Two picks today, and I feel fairly okay with them.
The first one is a stock appearing on my screen a second time. I owned it years ago and lost half of my money on it–I’m going to give it another chance. It is Consumer Portfolio Services, Inc. (CPSS), which is in the auto financing business.
The second one is CalAmp Corp. (CAMP), which does something with wireless communications–internet, etc.
Good luck!
Ok, I’m probably nuts to be doing this–but I wanted to go on record (no pun intened) as having signed up for this: The RPM Challenge.
The Challenge is to record a complete music album during the month of February. 10 songs or 35 minutes. (This is patterned after some “write a novel in a month” contests out there).
I’m going to try.
By posting my intentions here, I’m hoping that I will be motivated to follow through, and I invite all of my readers to ridicule me and call me a “quitter” if I don’t, because I no longer have any excuse not to.
I’m retired. Nothing else to do in February (although the last several days of the month I have some travel plans).
When I have written songs in the past, I’ve generally gotten them put together (rough demo quality) in one day (with the quality one might expect!). So…I’m going to do it! (I hope).
When I came across this Challenge–it’s not a “contest”, there’s no prize–I had already been thinking of doing something like this anyway. I’ve been away from my music hobby for about a year and a half, and I’ve been getting psychologically ready to tackle it again, and then this thing came along.
I’ve already got a couple of dozen songs more or less completed. I’m not going to be using them, though. That’s cheating. I’m intentionally keeping my mind blank until February 1st. What’s sort of cool about setting up the Challenge this way is that songs that otherwise never would have been written now will be.
So I’ve gotta come up with 10 songs–meaning I’ll likely have to write several more than that if I’m going to be going for any kind of quality at all. Let’s see…probably a couple country, a couple pop, maybe a folk song, a couple hip-hop, at least one heavy metal, a dance number, maybe some gospel (tongue-in-cheek, of course), maybe something classical… We’ll see what works. In the past, I have started things in one genre and it has totally twisted itself into something else.
I’ll post the songs here for comments. Maybe.
Meanwhile, to prove to you that I won’t be cheating I invite your input as to song titles, snatches of lyric phrases, themes (boy meets girl, rabbit meets fox), etc. I’ll try to incorporate them if my muse directs me that way.
I’m not expecting any Grammy nominations, but at least this should give me a good jumpstart on getting back into this.
Then again, maybe I’ll quit the first day. I hope not.
Stay tuned.
Truly charming:
A couple of unenthusiastics picks today–one of them downright cynical.
First up, I am going to venture back into Triumph Group, Inc. (TGI), which I picked up about 4 years ago and made decent money on. I sold it a couple of years ago and it kept going up and up (about quadruple what I originally paid for it), and now it’s back on my radar.
Irritated that I didn’t just hold onto it all this time (but that’s not what I do–I generally sell after a couple of years) I decided to lose all of my moral compass and pick up some stock in gun manufacturer Sturm, Ruger & Co. Inc. (RGR). I am an adamant anti-gun guy, so this is a “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” decision on my part. Maybe I’ll give all of my bloody earnings to charity or somesuch. Hold your nose and pick some up.
Good luck.
Just one pick today and it’s practically a “penny stock”, so I’m going to be taking a relatively small position in it.
Lihua International, Inc. (LIWA) is my pick–it’s a Chinese copper manufacturing company.
I did well with my first Chinese stock: doubled my money in a few months on some automotive company. But since then, on the two or three occasions I’ve invested there, I’ve done poorly.
This one does intrigue me, though.
Good luck!
Just one pick today.
I’m going to purchase some Homeowners Choice, Inc. (HCI), which provides home and casualty insurance in, of all places, Florida. Wait a second! Is that right?
Mumble…mumble…yeah, FLORIDA.
Don’t they have hurricanes down there and stuff?
Well, nevertheless, it has doubled this last year and still has an appealingly low P/E ratio, so…who am I to question what pops up on my screen.
And for some reason, I actually feel pretty good about this one. We’ll see…
Good luck!
Three picks today, one of them highly unusual.
The unusual one is Delta Galil Industries Ltd. (DELTY), which is an Israeli company making undergarments and socks. I’m sure there’s a joke in there somewhere–a really, really offensive one–but I’m going to pass. It showed up on my screen, it’s been on a bit of a run since late summer, and so I’m going to pick up a little.
A couple of more sane (I hope) choices: I’m going to pick up some Tenneco Inc. (TEN), which makes emissions control and ride control products for vehicles, and Wabash National Corp. (WNC), which makes truck trailers.
Good luck!
I have three unenthusiastic picks this time around since nothing really jumped out at me. I’ll take smaller positions in all three. First up is Cedar Fair, L.P. (FUN), which owns a bunch of amusement and water parks. See why I’m not enthused?
My second pick is RF Industries, Ltd. (RFIL) which is in the electronics business (even though I think I have plenty of electronics stocks already–I may have to take a closer look at my diversification soon).
And lastly, I’m going to get some iGATE Corporation (IGTE), which provides outsourced information technology and IT-enabled operations services.
Good luck.
You know what?
I’m taking a pass this time. No new pick. I did take a hard lock at Agrium Inc. (AGU), which makes agricultural products–fertilizer, chemicals, etc.–and that is what I’d be buying this week…if I was buying.
But this time around my screen just wasn’t finding much of interest and I think I’ll just hang on to what I’ve got until the next time.
Let me know how you do with Agrium, if you end up buying it.