Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Green Blog

With all the talk of the environment these days, I am considering creating a new blog about the products, lifestyle changes, and marketplace for the new green movement. The topics I propose are:

1. Understanding the issue
2. Recommendations for living differently
3. Products that are helpful or not
4. Additional topics related to green

I am posting a survey question to the right of this blog posting because I would also like to have you vote on whether this blog should be about - customer experience, investing, or green. I would like to have the readers decide....so please cast your vote now!

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Biotech ETF's outpeforming during market correction
Biotech stocks are currently bucking the downtrend of the general market. One fund in particular, the Biotech HOLDR's has broken above its 50 and 200 day moving average. As those of you know, the S&P, Dow, and the Nasdaq are all trading below those moving average lines.

The HOLDR's is a basket of stocks, with 14 primarily large-cap stocks. The symbol is BBH and it has outperformed all other biotech and health care ETF's this year. So far this year, the return has been 10 YTD, while the S&P has been in negative double digit territory for the past few weeks.

This could be a sign of sector rotation, meaning that Oils/Fertilizers and Agriculture are being sold while other beaten down sectors start to move up.

The 3 largest holdings in BBH are Genentech, Gilead Sciences, and Amgen. Genentech has recovered from a 2.6% loss Monday following concerns about a brain disease in patients that also take Rituxin. Earnings growth varied from 13% to 61% in the past 5 quarters. Sales growth has slowed from 43% growth to 8%.

Gilead is a maker of HIV drugs and Tamiflu. It has beat earnings estimates in the past 10 quarters and has experienced from 7-48% earnings growth over the past 4 quarters. The HIV business accounts for about 2/3rds of 2007 sales.

Amgen has an experiemental cancer drug called motesanib which has shown that it can stop the growth of thryroid tumors in patients in the most serious stage of the disease according to a recent study.

So the BBH could be a potential investment opportunity as it is also showing a product technical analysis pattern.

Thursday, June 05, 2008

Top ETF Performance

Here is a list of the top 5 ETF's for the last 3 months:

ETF Symbol 3-mth % chg
HT B2B Internet BHH 63.9%
ProS Ultra QQQ QLD 29.8%
US Natural Gas UNG 27.5%
MV Coal KOL 27.0%
PS DB Energy DBE 26.5%

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

ETF Trading

As many of you know, I love to discuss and trade stocks. I am investor with 10 years experience and a subscriber of Investors Business Daily and its methodology.

The basic methodology consists of:
1. Identifying stocks that are doing something unique and different
2. Identifying stocks that are leaders in their markets
3. Identifying stocks that are in the correct patterns
4. Understanding the current direction of the market
5. Establishing basic guidelines and rules for investing in individual stocks.

I am going to be posting the basic methodology of the course of the next few days as well as an additional strategy I am developing that is based on the use of ETF's or exchange traded funds.

Please stay tuned.

Sunday, June 01, 2008

First Blog

Hello All,
This is my foray into blogging. This is my first entry. I had signed up in 2005, however, hadn't found a reason for using it thus far.

This site is dedicated to investing and will focus on ETF's and other investing strategies.