Comments on: Michael Lee Makes Wildly Speculative Stock Picks for 2008 …

By: Michael Kelley

Michael Kelley — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 04:31:53 +0000

Well, in all fairness, it will immediately have Vista installed on it as well, and Ubuntu shortly after that. But it will sure be nice to replace my Frankenstein machine that I’ve pieced together over the years with 24 inches of pure brushed aluminum dead sexiness.

By: michael lee

michael lee — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 23:32:15 +0000

You might not be able to appreciate the awesomeness of M. Kelley’s last comment unless you know that he’s part of the software team that writes Microsoft Office for Windows.

By: Michael Kelley

Michael Kelley — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 23:12:52 +0000

This article at Slashdot suggests that the Qtrax distribution deals may be more marketing wishful thinking than reality.

On a related note, I also bought some Apple today, but like you guys, not the stock, but rather the 24inch iMac variety.

By: Sharolyn's Husband

Sharolyn's Husband — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 21:59:09 +0000

I did not know what the funny answer to my question was, but I knew that there was one. That was it.

By: michael lee

michael lee — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 19:11:35 +0000

+3 Charisma

By: Sharolyn's Husband

Sharolyn's Husband — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 18:42:58 +0000

What is the dividend paid by an iPhone?

By: michael lee

michael lee — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 17:36:50 +0000

Zack and I both own some Apple. It’s just that instead of stock it’s a macbook, a G5, a macbookpro, a mac mini, an iPod, an iPhone …

By: Zack

Zack — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 16:38:24 +0000

I wish I could contribute some advice to this column. But sadly, all my assets are tied up in cash.

By: JC

JC — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 15:51:21 +0000

June, what a great story! Here’s my two cents worth on the stock market. It’s a great long term investment. If you think you can beat it on a daily or monthly basis by doing a lot of trading or jumping in on a bit of “inside” information, or picking individual stocks, you’ll usually be sorry. Unfortunately, it’s a bit like gambling in that you always hear such great stories about “winners”. If you’ve got some extra money, that you can afford to do without if you lost it all, and you’ve got time (at least 7-10 years to let it ride up and down then up again) then OVER TIME the market is a great place to be! If you are going to jump in, Michael’s approach is actually the right way to go. Pick stocks that you actually know something about. In Michael and Stick’s case, that would be companies like Apple and BLLN where they can actually see trends emerging and know something about the technology and whose using it. Me? Getting too old to invest in risky things because there isn’t enough time to recover should things go south.

By: june

june — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 05:57:24 +0000

And we’ll need that much to keep living in CA.

By: Stick

Stick — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 05:24:27 +0000

Put it this way, if BLLN goes to $600 like Google, my 1600 shares (that I bought at 6¢ a piece) comes out to just shy of $1,000,000. That’s one miiiiiiiiiiiillion dollars. Mwah ha ha ha ha!!

By: Stick

Stick — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 05:21:10 +0000

I’ll come and pick you all up in my Lear when BLLN makes my $150 dollar investment become $2.6 Billion. Then we’ll fly to Pebble Beach and play golf.

By: june

june — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 05:14:32 +0000

Ok, I don’t know anything about anything, but I do know that my dear old dad bought a little stock here and a little stock there over the years and after I (the youngest of his three kids) graduated from college, he and my mom started paying wee bits more on their mortgage and when he retired a couple years ago, he had paid off their house in WA, then he cashed in a bunch of stock and bought an Excursion, 20 acres in Montana and a house on a river in Montana. He was able to do this, in large part, because until the purchase of the Excursion, the last new vehicle he purchased was his work truck in 1972, he and my mom never bought anything on credit and land is cheap in Montana. Still, it’s impressive. He barely graduated from high school and things were more than tight for several years when I was kid (think: hand-me-down clothes, free hot lunch, left-for-dead cars and government cheese. yum.) but apparently (like Sharolyn’s husband pointed out) one does not have to be a pro to make the stock market work in one’s favor. My dad is one smart monkey.

By: Sharolyn's Husband

Sharolyn's Husband — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 04:32:39 +0000

I know a guy that sold Apple at $20 a share and was proud of himself when it fell into the low teens. Ooops.

I like thinking about and planning investment strategies. This following story is humbling to me though:

In 1988 the Wall Street Journal began a contest that was inspired by Burton Malkiel’s book A Random Walk Down Wall Street. In the book, the Princeton Professor theorized that “a blindfolded monkey throwing darts at a newspaper’s financial pages could select a portfolio that would do just as well as one carefully selected by experts.”

On October 7, 1998 the Journal presented the results of the 100th dartboard contest. So who won the most contests and by how much? The pros won 61 of the 100 contests versus the darts. That’s better than the 50% that would be expected in an efficient market. On the other hand, the pros losing 39% of the time to a bunch of darts certainly could be viewed as somewhat of an embarrassment for the pros. Additionally, the performance of the pros versus the Dow Jones Industrial Average was less impressive. The pros barely edged the DJIA by a margin of 51 to 49 contests. In other words, simply investing passively in the Dow, an investor would have beaten the picks of the pros in roughly half the contests (that is, without even considering transactions costs or taxes for taxable investors).

http://www.investorhome.com/darts.htm