Scanned for low price/sales ratio and decent current ratio, looked at several, then picked this one. Amusing pick for a company. Lots of ecstatic Trumpers describes the customer base. Good American heavy iron. Decent size. As usual for one of my picks, running losses to some extent. Anyway, looking at the monthly chart, not completely sure, but now, looking at the daily chart, it's a super close stop. Well, a decent one if the stop is 14.50. And I love the idea of buying at the bottom of a red bar like this. The five day chart is really cool, too.
If it breaks out above the afternoon tops from Dec. 2, really good for an intraday buy. Or cool for a no stop buy, 10 shares, say.
Decided to add a criterion to the p/s/current ratio scan, down 50% in a year. This was the first stock on the list (out of 55 ... the strait up p/s/current ratio scan returned 650 stocks). Not sure the dip from 10 in November is quite done, but if the bottom at 8 (which is a nice round number) holds, a buy here with a stop at, say, 7.90, is pretty low risk ... or, take a small position now, no stop, and add more if it reverses more convincingly. Let's see, on the 5 day chart a price of 8.20 looks like the right price, so then the 4.90 stop is even better, maybe even really good.
On the daily chart, a 16 target is just plain standard, and I guess it will slow down, there ... and maybe that's how I want to trade it ... though there Charlie Munger snorting derisively ... this is a hold for 45, he's saying, and venal folks like me who have no patience and won't ride out dips get what they deserve.
What about ACAT, where is that headed?
get your sweetie something
For a buy and hold strategy, (ACAT) is headed for 60, and maybe pretty quick, like, within a year. Maybe it just keeps right on going, if a little slower, from there - that would be the Munger way - but I don't know all the Munger rules, so I can't really say. It's true, there are things to look for to signal a major (or minor but significant) top. Maybe we can discuss those when we see examples. Finally, for us nervous Nellies, and fidgety impatient types, a rocket to 40 would signal a sell. Meaning, ultimately, both of these are sort of for a double in a couple of months, with ACAT maybe being a stronger bet for the long term, although they both seem decent. (But I basically know nothing about AAC. Oh, it's amusing. And it's a growth stock, for sure. And profitable. Not a bad p/e, either. Has some debt, though not a huge amount. Meanwhile, ACAT just chugs along, so, more of a track record. Both are about the same size - decent size, not huge. ACAT has been running small losses. Meanwhile, its balance sheet is stronger, I guess. Hmm. They both seem like decent companies.)
Hmm. What's next. Sure would be nice if I could really make something happen TONIGHT. Of course, that kind of thinking never gets me anywhere. Not that I'm gonna stop. I treat it as a kind of meditation. I was thinking a lot, yesterday, about what to write ... how to write. My goal is (always) to make a million dollars in a year, starting with, oh, $10,000 ... no, less. My habit has been to look for stocks that will jump 100%, even better several hundred percent, in a day. Stocks definitely do that kind of thing, kind of all the time, and I'm not even talking about the pink sheets. I even think it ought to be possible to catch those moves, using charts, of course ... but I've had, maybe to put it mildly, pretty limited results. To go on about this a bit more, I just laugh at people taking, like, 1% gains, like the day traders seem to mostly do, not that I know anything about it. I feel like I'm gradually getting a feel for the game. I mean, you know what the candidates look like ... down a ton, and then sideways at low prices, something like that ... narrowing to points ... and now I'm looking for them to twitch upward, after doing what I just described ... but not just any twitch ... something like a short, solid green bar gapping up, or almost gapping up - saw something like that recently, followed by a big one day rally, I guess, like up 2 or 3 hundred percent by the close - I don't completely remember. So, yeah, there are things you could look for, but I have to say, it's kind of a pain. I mean, partly, I'm just not set up for day trading ... and those big moves tend to not hold up, so getting out in the afternoon is probably the way to go, if you get in on one of them ... but then, to increase the aggravation even more, sometimes the big move is just the beginning ... and I'm not at all sure I can tell (though there are clues about that, too).
Nor is that all, because solid green bars in bottom type patterns following big huge super sudden declines (maybe at the end of even bigger longer term declines) are sometimes just followed by more months of sideways action, and when I say sideways, even though it is sideways, the price is actually dropping by huge percentages ... and maybe eventually you do get that giant move, and it all works out great ... and I'm inclined to wait out the sideways action ... if I get my big day eventually, I'm fine with a wait ... but then on top of all of that, you can get reverse split out of your shares, or the company can go bankrupt, and you'll eventually get one new share for every hundred you own, and a $25 fee to go with the privilege (of now having nothing). So, if you can manage stops effectively - which I simply can't do, at present - maybe you can avoid most of that aggravation, and catch the occasional stupendous move, and do great. But then, can you do this with large positions? I mean, some of these kinds of stocks are thinly traded, though I guess some aren't. (Using Google to spell check that I'm offered "aren't you embarrassed?" Yes I am.) Anyway, the way I've been approaching it (and more and more), it's just $100 positions, and maybe if it goes down some more (which will be, down 50% again) and I still like it, add another position, or, if it goes sideways some more and I still like it, add a position. Or, if it reverse splits, I'll treat that as a loss, and get back in with another position - that's something I've been thinking about. But, you know, I'm not sure it all adds up. For sure, the commissions and the losses add up. (There is Robin Hood. I ought to become an affilliate. I'm trying to set up an account, but I'm bogged down with the user agreement, and then I have to figure out the app, which I'm not looking forward to trying to do, either.)
One thing I've been doing is running a scan on Finviz for stocks up a goodly amount in a year, but, more recently, for stocks up a good bit in a month, and then I look at the charts (which is as close to being a breeze on Finviz as it is anywhere, for sure), and think about how it would have made sense to buy them. Was there a pattern, you know, like a retracement to the top of a head and shoulders pattern, something like that ... and then it rallied 50% in a month? Or maybe a year back the price was really low, and now it's up 200%. What would have clued me in back then? I mean, it was down, but was it, like, cheap? What does cheap mean? It goes back to the fundamentals, right. But, you know, I've been studying Buffett, and Graham, and ... it sure doesn't look like your defensive investment is gonna produce a 1000% gain in a year ... that would turn $10,000 into $1,000,000. A defensive investment ... that's from Graham, and it's a low P/E (using ten year average earnings), low P/B, big company (a billion dollars in sales?), strong current ratio, no losses for ten years, 30% earnings growth over a ten year period, and, to top it all off, has payed a dividend and not missed a payment for 20 years! Then, this is the theory, you're unlikely to loose money. But, then, you're gonna have to wait years and years to make good money (which, it seems, if you do wait years and years, you are actually likely to do ... if it's actually true that this works!).
Something seems off. I've manage to look at a couple of Buffett investments, too, and I'm not convinced they were 100% defensive. I mean, you get - at least theoretically - a bonus for straying outside of the bounds of maximum caution. If you do so, and you can pull it off, then your return can be bigger, and faster, maybe much bigger and much faster. And by "pulling it off" I mean, maybe you can find a company that's pretty solid and, to quote Buffett, "ridiculously cheap."
So, I'm looking at
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