{"id":10676,"date":"2011-12-16T09:07:18","date_gmt":"2011-12-16T14:07:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=10676"},"modified":"2011-12-16T09:50:21","modified_gmt":"2011-12-16T14:50:21","slug":"mulling-on-plummeting-stocks-and-high-dividend-yielders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=10676","title":{"rendered":"Mulling on plummeting stocks and high dividend yielders"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most people, most commentators and most books concentrate on finding stocks that will go up<\/strong>. But, when stocks fall out of favor, they usually fall faster than good stocks rise. Hence, if you can get your head around the idea of being The King of the Declining Stocks<\/strong>, you stand to make a boatload of money from someone else’s misery.<\/p>\n

This big bust recently is\u00a0 RIMM — Research in Motion. Everyone in the press has jumped on this hapless, mismanaged company, which has been good for my short. By the way, This always happens. The press jumps in with stories like “How low can RIMM go?” Remember the press (especially CNBC) has a lot of time to fill with breathless stories. Disasters are good for circulation. This morning Deutsche Bank issued a “sell” on RIMM, with a target price of $10. Wow!! That’s way below where it closed last night — $15.13.<\/p>\n

There are more Declining Stocks<\/strong>. They\u00a0 fit into these categories of haplessness:<\/p>\n

+ Accounting irregularities. The classic cockroach stock beginnings.<\/p>\n

+ Stupid and continuing bad management decisions (Netflix)<\/p>\n

+ IPOs that come out on nothing, no (or limited) earnings, no prospects, skyrocket and then fall to earth. Sadly, it’s hard to short IPOs.<\/p>\n

+ Dramatic new emerging strong competition (e.g. the iPhone and Android against RIMM)<\/p>\n

+ Huge continuing industry price drops (like solar panels and their impact on FSLR)<\/p>\n

+ Excessive parabolic price runups (e.g. gold – see chart here<\/strong><\/a>).<\/p>\n

+ Just plain bad CEOs. Cramer gives awards occasionally. HP had one. But recently changed.<\/p>\n

I need to develop these themes a bit more.\u00a0 I ran out of time this morning. Please work on them for me over the weekend. Add a comment below with your mullings.<\/p>\n

Some high dividend yielders.<\/span><\/strong> First, my favorite Federal tax-free bond fund. Paying over 4% tax-free.<\/p>\n

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The leading mortgage REIT. Annaly is hanging in and now paying a 15% yield.<\/p>\n

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\n<\/a>
\nThen one that’s getting nice press and paying a 19% yield. <\/a><\/p>\n

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This is the tobacco monster. Sadly, people still smoke. I see them standing outside Manhattan buildings by the droves. They’re young. They’re old. They’re gorgeous. They’re ugly. But they’re all hooked, and all stupid. MO is yielding 5.63%.<\/p>\n

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Then there’s FGP now yielding over 10%. The chart is pretty awful, however.<\/p>\n

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A charming tourist video on Michigan in the winter.<\/strong><\/span> You’ll die laughing. Click here.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Young Republicans girls pool party<\/span>. <\/strong>Totally charming. Clean, too. Click here.<\/a>
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oh, Steve Jobs where are you?<\/strong><\/span> Steve was good at many things. He was particularly brilliant at making presentations, which he spent weeks of thought and preparation on.\u00a0 Yesterday I watched and listened to the worst webcast I\u2019ve ever been on. It was a webcast by Lenovo on the new products they’ll be showing at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January. I can’t tell you the products for two reasons. The first is they’re embargoed. Second, I can’t remember any of them.\u00a0 But I do remember some things from the ghastly webcast — tips you shouldn’t ever do if\u00a0 you’re trying to woe the press :<\/p>\n

+ I couldn\u2019t read any of the words on the slides \u2013 except for the headlines. Lenovo’s boring PowerPoint slides were about half the size of a typical YouTube and crammed with illegible words. “Full-screen” just enlarged the illegibility.<\/p>\n

+ The presenters used the word “experience” more times than Carter had liver pills.\u00a0 It was “the latest operating system experience, “the full tablet experience,” “the dualtime mulimedia experience.” If I hear the word “experience” again, I’ll puke.<\/p>\n

+ The presenters droned on endlessly, citing tech jargon that many of us didn\u2019t understand and wasn\u2019t explained for us poor dumb reporters.<\/p>\n

+ The presenters kept saying “Next slide please.” One even said, “Next slide please. We’re now on slide 14.” Lenovo executives are so lazy they can’t push a “forward” button on a remote?<\/p>\n

+ I stayed on the call to get three questions answered. They ran out of time and my questions languished. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. am I annoyed? Yes!<\/p>\n

None of this reflects badly on Lenovo’s excellent products.\u00a0 I use their laptops every day, including writing this column. They’re obviously doing well. They’re second or third in laptop sales worldwide, according to which of the two Lenovo speakers you believe. Pity they didn’t coordinate their presentations.<\/p>\n

Christopher Hitchens is dead at 62. <\/strong>Life-long smoking got him\u00a0 with<\/span> <\/strong><\/span>esophageal cancer. Sad.<\/p>\n

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He was an intellectual giant.\u00a0 He wrote on\u00a0 an enormous range of contemporary issues, including a favorite book:<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Witness to an Uprising: What I Saw in Bahrain. <\/strong><\/span>An English instructor living in Manama saw a would-be revolution brutally repressed outside his window, so he tried to document it on video, and that’s when his troubles started. For the full article from the Atlantic Monthly, click here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Life’s Truths:<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Truth 1:<\/span><\/strong>
\nPartners help each other undress before sex.
\nHowever after sex, they always dress on their own.
\nMoral of the story: <\/strong>“In life, no one helps you once you’re screwed.”<\/p>\n

Truth 2:<\/strong><\/span>
\nWhen a lady is pregnant, all her friends touch the stomach and say “congrats”.
\nBut, none of them come and touch the man’s penis and say “Good job”.
\nMoral of the story:<\/strong> “Hard work is never appreciated”<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

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\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Harry Newton who played two hours of\u00a0 singles tennis yesterday, then rode four miles on his bike. Harry feels great this morning. The moral seems to be: the more vigorous exercise, the better. I’m scheduling four hours of tennis this weekend, and ten minutes of lecturing one kid on logic. I’ll get more satisfaction out of the tennis.<\/p>\n

Stop Press.<\/strong> You got to watch this Wall Street Journal video featuring a taxidermist talking of the six day December bear hunt in New Jersey. Hint: it’s been great for business. Click here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most people, most commentators and most books concentrate on finding stocks that will go up. But, when stocks fall out of favor, they usually fall faster than good stocks rise. Hence, if you can get your head around the idea of being The King of the Declining Stocks, you stand to make a boatload of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10676\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}