I agree with AC to a large extent. Another example may be the article I quote. If someone was dumb enough to "short" the market, having borrowed shares to sell them, with the requirement to buy the shares back to close the position, they are now in a squeeze. The market has gone up and they may be getting calls from their broker to put more money up to cover their paper losses. What they need is the market to go down. What better way to do that than to put out a rumor that the market is going to drop, or a certain stock price is going to fall, and hope you generate a panic that saves your own ass.

Regarding the question by J_Zola, I'm personally not a fan of Noble. Three better companies in my opinion are Seadrill (SDRL), Ensco (ESV) and Transocean (RIG).

1. RIG and ESV are leaders in the drilling industry.
2. SDRL, RIG and ESV pay very nice dividends; all better than Noble.
3. RIG probably has the most up-side potential as they recover from Macondo. They used to sell for $150 a share, and are still the largest drilling contractor in the world. They now sell for $45 a share.
4. ESV has great top management.
5. SDRL is Norwegian and run less conservatively than RIG or ESV.
6. All are in a large building phase adding new rigs. When Supply overpowers Demand, rates will drop dramatically, and companies will go out of business. It is a high-dollar game of musical chairs, but there is great money to be made until the music stops. I think the industry has a few more good years.

I consider Noble a second-tier driller. They will go up or down as the oil/gas industry moves, but I don't see them bringing anything new to the party.

My money is on ESV and SDRL.

Thank you Kensco. I really know nothing about the oil business. The reason I asked is my brother has work for Noble for about two years. He works on the drill ships and they seem busy with new ships on order. They also have treated him well in reguards to pay and bonus.

James Day transformed Noble for the better years ago; absolutely turned that company around. Lately I think it's just fallen behind. I think their focus went towards Production rather than Drilling. So they've evolved.

Make sure your brother is participating in his 401-k at least to the level that they will match. He can acquire a sizeable amount of company stock that way.

All the drilling companies are going deep-water, with semis and drill ships, moving away from jackups. Staffing the new rigs is the tough part. Experienced workers are in short supply. An aggressive young man that volunteers for everything, and shows a strong appreciation for Safety can move up quickly and make excellent money. The key is to get noticed; in a good way. Once the OIM, and the other supervisors get impressed, his name will keep coming up when they have an opening to fill.

One other tip. If your brother isn't working overseas, he should try to move that direction; more job security, higher wages.

For what it is worth, Jim Cramer, on Mad Money, just commented that he doesn't currently like the drilling (deep water) sector, in a response to a question about RIG. Since I'm a long-term investor that doesn't change my thinking. My guess is that in a few months he will be back touting the drillers.

The staffing does seem to be a problem. My brother was a captain on container ships and Nobel was eager get him. He did have to sail as first mate for a year until he passed some additional endorsements. They made him captain shortly after.

Here is an article about Noble (NE). What they are describing was accomplished five to ten years ago by Noble's major competitors.

http://www.fool.com/investing/...is-a-noble-goal.aspx

NE just seems to be behind the curve in recent years.

When drilling companies spin-off their mat jackets or shallow (250') water jackups, tender rigs, platform rigs, etc. they're doing it for a reason. They are dinosaurs, dayrates are low, and demand is decreasing. Stay with deepwater, semis, jackups 350'+, and drill ships.

quote:

Originally posted by Kensco:
For what it is worth, Jim Cramer, on Mad Money, just commented that he doesn't currently like the drilling (deep water) sector, in a response to a question about RIG. Since I'm a long-term investor that doesn't change my thinking. My guess is that in a few months he will be back touting the drillers.

Cramer's an entertainer.

An entertainer, and a shill. It irritates me the way he goes down on his favorite CEOs to try to pump their stocks. He has built a brand though, I'll give him that.

On the Kinder deal, I had a choice to make. KMP or KMI. I went with the one that pays 6 1/2 instead of 4 1/2. That's what it came down to. I've been on this buying spree to get cash flow going and have been all over the world with it. I think it also helps insulate against certain things here. Only thing is though, dividend outfits mostly, not always, but mostly don't appreciate much.

The big exception being LMT. Love that quarterly check from them. Shows up like clockwork. And they got a buy back going. The only fly in the ointment of course is where defense is going.

Logically this is no reason of course to buy a stock - but I do think it's WAY cool to own the company that gave us the P-38 Lightning and those B-26 hotrods of old...

Sometimes logic doesn't have much to do with it; and it pays to go with your gut.

Hard to say where any of this is headed if the politicians in Washington continue to act like three-year-olds.

Yes, and I did much the same with UNP, SFL and NCLH. I wanted some NMM too, but it wouldn't hit the right price.

I'm just into trains and ships...I know, what a strategy...but how could you not want to have a company that at one time owned this - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...nce_Hong_Kong_74.jpg - or a company that right now is putting this back in operation - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:UP_Big_Boy_4014.jpg

Stick to your guns. Forty years ago I bought Kennecott Copper. I can't exactly say why. I saw a discussion on Wall Street Week, and liked the name. That was about it.

My broker kept bugging me about why I would buy such a loser, and create so much dead-money in a stock that was headed no where. After about a year I began to listen to him, and I sold the stock, through another broker. I guess I was a little ashamed to finally admit I was wrong so late in the game.

About a week later Broker #1 called up frantic, telling me to sell Kennecott. I admitted to him that based on his advice I had pulled the trigger a week earlier. The line went dead. When he picked the phone back up, he told me Sohio had just bought Kennecott. The stock had closed at $34 a share the previous day, and had just opened at the Sohio offer of $68.

I don't very often invest on sentiment, but occasionally I do. The one I'm holding now is Suburban Propane (SPH). In 1978 I was a relatively young drilling engineer and one of our customers was Suburban Propane. They had some leases near Ozone, Texas. I was developing the drilling programs, and supervising the rigs that were drilling their wells. After retiring last year I ran across an article about the company, and got a little sentimental. Long story short, I ended-up with 1,000 shares. They pay a 7.4% annual dividend and I'm UP 12% from where I bought it; so I can't complain.

I've found the "emotional approach" is particularly local interest driven. We've been around in the old industrial parts of our town (I just have a real fondness for looking at such things) and seen the rail yards, river traffic terminals, grain facilities, steel works, and so on, and made notes of company names whose businesses looked interesting. Then I looked them up and researched the stock. With most it wasn't practical for whatever reasons, but some I latched unto. That's how I found ADM, CN, KMI-KMP, KEX, APFC, CRH, SHLM, BKI and SON (I used to be sort of in love with the other company with the similar name, Sunoco, for about the same reasons). And it's kinda how I got unto MON. My grandfather was a top financial guy there. A paperweight I still use was on his desk in St. Louis in the 1930s. It's a cast iron HO scale railroad tank car with the Monsanto logo.

There is a pile of money in the IRAs and 401Ks, much of which represents decent collateral. I sometimes suspect that the investment banks are running up the stock market prices in hopes that they can sell to the retirement accounts for high prices and then move the money to something else.

Five minutes before the close I noticed DuPont (DD) hit a buy target I had set. I bought another 100 shares. Two hours after the close DuPont announced a spin-off of its performance chemicals unit.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2011...e.html#axzz2igKeXyGV

After hours the stock jumped another $1.82. It may be the wrong time, but I'm going to place another 100 share order. I like a stock with momentum and DD has it.

quote:

Originally posted by Kensco:
Five minutes before the close I noticed DuPont (DD) hit a buy target I had set. I bought another 100 shares. Two hours after the close DuPont announced a spin-off of its performance chemicals unit.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2011...e.html#axzz2igKeXyGV

After hours the stock jumped another $1.82. It may be the wrong time, but I'm going to place another 100 share order. I like a stock with momentum and DD has it.

DuPont is up quite a bit since New Year's...it will be interesting to see what the rest of the year brings.

There may not be too much more up-side to DD, but I've been buying it steadily for the past five years, and hold it for the dividend; 2.9% at current levels.

quote:

Originally posted by Kensco:
There may not be too much more up-side to DD, but I've been buying it steadily for the past five years, and hold it for the dividend; 2.9% at current levels.

You might take a look at LLTC, and HPQ at current share prices...

Both those would meet my profile, but I've not had much luck with tech in recent years. I watched HPQ for a while, but it was like Best Buy. I thought there was too much trouble ahead and never got in. Both did well.

The only tech stocks I own now are CSCO, GLW, INTC, and SNDK. The first three have been so-so. SNDK has been a real winner over the years. I took my SNDK money off the table earlier in the year, and playing with their money now. I'll probably hold on to that last 400 shares even though the dividend is a little weak.

quote:

Originally posted by Kensco:
Both those would meet my profile, but I've not had much luck with tech in recent years. I watched HPQ for a while, but it was like Best Buy. I thought there was too much trouble ahead and never got in. Both did well.

The only tech stocks I own now are CSCO, GLW, INTC, and SNDK. The first three have been so-so. SNDK has been a real winner over the years. I took my SNDK money off the table earlier in the year, and playing with their money now. I'll probably hold on to that last 400 shares even though the dividend is a little weak.

HPQ got in a little trouble over a software acquisition awhile back; I think there was an over-reaction to that and the stock was hammered.

Your LLTC was UP nicely this morning.

BP & PFE reported quarterly earnings and jumped for me. BP is UP 4.5% and increased their dividend. PFE is up 1.7%.

Two of my stocks that I swear are one day going to make me very happy are BAC and BP. I've been waiting on BAC a long time. BP is doing fine, with a nice dividend.

Just in case J_Zola is still monitoring this thread.

Ensco (ESV) just popped 7% after announcing they were increasing their dividend by 50%. After that increase ESV will be paying 5% annually.

quote:

Originally posted by Kensco:
Your LLTC was UP nicely this morning.

Things look peach-keen, makes me wonder if it isn't a good time to take a little money off the table and pay off some bills (and maybe one or two of the taxes).

>>>I think too many people get hung-up on conspiracy theories, and ghost stories about stock manipulation,<<<

I once worked at a very large semiconductor equipment company. When semi-conductor business had any hint of weakness that multi million dollar equipment was canceled en mass.
I participated in meetings where production schedules and cancellations were discussed. When the cancellations started I could always see the stock price starting to slide as the insider trading picked up.
Then there were the market manipulating layoffs.
A small percentage of employees would be canned and then a long monologue would be released about internal reorganization, consolidation, cost savings blah blah blah. All show to manipulate the market. Reminds me of the fakery of Las Vegas.

You know what's notably lacking in this discussion don't you?

It's been the "misses" rather than the "hits". It's those mistakes many of us don't like to admit.

But my theory is, if anyone REALLY is an investor or trader (two different animals) and says all their stocks have done well, then that person is either one of two things, and you can guess what they are. Kinda like a lawyer who says he's never lost a case (and some will say that to impress). He's either a liar or someone who never went down there much in the first place.

Anyway, one of my recent "hits" was XTXI. Bought it at 20 thinking of selling at 21.5 then rebuying it at 20 and so on and so forth. I liked its short term swing profile. Sure glad I didn't sell it as planned. Woke up one morning recently and it popped to 35. Who could have guessed DVN would merge it. Some are now saying sell, but I think I'll stick around and see what shakes out. DVN has for a long time been on my watch list anyway.

Another recent "hit" has been XEC. Who'd thought it'd go from 70ish to over 100 in 2-3 months after languishing for years and years in the low numbers. But I kept it and benefited nicely. However, I WAS forced to buy to close to get out of a covered call on it at 70 something. I saw it was gonna "pop" and had no choice.

Now, for those misses. ABX. Boy, did I miscalculate on that. With what all was going on, I figured 19 was about as low as it would go. I thought that looked a safe floor. Wrong! Then they whacked the dividend. I bailed with a small loss. I mainly just bought it for the dividend anyway. Then of course buy target prices of 20 started appearing, which pretty much guaranteed it'd in fact go to 20. And it did. But I'm not messing with it further.

What I aim for is to have more hits than misses over the long run.

My last big miss was about 20 years ago. It was a mutual fund that was smoking hot. It mainly had tech stocks in it. It was called Red Oak something-or-other. It was rated one of the top mutual funds for the year that I bought-in. If I recall correctly it lost about 80% of its value from where I bought it when the tech bubble burst. That hurt.

If you try to catch a shooting-star, more times than not you'll get burned. By the time you read about it in the rags, the easy money has already been made.

About this time of year I normally look at my holdings and if I have some losers I'll shuck those that don't appear to have good prospects in the coming year. This year has been excellent. I'll stay with what I've got and hope 2014 is a repeat of 2013.

My laggard is Bank of America. I was down a ton at one point years ago, but have climbed back into the black. I'm UP only 5% at the moment, but see brighter days ahead.

I generally won't look at a stock unless it pays a dividend of 3%. The only exceptions to that rule right now are HAL, SNDK (and BAC). I've owned Halliburton for years. I'm up 104% even though it pays only a .9% dividend. It may not have much more up-side, but the oil & gas industry is booming and Halliburton will benefit from it.

I've sold enough Sandisk in years past that I'm now playing with house money.

I know you and others here are oil patch guys, so maybe you'll appreciate this "miss". MRC. First off, I violated two of my own main rules, which is to skip IPOs and non dividend payers. But the key stats were positive and even some analyst ratings, so I threw caution to the wind. Then of course I paid too much. So it does the predictable and tanks. Still underwater with it. But, I have hopes it'll come back. When it does, I'm gone, like splitsville.

I did make a little off a covered call which I sold when I bought it, which eventually expired harmlessly. But I think they've learned their lesson and aren't offering anything like that any more.

The bad thing on the underlying is, I could have put the money instead into something more productive.

Now, my BIG mistake. ZEUS. Bought it years ago when it had 10.0 ratings and was on a rocket ride. Actually I COULD have made money if I'd sold it a week or so after buying. But got distracted somehow and missed some little spot of bad news, which I didn't even think sounded so bad. And I didn't have a stop loss in place - I thought I could follow it closely enough to not need that.

Anyway, it's finally inched back up to about half what I paid for it.

When they do that, if it's got any chance to come back at all, I'll wait it out. They have to REALLY be hopeless before I'll throw in the towel. SAPPI is a good example of that kind - a South African paper company. With that, enough was enough. And it had no viable call options. No chance to make a little something on your way out the door.

All in all, as long as the "hits" are some X multiple times the "misses", then I'm good...

My early oilfield investments all went wrong. Back in the late 70s early 80's boom, I watched people getting rich on paper. I finally dove in and bought shares in MGF Drlg., Global Marine, and Tom Brown; at the very top of the boom. MGF went out of business. I bought Tom Brown at $47.00 and rode it to $1.00. GLM went Chapter 11 on me. My shares became worthless. My own company's stock went from $17.50 to $22.00 to $.50 in the space of about three years.

Investing in the market isn't a sprint, it's a marathon. You have to keep learning. Most stocks I own now, I've held for five to ten years. Why do anything if a company is fundamentally sound and pays a good dividend.

ESV is a good example. I've been investing in them for almost twenty years. I own some shares at $3.00 and some at $8.00. I've sold some at $40 and some at $80. I haven't bought any more, other than dividend reinvestment, since they were at $20. Today they are at $62 a share and pay a 4.9% dividend. I have no plans to sell.

I tend to invest in best-of-breed now, and take very few gambles on new companies. Many of the independent oil companies being touted today weren't even in existence five years ago. Why give them your money. They won't be around five years from now.

From 1970 to 1990 I had very few winners, and many losers. The reverse has been true the last 15 to 20 years; thank God.

Be patient, keeping learning, don't stop trying.

My first stock was PSA airlines, in 1977. It went up nicely, enough to cover the commissions but no more. This was not a booboo, just a quick and relatively inexpensive lesson in buy-and-sell costs.

The first real booboo was Twenty-First-Century Films, run by Menahem Golan about 1990 or so. The internet then was not like the internet now, and I didn't know his history. I did violate my own rule (when a broker calls with a hot stock, hang up the phone). It went bust, took $1200 with it.

In 2000, the company where I worked terminated its pension plan and distributed the money. I opened a self-directed IRA and bought two stocks, Atmel and Glenayre. The hitch was the timing, at the top of the dot-com bubble. I also failed to notice the rise of internet-connected phones, with much wider coverage than two-way pagers. My wife reminds me of this periodically.

Oh, yes, one more for PM devotees. In the late 1980s, I bought a bag of junk silver from a dealer who never delivered and ultimately went to jail for not-delivering about $140,000 of various citizens' purchases. This was a $2300 lesson about precious metals. They are only an inflation hedge if you have them in hand. There is a lot more paper gold nowadays than physical.

TomP - I think your post contains volumes of the sort of considerations any INVESTOR (as opposed to "speculator") should see as a guide to how important thinking is before buying anything where they care if they ever get their money back. Even more so if they want to get more than their own money back.

I first started buying stock in about 1960, but as you may or may not recall that was when yet another recession was sweeping the U.S. economy clean. Luckily I only bought $30,000 of one stock. It did not go up, but it didn't go down either as it turns out I had bought it at a decent price. But that was pure luck. After 5 years, it finally went up a bit and I sold it at just enough to retrieve my initial cost and pay the brokerage on both ends. After that, I invested in other things for about 5 years.

Then I was made aware of two legislators who were annually manipulating the price of a penny stock which was based on a silver mine in the NWT which they owned about 60% of.

The price would fall like a rock every December/January thanks to them, and would soar way high every year by about the end of May.


They would buy back in during January and sell in August-to-October, thus triggering the price collapse in December & January and the rise at the end of every Spring.

That way they could buy at the bottom price, wait until it reached its peak and then sell again, reaping a tidy profit. And when tax time came on that year's personal assets, anything they still held (60% of the stock) would be valued at the end of December price...so no taxes would be due on the stuff they retained...they could actually take a loss on it for tax purposes...or at least show no gain over the purchase price.

Of course, they paid the tax due on the profit they made during the year, but the fact is, because they manipulated the price, they always made that profit so it was a good thing for them.

It was a good thing for me too for three years. Though I was not one of colluding partners, I bought every January, and sold every September.


The thing I didn't count on was the federal investigation of them that their little game triggered. So, one January I bought my stock, but the feds decided to cite and fine them justg a few days after my annual purchase.


The stock collapsed completely, they were required to divest themselves of all of theirs to pay the hefty fines, and then the company went bankrupt and was closed down. I only played with about $160 (16,000 shares at one cent a share purchase price), so my loss wasn't great, even back then.

But it taught me another lesson in investing. Look for solid, long-term, stocks which pay dividends every year, provide a truly needed service or product, and are not easily affected by events which don't affect that whole market sector.


So, the next time I started investing in stocks was about 20 years after the silver mine event. I bought three stocks which made sense as investments. One was a health care company (everyone always wants good health and it was the biggest in its field), and two were war supplies companies (the U.S. is always in some damned war or another because those large military/industrial companies can buy both Presidents and Congressmen). All three had paid dividends for over 20 consecutive years.

Anyway, both of the war supplies company quadrupled their prices or better (the price of one increased 1,400% !).

The health care company doubled its price, but I sold it when I saw what we now call ObamaCare Written on the wall a few years ago. And, boy am I glad I sold! There are massive layoffs going on unreported all over that industry right now because they are no longer making enough to cover expenses with ObamaCare in place. Stock prices are sure to go down as their profits go down and the threat of bankruptcy looms for many.

Yeh, the stock market requires either a lot of thinking, or a hell of a lot of luck. Hopefully once in a while, a person will have both. But as a person can't have great good luck all the time, without the thinking, a stock buyer is not investing, he is just speculating (hoping) hat the market will go up after his purchase.

quote:

Yeh, the stock market requires either a lot of thinking, or a hell of a lot of luck.

It's usually better to be lucky than good...

quote:

This was not a booboo, just a quick and relatively inexpensive lesson in buy-and-sell costs.

In stocks, lessons are usually expensive, and good lessons cost lots.

quote:

provide a truly needed service or product

..another miss there to report but I learned from it. An E TX oil drilling equipment contractor out of Longview. I managed to get out with some of my investment intact, but others didn't.

Anyway, I really got to thinking about it and realized something. They were essentially just a contractor who repairs wells. Almost anyone could pull together a small outfit and do that. It told me the underlying value of the business was virtually zero. In other words, they had nothing unique or of intrinsic value like market share or a patented process or something. And who would ever want to buy them out.

That led to one of my many rules, which is to ask myself if the company went out of business overnight would they be missed. Or would someone step in immediately and take their place.

For the same reasons I don't do restaurant stocks or most retailers stocks, with exceptions like WAG or WMT and some other obvious cases.

Retailers and Restaurants scare the Hell out of me. I don't want any association with them. Humans are too fickle; no brand loyalty. I thought long and hard about Home Depot years ago, but preferred to stay with industries I knew, or thought I knew. Who would have ever guessed that Sears, Montgomery Wards, JC Penney, K-mart, Woolworths, among others, would have ever become irrelevant.

I don't worry about opportunities missed, whether they are Wal-Mart, Home Depot, or Coca-Cola. There are always opportunities out there. Since retiring I've had to take a slightly more conservative approach with my investing, but I still play the game.

I started my investing career being a hare. Then I started seeing other hares losing their homes, their families, swallowing the end of their shotgun, and I turned turtle. Slow and steady has been very profitable. Trips to Vegas or the track were always about emotion, ego, and adrenaline. They have no place in investing.

Pulled the trigger on Pfizer (PFE) and picked up another 100 shares this morning. The dividend is 3.1%. I think PFE has another 15% to run possibly.

DuPont (DD), General Electric (GE), and Pfizer (PFE) remain on my radar.

You could have made out today already on GE. 26.82 to 27.14 and back again. That's $300 after commissions on 1K shares, the big idea being repetition of course (don't try that at home).

But, I already have some. Unfortunately it was another of my "misses". I got what I thought a good price, 29. It was usually a mid 30ish stock. But that was just before everything tanked. So I've been patiently waiting these years for it to come back. And the good news is, it's been doing it.

Anyway, I'm continuing just to bide my time with it. Don't know if I will sell or not after it crosses into positive territory, which I suspect it will.

PFE we already have.

I've been studying the ETFs lately. Interesting, those that leverage into 2 or even 3 X underlying moves. That's an interesting concept...

I'm good on GE; a couple thousand shares at an average cost of $15.43.

I'm pretty disciplined. My current GE price target is $27.93. If it doesn't take that number out, I don't buy more. Personally, I think GE will go over $41. I just don't know whether I will live that long, but I have no plans to sell.

ESV CEO just announced he's retiring. Since ESV is my largest holding, so that makes me nervous. He's done a fine job. The next guy has a big pair of shoes to fill.

DOW 16,000 today.

I don't see much that interests me this morning, but I did buy another 50 shares of Bank of America (BAC). It's been slowly grinding higher (set a new 52 week high today) and I suspect they will increase their dividend in the next twelve months. Theirs is the only dividend I currently allow to reinvest. At 0.30%, it doesn't amount to much.

quote:

I don't worry about opportunities missed, whether they are Wal-Mart, Home Depot, or Coca-Cola.

I don't either. What I do though, is use them as learning experiences. And I have a mental warehouse stacked full of them. From way back.

Anyway I'm one of the few who've never owned WMT. Just never got around to it. And I thought about HD this year but already missed the building boom (I prefer LOW anyway). And KO we've had for decades. It split this year. They are OK with splitting whenever it gets to the 80s. They think that makes it available or attractive to more folks and they've been doing it a long time.

More companies these days are skipping doing splits. They actually don't mean anything anyway you know.

In any event, I'll tell you what gets confusing. And it's kind of a nice problem to have. When you want to have both long and short term swing trading as strategies and you get one that keeps going up. Makes you want to back off the short term strategy, keep it, and go find a different platform for that type trading. But it has to be something of course with overall "upward thrust" to it. And it has to meet a long list of requirements for such things.

I always liked stock splits. I always thought it might add some momentum to a stock.

I hate reverse splits. I had a plan to retire on my profit on Citigroup (C) when it was beat-down to nothing. Then suddenly a $1.50 stock that I could accumulate a ton of, became a $15.00 stock I couldn't buy near as much of, near as fast. I sold what little C I had at $35 and turned my attention to BAC. IT wasn't that C was a bad investment at $15, but it just made a shambles of my strategy when it did the reverse 1 for 10.