Why did the man freeze his money? He wanted cold, hard cash.
If only it was that easy right now, right?
Stocks advanced this morning on rumors the FDIC would be creating a sort of “bad bank” to remove money-losing assets from a few banks balance sheets. The Federal Reserve also announced that the central bank would possibly buy long-term government debt if it would help the financial markets.
Citigroup Inc. (C) and Bank of America (BAC) especially saw gains this morning. Citi was up about 18% and Bank of America was up %. However, my question is whether today is a typical rally or something more sustainable? Looking at Citi on PredictWallStreet, I checked the one month sentiment. It’s been pretty rocky the past month. There were several days of extremely bearish sentiment and in the past week its recently become more bullish. I would expect some of that bullishness to be a cause of the FDIC rumors but if you look closely you can also see that it’s already beginning to fall. I don’t exactly know much about C, but seeing how sentiment has been fluctuating so much I would think that the sudden up tick of bullish sentiment is probably temporary, and so is this price gain.
Bank of America’s (sentiment has also been fluctuating quite a bit this past month, but with less bullish sentiment. Sentiment right now is almost neutral, but I would think it’s going to fall. Checking the Accuracy and then clicking on the Star Performers for BAC I noticed that the 5 star predictors are actually split in their predictions -half think BAC will close up and the other half think it will close down. The remaining 4,3, and 2 star predictors predicted up.
So the questions is should you sell today and reap the benefits of this rally or hold on just a little longer and see if its gets better? While I can’t exactly give you advice on that, PredictWallStreet can at least guide and help you in your investing decision through its sentiment and accuracy record based predictions.
A new president, a new era, a new economy. That would be nice, anyway. But while the hope seems to be being passed out left and right, the stock market can’t get no love.
It’s no question the market is being driven by a lot of emotion right now. But to say those are mostly optimistic feelings, would be well, optimistic. Checking the real-time sentiment meter on PredictWallStreet’s front page it shows sentiment for the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended today bullish, while the NASDAQ and SP500 teeter totter on the line between bullish and bearish. While the real time sentiment meter shows sentiment every fifteen minutes, I wouldn’t think it a stretch to say that the market is still depressed.
Yahoo! (YHOO) released their earnings this afternoon. While most analysts, and bloggers and me thought it would be a dismal report, it wasn’t half bad as we all thought! Yahoo! reported a loss of $303 million in the fourth quarter and earned 17 center per share, well above the Street’s estimates of 13 cents per share. So while new CEO Carol Bartz has her work cut out for her, she’s at least got something work with here. I realize these reports were still pretty dismal, but Yahoo! proved to withstand the recession a lot better than some of its worst critics assumed.
I really expected sentiment to crash on news of the earnings because a lot of times I feel no matter what Yahoo! does right now it’s never good enough for some people. Don’t we all feel that way sometimes? But in this environment I think investors are beginning to grab onto any little hope they can find. Sentiment for YHOO actually didn’t drop at all. And it looks like it could even become bullish in the days to come. YHOO also closed up today about 1.5%. 67% of predictors on PredictWallStreet predicted UP for YHOO today as well. So it seems investors are optimistic about YHOO. Maybe not in the short run, but on a longer horizon. Oh and not to mention, I can’t wait to read some more email’s from Carol Bartz- the women has got quite the mouth.
You know its bad when even Girl Scout cookies have to find ways to downsize. The company recently reported that due to increased cost of ingredients they will be decreasing the number of cookies in certain boxes and the size of certain cookies. I know how bad those things are for you, but I cant help but buy more boxes than I should when I see those bright and smiling faces holding delicious cookie boxes outside my grocery store. I’ll be putting more than just my Thin Mints in the freezer this year, gotta make them last.
The market was up this early morning and I thought it would be a good day. Yet as the day went on, stocks fluctuated all over the place in response to a mixed bag of reports before it closed higher. The major indexes were all over the place today. Pfizer planned to acquire Wyeth, home prices rose, Caterpillar and Home Depot announced job cuts, and my lover and friend Research in Motion fell on news of Blackberry glitches.
I recently filmed a video blog about accuracy record based predictions on the PredictWallStreet widget. The widget has a tab, or button, that is labeled Accuracy. Now you have to first make your prediction to access all the PredictWallStreet data. Once you click on the Accuracy tab, you have three new options. Clicking on the furthermost right button called Star Performers, a chart with three columns will show up. Here you can see what predictors with the most accurate and least accurate prediction records have. A 5-Star predictor is someone who has been consistently correct in predictions for this stock, while a 1-Star predictors has been consistently wrong. Thus you can use the accuracy tab to dive deeper into the prediction data. You get some interesting situations looking at the Accuracy tab. For example, the poll results could show that the majority of the community has predicted way one on a specific stock. Yet when you look at the Star performers, the 4 and 5 Star performers may have predicted the opposite way than the rest of the community. Or, perhaps the community and the Star performers all predicted in the same way. You can use this information in making you prediction and investing decisions. I personally like to look at the Poll Results, Star Performers and direction of sentiment to get a good feeling about a stock. Here’s the video— Check it out! If you have any video blog suggestions let me know. Or if there is something you would like to see a video blog made on, leave a comment!
To show you how I personally use the Accuracy Tab, I’m going to predict on the Dow Jones Industrial Average, DJIA. I have predicted UP for right now but after evaluating the data inside the widget I may change my mind. If I do, I can always click the Change Prediction button at the top left of the widget. First, I click the Accuracy Tab and then Star Performers button. Now I can see that the 5 star performers have all predicted up along with the 3,2 and 1 star performers. Interestingly, the 4 star performers have predicted down. Hmm…So now I look at sentiment. I like to look at one month sentiment. One month sentiment is showing a lot of green, meaning investors are feeling particularly bullish about this company. Combining the bullish sentiment with the fact that the majority of predictors have also predicted up, I get a good feeling that the DJIA will indeed close up and I keep my prediction the same. Despite that the 4 star predictors are relatively correct in their predictions, I’m going to agree with the majority on this one, although this might not always be the case and the majority is not always right.
I’m super duper excited about tomorrow’s inauguration. My house is having a whip cream pancake breakfast gala in the morning in celebration of the inauguration. To my few friends who are in D.C., I’m very, very jealous. I’ll trade you three pancakes for your ticket heh?
I was looking at Yahoo!Finance today trying to figure out why the market line was straight until I had a doy! moment and realized it was Martin Luther King Day. To all of those who have today off, hope you’re enjoying this beautiful weather if you have it like those lucky in California.
So, I noticed today that sentiment was extremely bullish for the three major indices. I had read a few articles about the “Obama bounce” and what exactly this meant. Historically, the market has been down the majority of the time on January 20th. Given the curious mix of circumstances surrounding this years inauguration, I’m more skeptical about how the market will perform tomorrow. Seeing that sentiment today is already bullish and given that the general sentiment surrounding Obama is optimistic and hopeful, I’m thinking tomorrow could indeed be a bounce. Now, this isn’t to say that there could very well be an Obama crash next week when people realize numbers haven’t changed that significantly and the market is merely reacting to emotion. PredictWallStreet’s real-time sentiment meter will be a perfect way to watch how Wall Street reacts and get up to date sentiment information.
Here is what the sentiment chart looks like right now:
So I made a prediction on Monday for Alcoa (AA). It has been forecasted to close up but at the time they had posted some huge billion dollar loss so I went with my instincts to predict down despite the forecast. And…checking My Page at PredictWallStreet it looks like I was right. AA closed about 5% down yesterday. I just figured they’re was no way the stock couldn’t take a beating with that kind of loss. Looking at my Best Stocks, I’ve been accurate on both of the predictions I’ve ever made on AA. I think I’m going to continue to make predictions on this stock because it seems I have some sort of affinity with this company.
Anyhoo, I’m having a really good hair day. But more importantly the market tanked this morning. I was waiting for it to dip below 9000 but it rallied in the last closing hour. Yahoo!’s headline right now is “Stocks Plunge on Disappointing Retail Sales.” Well ya, duh. I thought we knew this in December. Or like I don’t know I guess I though it was obvious when we said “unemployment rates hit new high” or “recession.” I guess the market is finally reacting. Sentiment for NASDAQ, SP500 and the DJIA is all bearish according to the real-time sentiment meter here.
It was interesting to see today the discrepancy in predictors on the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA). Looking at the Star Performers under the Accuracy tab you can see that the 5-star (the most accurate) predictors predicted the DJIA DOWN today while every other predictor from 4-star to 1-star predicted UP. It’s important to look at the actual average star rating on the stock. If it had a average 2-star rating you could think it safe to go with the 5 star predictors. When its a 3-star average, its a little more tricky. I like to combine this information of what other predictors who could very well be more knowledgeable than me with the information I take from sentiment and news.
If you work in a quiet office I don’t recommend bringing celery for lunch. Celery could quite possibly be the planets loudest food to eat. I just found out to that celery actual has negative calories. At first you’re like how is that even possible? But the amount of calories it takes for your body to digest celery is more calories than is in the food itself. So basically it’s like eating air while running on the treadmill. Ok, not exactly but at least this is one negative number to rejoice about.
My New Years resolution was pretty bland. To work out consistently. This is probably the third time I’ve made this resolution so you can see the “consistently” part hasn’t really stuck yet. I always do fine until the weekend when I’m tired and catching up on things I didn’t get to do during the week. I find that with anything I want to do consistently the weekend usually ruins it.
I don’t know if the weekend exactly ruined the stock market but it aint so pretty this Monday. The DOW fell 125 points, extending last weeks declines. Earnings season is right around the corner and Alcoa started it off with a bang! Alcoa, aluminum maker, posted $1.19 billion loss in their fourth quarter as demand fell for the metal. Surely this isnt the only place demand has fallen and investors are starting to become less cautious about such news and are acting quicker to sell-off. PredictWallStreet’s market sentiment meter shows sentiment for NASDAQ and the SP500 borderline bearish.
Alcoa has over 117 predictions this morning as their quarterly earnings infiltrated headlines across the web. Surprisingly, 56% of predictors had predicted up for AA. However, looking at the one month sentiment chart you can see that sentiment quickly dropped and is extremely bearish in the red zone. Overlaying the price quote, in the past month AA’s price experienced a nice upward haul for some time leading up to the quarterly announcement and then dropped off in the week before. It experienced some jaggedness in that week as sentiment took a hit and started its fall into bear territory. Between the relative market conditions and there quarterly announcement I would expect sentiment to stay bogged down for some time which will inevitably effect price. I would keep an eye on AA’s sentiment to see if it makes any gains before the price moves up.
They were also a several forecasts published today. Among those forecasts was one for Alcoa. AA was actually forecasted up. Now I personally predicted down for AA today so we’ll have to see tomorrow if I or the forecast was correct. Now the forecasts has a history of being right and I have a history of being wrong so its kinda a 50/50 chance here. The Dow Jones Industrial average was also forecasted to close down today. Its clear that most companies are suffering right now due to the overall market. And while I would of loved to believe this year to be the beginning of the end, I think it may only be the beginning. I’m sure I won’t have any trouble finding a job when I graduate!
And as if the RIMM Blackberry and Apple iPhone saga would ever end. How many bloggers are sick of this one? But I did want to point out that I read a good article this morning about Apple perm-bulls who remain bullish despite other obvious factors that may indicate otherwise. This morning sentiment for Apple was extremely bearish while sentiment for RIMM remained pretty neutral. Apple is pretty sensitive to any news story and thus see’s more swings in its sentiment and consequently its price. For Apple, I believe it’s most important to analyze this stock in a longer period terms than say Research in Motion. I also wanted to point out that RIMM is still the leader with 41% of the market share.
So this morning I checked My Page at PredictWallStreet to follow up on my prediction on Research in Motion (RIMM). I had made six predictions on Monday on various different companies I liked. The funny thing is I got all of them wrong except my prediction on Research in Motion! I had predicted the price would move up and it did. I will take a moment from patting myself on the back to realize that in actuality this could of been a lucky guess. So to gain more practice, I will predict on RIMM again today and see if I can be consistently right with my predictions. I’ve also made a few other predictions to even out the playing field. Ya know, in case RIMM and I’s relationship goes horribly awry I want to have some back up’s to lean on.
Looking at RIMM’s sentiment today I’ve noticed that it has turned downwards. Investors could be becoming more bearish about RIMM. Now normally I would think that the price would closely follow sentiment with a lag as price caught up. But looking at the one month sentiment chart and overlaying the price quote I noticed that RIMM’s price seems sorta random. There have been times in the beginning of the month that sentiment has peaked upwards but the price (blue line) has been downwards and never actually caught up. This tells me I need to do a little more research about RIMM. I looked at some recent news articles and it seems analysts are split down the middle on this one. Some think RIMM has a solid balance sheet while others think RIMM will not stand up to the competition of Apple. I have predicted down today for RIMM because sentiment seems to be falling and the price already is. Even if they have a good balance sheet, if investors aren’t optimistic about RIMM the price will probably fall. Lets check back later and see if this prediction was right.
Hello blog world, it’s been quite some time. Welcome to 2009. “The Best of 2008″ list seems obligatory. And while I’m a glass is half full type of gal, lets be honest- 2008 sucked for a lot of reasons. This is my The Worst of 2008; in no particular or chronological order. I can keep the years straight, the months…not so much.
1. The serious failure of the XM-Sirius merger: sounded promising, but Satellite Radio pretty much got pwned.
2. An American icon falls: Ford, Chrysler and GM almost go bankrupt and has Wall Street in a flurry
3. Illonois’ Rod Blagojevich’s attempt to sell Obama’s U.S. Senate seat. And his refusal to resign when he was caught.
4. Madoff’s Scheme: the entrepreneurs Ponzi scheme lead to $50 million loss and even a few lives.
5. Mortgage meltdown: the housing bubble finally popped catalyzing the country into an economic downturn
6. “I can see Russia from my backyard” foreign policy according to Sarah P.
7. The tyranny of Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana
8. Yahoo! loosing grip and watching their stock tumble until they realized “hey! I think we need a new CEO!”
9. Recession: It was deemed official
10.Failure to Launch: Research in Motions touch screen Blackberry was more than disappointing
There you have it, in my own opinion.
It’s been a rough year in many aspects. As a young investor, I have time on my side but it’s always good to evaluate my financial strategy and performance. PredictWallStreet is an easy way for me to test my trading strategies for free and track my performance by using the My Page feature. My Page tracks all my predictions made and shows me whether they were right or wrong. I can check my overall accuracy or I can check my star rating on a particular stock. It also shows me the stocks I have predicted the most accurately on which is helpful in showing me what stocks I have the most affiliation with. This way I can formulate my strategy, predict on the stock when I would invest and see my accuracy. If I had a strong affiliation with this company was continually predicting correctly, I could apply my trading strategy.
For example, for Christmas I got the new Blackberry Storm by Research in Motion (RIMM). This is ironic for many reasons. The biggest and most blatant being that I just put it in my Top Ten Worst of 2008 list two paragraphs before this one. The other’s being that I have blogged many many times about how RIMM blew it with the Storm and how the Storm is a piece and blah blah. However, now actually owning the phone I can personally attest to its faults…and its upsides.
So why did I get the phone? Three reasons. 1. I had an upgrade. At the upgrade price, the Storm is as much as any other flimsy phone. Price was not a deterrent. As a college student, price is normally my number one deterrent. 2. I dont have AT&T and can’t get an iPhone. I’m not about to pay my own cell phone bill so I’ll stick to our Verizon family plan. 3. I wanted a Blackberry hands down. I want internet at my fingertips. The deciding factor between the Blackberry Curve and the Storm was shallow and almost moronic: I finally wanted to be the one with the “newest of new” phones. It’s like when the RAZR first came out. It lagged and broke if you dropped it two feet. But at least you had the new phone. I didn’t get a RAZR until two years later. By then, it wasn’t even remotely cool anymore. I want to be cool.
I’d be lying if I said I bough the phone solely on aesthetics and its marketing pitch (probably half of it though). I played with it for awhile in the store before swiping my credit card. And you know what? I likey. But this is a story about Research in Motion, not why the Storm isn’t as bad as bloggers said. So I like RIMM. I think they make good products and I want to invest in their company but I’m still a little hesitant to do so. So I’m gonna predict on RIMM on PredictWallStreets site and see how well I do. Right now RIMM is up about 3%. Looking at RIMM’s one month sentiment chart I can see that the sentiment line is beginning to move to the extremely bullish zone. Thus investors are feeling optimistic about this company and might be expecting its price to move up. Checking just a few news stories I can see RIMM earnings have been beating their estimates. All this information combined, I feel pretty bullish about RIMM and am making my prediction for UP by clicking the green arrow. Now, I will come back tomorrow and check on My Page to see if my prediction was right.
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