other non real-estate businesses.

I bought it because I liked the dividend payment, the book value and the great businesses it owned.

Bought at: $24.01
Priced at: $40.20

% Change of : 67.43%!

Now if only the rest of my picks would be this great ... :(

Among my flops are:
1) Natuzzi (Sofa Manufacturer...) currently doing -34.68%. I have a little confession to make, I didn't do much research on this stock. I invested using MSN guru, which basically told me that Benjamin Graham would have liked this stock...

2) GM, which has this weird ongoing situation with Kirk Kervorkian, I don't know what the hell he's doing, bought in May to sell in December to rebuy now...This whole debacle has costed me -22.40% with GM. Talks of bankruptcy aren't going to help my case made for GM a couple of months ago, as they are losing money quarterly and it will only be so long before they run out of cash flow.

3)SHLD, I bought KMRT a while ago because of the hype surrounding Mr. Eddie Lampert becoming the next Warren Buffett and possibly turning KMRT into an investment vehicle a la Berkshire-Hathaway.

I'm very uninformed about the current situation of this stock, so the negative change in stock price could just be a simple fluctuation of the stock market.

But if there's a lesson to be learned is that you shouldn't invest on hype. But time will tell if this actually will pan out well for me or not. Currently doing -13.85%.

I will now try to always invest in company that offers decent dividend yield.