The UnderTrader's ALMOST Daily Stock Talk

This is the last thing we need....

2007-04-12T13:19:00.000-07:00

The government attempting to bail people out would make things WORSE, not better. The best thing to happen is let people go bankrupt so they learn their lesson. Bailing anyone out for their own stupid and reckless behaviour is not going to help anyone (and it won't work anyway.)

But, isn't it nice to know that YOUR tax money is being used to bail dumb-asses out of their fuck ups? Great country we live in. Fuckin' stupid.

Invest in peace...

The Fools join the dark side and agree with me!

2007-04-12T11:08:00.000-07:00

Here's an article that was just posted over by the Fools saying what I've been telling you for a year, the housing market is in deep, deep shit. Enjoy the read.

Invest in peace...

In more surprising news....

2007-04-12T10:40:00.000-07:00

Bankruptcies are way up! Imagine that! I wonder why that would be? Hrmmm...

The Fed also came out and said more rate hikes may be needed (which I've been saying for 6 months, thank you very much.) You can read about that here.

A research company took a poll and 60% of the people asked feel a recession is coming and 35% of those people felt their finances were 'shaky.' That's always a good sign, right?

People insisted that there wouldn't be a housing bubble burst either. I live in a neighborhood with 4 streets on it, not sure the number of houses total, but there are 7 houses for sale right now in my little neighborhood and 3 just sold. That's a huge number. People are bailing.

It's a good time to be in cash and it's also a good time to look for those stocks that are down right now with the potential to come back. Buy low and sell high. It's that easy.

The doom and gloom is only doom and gloom for people who have over extended themselves and bought items they couldn't afford. If you're debt free and have cash, the doom and gloom is more like a spring bloom because so many great opportunities will become available when all of those other people bail the sinking ship.

Invest in peace...

Poker advice works well for stocks...

2007-04-11T10:55:00.000-07:00

Reader Jay-Dawg, who has been sending me all sorts of good articles lately, sent in this great article by Annie Duke, the poker studette, explaining why she doesn't freak out if she gets beat. The game of poker isn't about winning money, it's about making good decisions, which is the same idea as the stock market. If you make good decisions, money will come. Don't chase the money, chase the good decisions. The people who lose are the ones who see Disney is up $14 in the last year or two and jump on the bandwagon now. That's chasing money. I bought Disney at $20 (it's $34-35ish lately), that's a good decision and because I made a good decision, it got me $15 a share profit, almost doubling my investment.

Invest in peace...

Wow, Motley Fool wrote something that isn't crap!

2007-04-05T13:03:00.000-07:00

Here's a great article about home ownership and how long-term real estate is a crummy investment. Most people don't believe it, but it's true. You're better off going long-term in the stock market. Not necessarily holding stocks long-term, but having your cash in the market for long periods of time. Oh yeah, investing in stocks doesn't increase your debt either.

I'm totally hammered with work this week, so I won't be posting as often, but I will hop in when I see good stuff.

Invest in peace...

Lesson whatever....I lost count.

2007-04-04T10:02:00.000-07:00

My lesson for today is....everything passes. No matter how much you worry about something, how stressed out you are, how big of a deal you think something is, everything passes. May not be today or tomorrow, but eventually it will.

The key is to attack things head on and push them behind you instead of waiting for them to fall behind. Debt is a good example of this. If you'd just put your mind to it and get rid of it, it'd be behind you and you'd never have to worry about it again. It's the ignoring it and allowing it to build and build and build that makes things suck. Don't ignore problems, just confront them and then forget them.

I was worried today because I had to make a call to tell a vendor that we didn't want to go through with the order we made with them. I was stressed out for two days. It was my fault, I forgot I was supposed to call and cancel when we found a MUCH better deal elsewhere. I was worried she'd be angry or mad or charge me anyway and you know what? She said, "That's great, good for you! Thank you." and that was that. All that stress and worry over what turned out to be nothing.

If your bills are stacking up, guess what? They're stacking up. Nothing you can do about what's already happened. You could wallow in your misery or feel sorry for yourself or whatever else you want to do, but they'll still be there. Isn't it easier to just decide you don't want that in your life, snag a second job for a couple months and get rid of them? That's what reader Big Jay Dawg has done and he's knocking his debt snowball out like Barry Bonds hits baseballs out. Is he tired? Yes. Does he have a life? Not much. But, in 4 short months he's knocked out half his debt, gotten an emergency fund and is working on the other half. You think it's worth a year of your life to be totally debt free and pocketing cash on a monthly basis instead of living paycheck to paycheck under a mountain of debt? You're damn right it's worth it.

Invest in peace...

A good article on subprime sucker lending...

2007-04-03T14:06:00.000-07:00

Reader Jay Dawg sent in a good article about subprime lending and how it's absolutely fucking people, and not in the good way.

Here's a lesson peeps - If you have to apply for a subprime loan, or if you have to mortgage your current house to buy another, you don't have enough money to be doing that shit. I got a letter from my mortgage company today (who is going to be in for a big shock in 2 weeks) letting me know I'm pre-approved for a $300,000 loan! People take those! They are insane! Stay away from that crap my friends. Work, pay off all your debts and save. It's that simple.

Invest in peace...

What's the name of that Queen song?

2007-04-02T10:46:00.000-07:00

Oh yeah, "Another one Bites the Dust." Another mortgage lender has declared bankruptcy. Where's this headed? If you read the Undertrader often enough, you already know.

Apple and EMI announced today they will start selling DRM free songs on iTunes. What does that mean? It means you can purchase the songs from iTunes and play them on any player you want and copy them to anything, including audio CDs and it's legal. A huge change in the way the music industry works and a huge bump in income for Apple who now can sell EMI songs to any player, including suckers who bought that crappy Zune from M$.

WWE broke the record for attendance at the football field Wrestlemania was held at last night. Ya think that'll be good for their bottom line? Don't bet against WWE when it's Wrestlemania time my friends. And, don't forget, they have a movie staring Stone Cold Steve Austin coming out this year. Yeah, it's true John Cena's 'The Marine' and Kanes 'Whatever the hell it was called' kinda tanked in the box office, but both are up in the $30 million range for rentals and sales and both movies only cost about $10 million to make each, so WWE is rolling in the cash from their movies so far and Stone Cold should out draw Cena and Kane easily.

I gotta get back to packing, thanks for the tip on the bankruptcy from reader Big Jay Dawg and to quote the immortal words of one of the great writers of the 20th century, Mr. L L Cool J, "I'm goin back to Cali...."

Invest in peace...

More bad news for housing...

2007-03-28T12:37:00.000-07:00

It appears the Beazer Homes is under investigation for lending frauds and according to the Motley Fools, many more people are going to probably be busted for this. The article also goes on to say that a whopping amount of loans are 'liar loans.' Essentially, people lied about their income to get a loan they couldn't afford. I have some friends who did this. I think it's insane to do something so dumb.

Why are liar loans so bad? What's a little fib? First of all, you had to lie simply because you can't afford the damn thing in the first place. Secondly, you can't afford it and will be living paycheck to paycheck just to get by. Thirdly, if/when you get caught you will not only lose whatever you bought, but you will also still have to pay back the loan AND face a possility that you'll go to jail for fraud. Good times.

Here's the deal folks. Take the 'get rich quick' schemes and forget them. Here's how you get wealthy. 1) Get a job. 2) Spend less than the job gives you. 3) Invest the rest. It's that easy. If you want to speed the process up just modify step 1 to say Get two jobs.

Invest in peace....

Things are looking up! Oh wait, no they aren't...

2007-03-28T11:37:00.000-07:00

Bernanke agrees with me. The outlook for the US economy worsened, just like I said.

Invest in peace....

Ben Stein is a stud...

2007-03-28T10:15:00.000-07:00

One of my hero's and an actual acquaintance of mine, a man who has traded emails me me, Ben Stein posted a wonderful article today over at Yahoo....definitely worth your time and it mimics most of what I say.

1) Buy low sell high
2) Don't make rash decisions, buy and sell only after thought (when the market is closed in my case).
3) Have plenty of cash.
4) Don't panic when things look bleak, look forward to your buying opportunities!

Invest in peace...

Down down down....

2007-03-28T08:42:00.000-07:00

And the market is down over 100 again today. Let's review. I said the housing bubble would burst (check), I said the stock market was just aching for a crash (check), I said foreclosures would go crazy (check), and I said that the interest rates will go up, way up. Not yet on that last one, but it's coming.

If you're hopping into real estate now, I think you're getting in way too soon. Many, many, many more people are going to be foreclosed on. Couple that with no sub-prime loans being given and the amount of people who can qualify will go down while the amount of homes to choose from will go up. with more and more homes on the market, the prices will be forced to drop. Up here in Canada one of our friends has had her condo on the market for nearly a year with no one even making an offer. We looked at a house that was over $60,000 over priced and told them so and suggested he sell it at a realistic price and the owner balked at it, which is what many people are doing right now, wanting to get their cash back, thinking that that 2 bedroom house they bought for $500,000 was a great deal and they should make money on it. It doesn't work that way.

Another friend just sold their house, for a $5,000 loss. When the government, who is not raising the interest rate to try to hold off the hatred for the current government due to the elections coming up, finally raises the interest rates like they need to, you will see even more foreclosures. We'll see what happens.

Microsoft came out and said they sold 20 million versions of Vista, but everyone and their brother in the news world is saying they're lying. I have to agree. Unless by 'selling' they mean 'giving away for free' or 'selling licenses to HP for unsold computers.' None of my friends have it. I don't know anyone who has it except me and I was forced to buy it for work.

HP announced they are getting out of the Windows Media Center business because, uh, they don't sell? Yep, that's it. They don't sell. No one wants a computer in their living room, they want an AppleTV-type thing.

Apple released AppleTV, which admittedly is low on features, but high on ease of use. Well, the Internet community has already started hacking it. If you search around you'll see that people have already figured out how to upgrade the hard drive in it, install the codecs to play AVI's, DIVX and VXID videos, even install VLC software on it. It's hugely hackable and that's going to really help the sales. Essentially, Apple left it open so that they can play things that they'd get sued for if they did it, but they knew the Internet hackers could figure it out and do it on their own. Good move. Let's hope the iPhone is hackable as well.

Be sure to check out the guys over at Investorgeeks.com for more good info!

Here's another website with some ideas to save money. The guy lived on $12,000 a year. Obviously, in California that's not going to happen since that's about rent, however I think $24,000 is a good amount to shoot for.

That's it for today,

Invest in peace...

Compound Calculator

2007-03-23T11:13:00.000-07:00

I was messing around with budgets and things, looking at how much money you could have in 10 years with some savings and I noticed that if you saved $1000 a month for 10 years and got 10% a year on it, you'd have $210,000+. If you saved an extra $500 and saved $1500, that number would jump way up to $315,000+.

Anyway, here's a calculator that you can play with to see how create compounding is.

invest in peace...

Money Hacks

2007-03-23T11:00:00.000-07:00

Well, rather than ripping on people and saying the market is sucky today, I thought I'd post a useful link. The peeps over there at moneychump.com posted a pretty sweet article on money hacks. Essentially, easy ways to save money. Definitely a great read, even if you only use a couple of the ideas.

Speaking of which, my sister bought a book at a garage sale Saturday for a quarter, went home and put it on Ebay the same day and a week later was $49 richer. Hows that for ROI?

Invest in peace...

More great housing news!

2007-03-22T08:53:00.000-07:00

KB Homes reports that their profits are down 84%! But, wasn't the bubble over? Weren't we on the way back up? The CEO goes on to say that they expect their woe's to continue. Good times!

AppleTV is now officially out and getting great reviews. The big question is what is the future of AppleTV? Online video rentals would make this the MUST HAVE thing for the home. The ability to download videos straight from the net is already in it (movie trailers right now), but the thought is it will eventually allow rentals, which would be sweet.

The one thing I'd like to see added to it (and front row for that matter) is email notification. I won't hold my breath.

Market is wonked again today, just kinda sitting there and doing nothing.

The fed announced they're keeping rates the same again. I think this is a mistake. The longer we wait to raise the rates (which is coming, don't kid yourself) the deeper we're falling into economic troubles which we're going to need to dig out of eventually. The longer we wait, the more the rate is going to have to increase. I think the Bush administration is just trying to wait until the next election, trying to avoid the bad news....we'll see.

In stock news, keep your eye on Barnes & Nobel (BKS) and Scholastic (SCHL). When these go down it'd be a good idea to grab them with the Harry Potter book coming out this summer. A gazillion copies of that puppy are going to sell and throw the profit through the roof for both of these companies. Borders books is in desperation mode to try to compete and announced they are closing 50% of their Waldenbooks stores due to lack of sales. Not good news for them.

As reader Weas stated yesterday, insurance companies suck. And as Jason said, you need to figure the value of your car vs the value of your insurance. My car is a 2004 Kia Sorrento, which I paid cash for and never had any coverage on the car itself and my insurance is still $380, to answer Jasons question, and when I asked Geico for a quote it was almost $250 more because I'm getting a home-owner discount on my car insurance through Stink Farm.

Invest in peace...

Creative math at my insurance company...

2007-03-21T11:23:00.000-07:00

So yesterday I called my insurance company, SF is the initials, to try to lower my rates and increase the coverage on my house and boy did they have creative math.

First of all, I pay $380 every 6 months for my car that has no coverage on it. I will have paid $3800 in insurance in 5 years on my car (another reason to not buy a new car and just think, if you have a loan or a lease, you'd be paying more to cover the car as well.)

I asked why it was so expensive and the lady said, "Well, if you had a second car you'd get the second car discount." So let me get this straight, if I get a second car I will get a 'discount' and pay $330 on each of them every 6 months, or $660. Yes, I'd save -$280! Brilliant! Fuck that.

Then we went onto my house, which I pay $340 every 6 months on! Now, think about that, my $20,000 car costs me more than my $360,000 house to insure.

Let's say that my average for car insurance was $300 every 6 months for the time I've driven. That would be 18 years. That's $10,800 I've paid into car insurance and my home we'll say $300 as well, that's $6000 I've paid in home insurance, that's $16,800 I've given the insurance company for.....nothing. They've never paid for anything for me. I've tried to claim damage to my house twice, but they way they screwed me it fell under my deductible and they didn't give me a dime. That's a ton of money for no return!

The worst screw job was water damage I had in my roof, I said I needed to repair it and repaint the roof (inside) they agreed, measured the water stain and said they'd pay for 3 inches by 5 inches worth of paint. They wouldn't cover painting the entire roof in that room, hell no, nor the cost to replace the drywall in the roof, just that little 3 x 5 square.

Good grief....

invest in peace...

Explain this to me....

2007-03-20T09:27:00.000-07:00

So, last week the stock market tanked because of housing woes, which I covered here. Yesterday, the market went way up because....uh, a bounce I guess. No real reason. Today, the market is down again, why? Well, because of the housing woes! WHAT?!

Yesterday I guess everyone forgot about the housing woes. WTF is up with that? Are people stupid? Let me answer that for you, yes.

Reader big Jay Wolf wrote it yesterday with a good question, how do the banks make back the gazillion dollars they are about to lose with all of the home foreclosures that are coming?

Well, they could get it back by raising your fees you pay banking with them. They can increase interest rates. They can call due loans they've already given out. Essentially, all of the loses that the sheep are going to take on stupid housing deals will be passed along to us. That is, if you allow it.

I try to keep as little at a bank as I can. I prefer to save my money in my stock account at Scottrade. In that account I can have my cash in a CD, in a money market account or in stocks. Much better than BofA's incessant fees.

I learned that BofA, my bank only because of ease of finding ATM's, now charges me $5 PLUS atm fees to get MY FREAKIN MONEY out of the bank at international ATMs. Fuck that. I live in Canada half the year, I'm not paying those fees. Screw them.

Look at your own situation and try to remove some of the fees you're stuck paying. It'll add up!

Invest in peace...

A huge thank you...

2007-03-17T08:00:00.000-07:00

A huge thank you goes out to the studs and studettes over there at my other home on the web, InvestorGeeks.com! They were the first to donate to my bike ride to try to raise money and awareness for Arthritis.

Most people don't know that millions of people suffer from Arthritis. Even less people know that millions of children suffer on a daily basis from this horrible disease. The money raised from this bike ride is split between research for the cure and for camps for families with children who suffer for Arthritis where all of the activities are family based and designed for children with the disease to be able to participate.

We will be riding bicycles along the coast from San Francisco to Santa Monica, California. It takes 8 long, tiring days! All it takes for you guys is a click on a website. I think that's a fair trade. Even the smallest donation helps and it's a tax write-off.

So, if you'd like to help the cause, please donate here today! And after you do that, go check out InvestorGeeks.com. It's a great site with lots more great information on investing and some lively debates as well!

Thanks again InvestorGeeks!

Invest in peace...

Charge it!

2007-03-16T09:04:00.000-07:00

One of the employee's at Big Jay's work was bragging about the new credit card he got the other day and how he'd, "Only use it for emergencies" (how many of us have said that?)

We'll, here's an article about how people are now using credit cards in vending machines! It's an emergency! I need my Baby Ruth!

It's my belief that I spend more money knowing I have a credit card in my pocket than if I didn't. The only emergency I've ever used my credit card for was....oh wait, there never was one. And I've had a credit card for 18 years.

Invest in peace...

"You can't believe how bad it's going to get."

2007-03-16T08:47:00.000-07:00

And another prominent investor believes exactly what I've been preaching for going on two years now. In this article over at Reuters, a stud by the name of Jim Rogers says that the bubble isn't just going to burst on real estate, it's going to explode in the likes we've never seen before. I totally agree.

Listen people, when houses in Oxnard, California, a little shithole of a town that has no high income jobs to speak of other than the P&G plant has low income houses in the $500,000 range, shit is going to burst. Who can afford that working at Walmart? No one. There are no jobs that support the insane payments these people took who were just going to 'flip it and be a millionaire.'

Many people, instead of being smart with their flip and grabbing a $200,000 house to lower their risk decided that buying $1,000,000 houses would get them more profit faster and they're UBER FUCKED LUZERS OF THE DAY! Congratulations on that tag. Wear it with pride.

Look at how many people, idiots really, bought real estate when it was so massively over-inflated that my 3 year old dog said, "Woof, it's gonna burst." All of those people are fucked. They can't sell the house for anywhere near what they paid for it (because they aren't worth within $100,000 of what they paid for it) so not only will their either sell for a massive loss and STILL be in debt, or they'll declare bankruptcy and lose everything or they'll just default on their loan until the house and everything else they own is taken from them.

For those of you smart enough to avoid the housing stupidity, now is the time to hoard cash. If you want a nice house, now is the time to be saving because believe you me, majorities of neighborhoods will be for sale within the the next couple years. You won't be able to spit without hitting a for sale sign. People will be desperate to get the hell out of the mess they created and if you have cash, you can pounce on it.

BTW, when the housing bubble bursts, there's a good chance the stock market will burst too, which will drive the country into a deep recession. I think things are going to suck before they get better with just a smattering of companies holding their position in the market (Coke, Apple if Apple TV and iPhone take off, McDonalds, P&G, etc...) If it's not a company that sells what people feel are necessities, they'll be fucked.

Invest in peace...

Returning to cable television....

2007-03-15T06:49:00.000-07:00

No, I'm not signing up for cable TV again, I'll keep my $80, but the other day I posted about a guy who figured out that it was cheaper to use iTunes instead of pay for cable and I couldn't remember the link. Well, I found it, so here's the link!

invest in peace...

Google just got hit with the whoop ass!

2007-03-13T10:14:00.000-07:00

Viacom is suing Google for $1,000,000,000. That's a crapload of zeros right there my friends. A billion dollars for copyright infringement and guess what? Viacom will win.

Obviously, this will probably be settled out of court and Google will make up a story as to why they can't police the content when everyone knows they can, but this is the future. A battle between the content creators and the content providers. This is why iTunes Music Store and other services like it need to succeed. Without them, content will never move to the net and we'll all be stuck paying for Tivo's and Satellite dishes that go out in storms and bad cable service and paying $80 a month for 100 channels we don't want and 3 channels we do.

By going to the net, all of these items can go 'ala carte' as they say and you'll be able to pick and choose exactly the content you want, when you want it. I read a great article the other day that I can't find now, (ggrrrrr) where a person figured out that if he paid for the season pass of the shows he actually watched on TV through iTunes Music store that he'd actually save money over the year. He could purchase the entire season for something like 20 shows and still pay less than a full year of satellite TV.

You could also go to the library and get TV shows on DVD about a half season late for free, but I won't go there.

Anywayz, looks like the days of getting free content on the net that's illegal (and we all know it) are getting slimmer. As much as it will pain me to not see the UFC PPV's on You Tube the day after they air, I think a smack down is ultimately a good thing. We'll see what happens with this case and Google's stock. (Note: Google (GOOG) is only down 1% today and Viacom (VIA) is up 1.3%)

Invest in peace....

More happy real estate news....

2007-03-13T10:03:00.000-07:00

Studly reader of this very blog right here, the Jay Man, Big Dawg sent me a great link to a story ABC news had about the 900,000 people who are about to lose their houses right now due to the shitty loans they took out to buy their houses that they're upside down in right now. That's just the beginning folks. ARM's and 80/20's will be the death of a few million American dreams that those with cash will come in and swoop up and huge discounts.

Notice that the lady in the piece states that the entire American economy was being supported by home equity loan money. Read that again, people risked their houses, the place they live, to get cash to buy crap. Good way to run an economy and a family.

I know a lady a few doors down from me, she has an 80/20 loan on her house AND she took out a 3rd mortgage to put in a swimming pool. Just dumb. Amazing.

Like Dave Ramsey says if you have money in the stock market right now, "If you didn't have that cash in the market, would you take a loan out on your house and put that loan into the stock market?" 100% of the people say no that he asks on his radio show, but that's what you're doing if you have cash and you're risking it instead of paying off your house. At least these people are putting their money somewhere where it will gain value over the long term, but putting your home equity loan into a big screen TV or an SUV or jet skis is throwing not only money away, but your house as well.

Pay off your debts, save up cash, pay off your house and you're set for life my friends. Pretty easy plan if you just decide to do it. It's a lot of hard work and sacrifice, but I think you'd rather do that for 10 years or so than be one of these people who risked everything, got it all and now are going to lose everything because they didn't want to sacrifice. They wanted to take the easy road and it doesn't work that way.

Invest in peace...

Flipping? Not anytime soon....

2007-03-09T11:27:00.000-08:00

For those of you that got caught up in the 'hey we'll flip a house and be millionaires' game, bad news for you, even the most bullish guy at the real estate office says prices won't be back up til 2008 and most economists who don't have their heads up their asses or something to gain say it'll be a minimum of 7 years before the housing market recovers to 2005 prices, including inflation.

Flipping a house is great for someone who can repair and rebuild them. Flipping them cuz it's a cool way to get rich is dumb. Here's a better idea, get out of debt and just save your money!

If you're married and both make $30,000 a year and have no debt, guess what? You should be saving $30,000 a year or close to it. We'll even say $20,000, in 10 years you'd have $200,000+ gains in the bank, risk free. That sounds pretty easy to me. I think you can live on $40,000 a year even with rent, food, utilities, clothes and FUN as your only bills.

Here's a good article on the stinky housing market. If anyone knows of a good house for sale on a golf course in California, let me know.

Invest in peace...

Just when I wanted to dump Walmart....a lesson breaks out!

2007-03-08T08:56:00.000-08:00

They go and raise their dividend 31%! Today they announced here that they were going to raise their dividend 31% to 88 cents a share. If you have 1000 shares of Walmart, which would be worth $48,070 you'd get an extra $880 in dividend gains. That's a 1.8% gain for doing nothing, pretty much the same as having that cash invested in a savings account, so anything Walmart gains is a bonus. The problem is, Walmart hasn't gained in a long, long time, through no fault of their own. The company is just too big already, so no one is pushing the stock up. Everyone assumes they can't get any bigger. Still not really worth keeping in my view.

Dividends are a good way to increase your gains, but if the stock doesn't move up with the dividends and if you didn't buy the stock well below it's averages, you're not really gaining. Let's say you own Walmart and you bought it at $46, which is about the average price it's been through the past year. Right now it's at $48, so you gained $2 a share or a 4% gain, throw on the 1.8% divided and you're up 5.8%, right? Well, not really. We have to subtract 4-6% for inflation. Then we have to subtract 30% of the gain for taxes. So, you've actually lost money. You need to be pulling a 10% gain or more to be actually gaining in the long-term. Gaining $10 on the dollar (10%) gets you $7 after taxes, -4% for inflation = $3 gain or so. You're moving forward, which is good. A 5.8% gain sucks rocks (can you say CD's current return?)

A combination of dividends and upward movement of stocks give you a great return, so you gotta find both.

Now, lets say you bought Walmart at $42, the lowest price of the year, well below its 50 and 200 day moving averages. It's at $48 now, so you'd be up 8.75% + 1.8% in dividend gains, now you're up 10.55%. That would rock, which goes to show two things:

1) A stock doesn't need to move much to make a profit.
2) It's WHEN you buy the stock that dictates your profit! Buy low, sell high. That simple. If the stock isn't below it's average, it's not time to buy it.

It's the same stock, it's the same current price, the only difference is when you bought it that changes your gain greatly and a 10.55% return in one year on your stock beats most mutual funds and the market most years. Easy stuff. Buy name monopolies at the bottom of the barrel under their 50 and 200 day moving averages and hold them. Dividends are a bonus.

Invest in peace...