{"id":5947,"date":"2011-02-18T09:03:48","date_gmt":"2011-02-18T14:03:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=5947"},"modified":"2011-02-18T14:21:43","modified_gmt":"2011-02-18T19:21:43","slug":"nice-market-gains-nice-profit-gains-nice-weather-in-the-east-plenty-to-study-this-weekend-keep-those-stops-tight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=5947","title":{"rendered":"Nice market gains, nice profit gains, nice weather in the east. Plenty to study this weekend. Keep those stops tight."},"content":{"rendered":"

NLY bounces back: <\/strong>Annaly announced a billion dollar secondary at $17.30. Its shares dropped. A secondary is good for this company. It adds to earnings. Hence the shares are rebounding. Fortunately I recommended buying Annaly on the drop. I did. I hope you did too. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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

Annaly is presently yielding 14.55%.<\/p>\n

Here are REMX’s top holdings.<\/strong>I’m still mulling on rare earth. Bubble or big, serious opportunity? I’m not a big fan of small mining companies.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Here’s REMX over the past two years.<\/p>\n

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My friend, Philip Z. loves NE. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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He’s usually pretty good with his picks. Here’s his logic:<\/p>\n

Noble Corp (fka as Noble Drilling) operates the world\u2019s premier fleet of offshore drilling rigs. Noble\u2019s fleet is considered the most advanced for drilling in deep and ultra deep water.<\/p>\n

Shares of Noble (NE) are cheap. They currently trade at less than 18 times earnings 2011 earnings per share estimates of $2.30 per share. This is due in large part to the exodus out of energy stocks after BP\u2019s disaster in the Gulf of Mexico last summer. Due to stellar revenue and earnings growth and the price of a barrel of oil approaching $100 again, Wall Street has been moving back into this volatile sector. Thus NE is a PE expansion story. Before the BP rig disaster Noble traded at a PE over 25. Figure 25 times $2.30 (2011 eps) is $58. Figure 25 times 2012 estimates of $3.60 is $90. This stock has a way to run.<\/p>\n

Drillers have high visibility with earnings due to world\u2019s insatiable thirst for oil. Big companies like Exxon and Chevron have limited access to reserves in the Middle East so they have to find oil offshore. More and more this is in deepwater. Noble\u2019s Rigs currently operate off the coast of Brazil and Africa. Day Rates can exceed $200,000.<\/p>\n

Noble has a stellar reputation for know how and safety.<\/p>\n

Warren’s holdings:<\/strong><\/span> Many were bought years ago. Most don’t appeal today.\u00a0 I suspect this list is not comprehensive. It leaves out Goldman Sachs and BYDDF\u00a0 (BYD Company), amongst others.<\/p>\n

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

Hearing aids suck.<\/strong>I returned my free trial\u00a0 Oticon Agil hearing aids last night.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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They were great amplifiers, but they were lousy discriminators. They amplified everything including all the ambient noise. They made being in a painful noisy restaurant even more painful. I’m told that some hearing aids can cut sideways noise and focus on the front conversation. I can’t see how any hearing aid can do that when its two (typically two) microphones are front-facing and no more than one inch apart. <\/span><\/p>\n

Learning the art of lip-reading may be more productive — until I get to 90 and really need the silly, overpriced things. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Meantime, I remain awestruck by the genius marketing behind selling $25 of electronics\u00a0 for $6,000. that’s what mine would have cost, had I been stupid enough to buy them.<\/span>
\n<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Wives are so generous.<\/strong><\/span>
\nA man and his wife were awakened at 3:00 am by a loud pounding on the door.<\/p>\n

The man gets up and goes to the door where a drunken stranger, standing in the pouring rain, is asking for a push.<\/p>\n

“Not a chance,” says the husband, “It’s three in the morning!”<\/p>\n

He slams the door and returns to bed.<\/p>\n

“Who was that?” asked his wife..<\/p>\n

“Just some drunk guy asking for a push,” he answers.<\/p>\n

“Did you help him?” she asks.<\/p>\n

“No, I did not, it’s 3am in the morning and it’s pouring rain out there!”<\/p>\n

“Well, you have a short memory,” says his wife. “Can’t you remember about three months ago when we broke down, and those two guys helped us? I think you should help him, and you should be ashamed of yourself! God loves drunk people too you know.”<\/p>\n

The man does as he is told, gets dressed, and goes out into the pounding rain.<\/p>\n

He calls out into the dark, “Hello, are you still there?”<\/p>\n

“Yes,” comes the answer.<\/p>\n

“Do you still need a push?” calls out the husband.<\/p>\n

“Yes, please!” comes the reply from the dark.<\/p>\n

“Where are you?” asks the husband.<\/p>\n

“Over here on the swing,” replied the drunk.<\/p>\n

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Harry Newton who prays that the biggest beneficiary of the turmoil in the mid-east will be us. Yes, the United States of America. If only we could learn to stop meddling, we wouldn’t be fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We wouldn’t be bribing Egypt with $1.3 billion of military aid each year. We wouldn’t station troops in over 50 countries. We wouldn’t have a major naval base in Bahrain. And so on.<\/p>\n

Our own American revolution came because we didn’t like someone else (the British) meddling in our affairs. Why would the Iraqis, Afghans, Egyptians,\u00a0 Bahrainis feel different?<\/p>\n

Our meddling has a gigantic\u00a0 cost. Thousands of precious American troops dead in Iraq and Afghanistan. Billions of wasted resources.<\/p>\n

I eye the problems at home that the money and the people could have solved. The big Ichabod Crane School in Vallatie, New York has stopped its computer classes and closed its computer lab because it doesn’t have any money. Yet we give Egypt $1.3 billion a year in military aid when they don’t have any enemies. As of December 2009, there were 35,688 U.S. military personnel stationed in Japan, and another 5,500 American civilians employed there by the United States Department of Defense. That’s a total of 41,188 people. Doing what?<\/p>\n

I went to a charity event for the Fortune Society last night. It helps just released prisoners. I heard the heart-breaking stories of people being put in jail for 20 years for posssessing three ounces of cocaine. To people\u00a0 living in American city slums, drugs\u00a0 look like the <\/strong>way out, not education. Here are the numbers:<\/p>\n

America has 5% <\/strong>of the world’s population, yet we have 25%<\/strong> of the people behind bars — many locked up for years, often for minor, victimless\u00a0 “crimes.” We have 2.3 million <\/strong>people behind bars. Two of every three we release from prison go straight back to prison. Our recidivism rate is high, because virtually all the training classes in our nation’s prisons have been cut. Blame the budgets. Our prisons are into punishment and incarceration, not rehabilitation.<\/p>\n

We haven’t built a new bridge or tunnel in New York City for 50+years. Highways to our city’s airports — La Guardia and Kennedy — have never been expanded. Us new Yorkers expect traffic jams every time we go to Kennedy.\u00a0 I’m sure you can think of projects in your community that could do with some of the money we wasted in Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, Germany, Japan (yes we have troops there, too) and now Bahrain.<\/p>\n

Maybe it’s time for a peace march in Washington? I can see some of the placards, “No More Meddling.” “Let’s fix America, not the world.” “Bring Our Boys and Girls Home.” “Stop Financing Dictators.” “Stop Funding Our Enemies.” (A reference to what Saudi Arabia does with some of our oil money.)<\/p>\n

I am not a liberal nut case. My obsessions are allocation of precious resources\u00a0 — my own resources (as in finding the “perfect investment”) — and my beloved country’s resources. We are so rich. Yet we misallocate our resources so badly. We are falling behind. Look at our science and math scores.<\/p>\n

Please read this piece from the New York Times this week. It’ll make you cry.<\/p>\n

Blood Runs Through the Streets of Bahrain<\/strong> by Nicholas Kristoff<\/p>\n

MANAMA (the capital), Bahrain. As a reporter, you sometimes become numbed to sadness. But it is heartbreaking to be in modern, moderate Bahrain right now and watch as a critical American ally uses tanks, troops, guns and clubs to crush a peaceful democracy movement and then lie about it.<\/p>\n

This kind of brutal repression is normally confined to remote and backward nations, but this is Bahrain. An international banking center. The home of an important American naval base, the Fifth Fleet. A wealthy and well-educated nation with a large middle class and cosmopolitan values.<\/p>\n

To be here and see corpses of protesters with gunshot wounds, to hear an eyewitness account of an execution of a handcuffed protester, to interview paramedics who say they were beaten for trying to treat the injured \u2014 yes, all that just breaks my heart.<\/p>\n

So here\u2019s what happened.<\/p>\n

The pro-democracy movement has bubbled for decades in Bahrain, but it found new strength after the overthrow of the dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt. Then the Bahrain government attacked the protesters early this week with stunning brutality, firing tear gas, rubber bullets and shotgun pellets at small groups of peaceful, unarmed demonstrators. Two demonstrators were killed (one while walking in a funeral procession), and widespread public outrage gave a huge boost to the democracy movement.<\/p>\n

King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa initially pulled the police back, but early on Thursday morning he sent in the riot police, who went in with guns blazing. Bahrain television has claimed that the protesters were armed with swords and threatening security. That\u2019s preposterous. I was on the roundabout earlier that night and saw many thousands of people, including large numbers of women and children, even babies. Many were asleep.<\/p>\n

I was not there at the time of the attack, but afterward, at the main hospital (one of at least three to receive casualties), I saw the effects. More than 600 people were treated with injuries, overwhelmingly men but including small numbers of women and children.<\/p>\n

One nurse told me that she was on the roundabout, known as Pearl Square, and saw a young man of about 24, handcuffed and then beaten by a group of police. She said she then watched as they executed him at point-blank range with a gun. The nurse told me her name, but I will not use full names of some people in this column to avoid putting them at greater risk.<\/p>\n

I met one doctor, Sadiq al-Ekri, who was lying in a hospital bed with a broken nose and injuries to his eyes and almost his entire body. He couldn\u2019t speak to me because he was still unconscious and on oxygen, after what colleagues and his family described as a savage beating by riot police outraged that he was treating people at the roundabout.<\/p>\n

Dr. Ekri, a distinguished plastic surgeon, had just returned from a trip to Houston. He identified himself as a physician to the riot police, according to other doctors and family members, based partly on what Dr. Ekri, 44, told them before he lost consciousness. But then, they said, the riot police handcuffed him and began beating him with sticks and kicking him while shouting insults against Shiites. Finally, they said, the police pulled down his pants and threatened to rape him, although that idea was abandoned and an ambulance eventually was allowed to rescue him.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe went to help people,\u201d said his father, who was at the bedside. \u201cIt\u2019s his duty to help people. And then this happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

Three ambulance drivers or paramedics told me that they had been pulled out of their ambulances and beaten by the police. One, Jameel, whose head was bandaged and his arm was in a cast, told me that police had clubbed him and that a senior officer had then told him: \u201cIf I see you again, I\u2019ll kill you.\u201d<\/p>\n

A fourth ambulance driver, Osama, was unhurt but said that a military officer \u2014 who he said he believed to be a Saudi, based on his accent in Arabic \u2014 held a gun to his head and warned him to drive away or be shot. (By many accounts, Saudi tanks and other military forces participated in the attack, but I can\u2019t verify that).<\/p>\n

The hospital staff told me that ambulance service has now been frozen, with no ambulances going out on calls except with approval of the Interior Ministry.<\/p>\n

Some of the victims, though not all, said that the riot police shouted anti-Shiite curses when they attacked the protesters, who were overwhelmingly Shiite. Sectarianism is particularly delicate in Bahrain because the Sunni royal family, the Khalifas, presides over a country that is predominately Shiite, and Shiites often complain of discrimination by the government.<\/p>\n

Hospital corridors were also full of frantic mothers searching desperately for children who had gone missing in the attack.<\/p>\n

In the hospital mortuary, I found three corpses with gunshot wounds. One man had much of his head blown off with what mortuary staff said was a gunshot wound. Ahmed Abutaki, a 29-year-old laborer, stood by the body of his 22-year-old brother, Mahmood, who died of a shotgun blast.<\/p>\n

Ahmed said he blamed King Hamad, and many other protesters at the hospital were also demanding the ouster of the king. I think he has a point. When a king opens fire on his people, he no longer deserves to be ruler. That might be the only way to purge this land of ineffable heartbreak.<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NLY bounces back: Annaly announced a billion dollar secondary at $17.30. Its shares dropped. A secondary is good for this company. It adds to earnings. Hence the shares are rebounding. Fortunately I recommended buying Annaly on the drop. I did. I hope you did too. Annaly is presently yielding 14.55%. Here are REMX’s top holdings.I’m […]<\/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-5947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5947","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=5947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5947\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}