Wednesday, January 31, 2007

NNVC - update

On Monday I suggested that NNVC was ripe for a 10% rally to $1.00. As of Wednesday morning, it's there. Now what? Based on price and volume patterns, and sheer arrogance, I am looking for $1.50 to $2.00 in the weeks ahead.

A

Monday, January 29, 2007

NNVC

NNVC, an old favorite of this blog, traded as low as $0.60 at the end of December. We bought this stock at 10 cents, rode it up to $3.75 last March, and have watched it slowly consolidate, retrace, crash, burn, and endure the ultimate indignity, tax loss selling, all while sitting patiently on our remaining shares (yes, I sold some above $3, damn, windfalls happen).

That said, I've been buying again, from $0.80 about a week ago. Why? Price and Volume. A month of firming prices on increasing volume after such a horrendous six month decline suggests at least a counter-trend rally, and at most, a revisit to old highs. Although not the same no-brainer as buying at 10 cents, I like the risk:reward here, looking for a move above $1.00 (10% higher) in the days ahead.

A

Sunday, January 21, 2007

Dines Annual Forecast Issue

Saturday morning brought the 2007 Annual Forecast Issue of The Dines Letter into my mailbox. Forty-six pages of what Jim Dines considers his most important work of the year. One year ago, in the 2006 Annual Forecast issue, Dines focused on the investment opportunities in Uranium for the coming year.

Performance of some of his Uranium picks from the 2006 issue are impressive:

Pinetree Capital +300%
Fronteer Development +233%
Paladin Resources +260%
Mega Uranium +330%
Denison Mines +121%


So, with that as an introduction, what says Dines for 2007?

Some sub-headers from the 2007 issue:

The Four Greatest Investment Opportunities;
The Coming Energy Crisis;
The Coming End of the Age of Petroleum;
The Coming Uranium Buying Panic;
How High Might Uranium Prices Go?
How To Know When To Sell Your Uraniums;


Those headers come from the first 11 pages of the 2007 Annual Forecast Issue. I think you get the idea. As for Dines' picks for 2007, he asks that subscribers not give them away. So I won't, but suffice it to say, not a lot has changed since his appearance on The Nightly Business Report which I linked in a previous blog and in which he made some specific recommendations.

The remaining 35 pages of this issue covers geopolitics, gold and silver, stocks, health issues and of course, his current stock picks. I have read through it for an initial take on Dines' view of the world and investments for the coming year and will go through it again for more details and nuance in the days ahead. But as promised, we have been waiting for this issue for several weeks and I wanted to post the gist of it ASAP for my readers. This newsletter is worth every penny.

A

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

FRG - Breakout Watch

FRG's highest weekly close, ever, was in November, 2006 at $9.90. In a two month consolidation period soon thereafter, FRG made a print low of $7.61. It is now at $9.25, up 5% today (Wednesday) and up a very cool 21.5% from it's low on January 10, just seven days ago. We like FRG's fundamentals and we like its sector, Uranium. Now, we love it's price momentum. All that's left is a breakout above $9.90. Everything is in place for a home run.

A

Friday, January 12, 2007

Uranium

I came across this Merrill Lynch report on Uranium, published in July, 2006, covering the the fundamentals of the sector and recommending several stocks.

The Dines Letter annual forecast issue is due out any day now and I suspect there will be more on uranium picks in that issue. Meanwhile, our uranium picks FRG and PNP.TO are pulling back a bit on the worldwide commodity prices drop, maybe a buying opportunity in those names. Uranium, according to Dines at least, is not just a commodity anymore, he considers it the investment opportunity of a lifetime.

A

Saturday, January 06, 2007

Thinking and Trading

Thinking about what you are doing is probably the most underused tool in trading. Let me give you a non-trading example of what I am getting at here.

Over this past week, I lost all my personal preferences, bookmarks, mailboxes and custom settings on my Powerbook (Macintosh G4). My first recourse was Apple Support and when that didn't help, I posted the problem at the Apple Discussion Forum. Still no relief, but I did get some insights from those two sources as to how all of this information is organized on my computer.

Thinking about the loss, and what caused it, I started a logical train of thought that led me to a misplaced Library folder, found it, put it back where it belonged and bright and early this Saturday morning, everything was exactly where it should be, problem solved.

The analogy to trading is direct. Sometimes we look to an indicator, or guru, or someone else's opinion for an easy answer for what to do. We learned this habit because sometimes it works like that. A Blog, or newsletter, or indicator leads us into a very profitable trade and we spend years trying to make that happen again. But it was a random event and since there are only two directions that a stock can go, getting it right happens, whether there is any insight there or not.

What has worked best for me in trading is thinking about why something worked and not so much searching for the holy grail, be it a guru or indicator. An example of this is our Insider Buying system. We know stocks go up when lots of stock is being bought by multiple insiders. We know where the information is made available and we know the nuances of why some of these pop more then others, and why some are have lasting effects more then just the immediate pops.

Now I have promoted the work of Eric Muathe and Jim Dines here before, so how do I reconcile those recommendations? Muathe has found a breakout pattern that works and Dines has a more geopolitical bottom down approach for finding trends in financial markets before they are recognized as trends by the masses. In both cases, they don't replace the traders own brain, they expand the potential. I can find a Muathe break-out without Eric posting the stock on his web site.

So my message is simply that becoming more self-reliant in your trading will bring a success that goes beyond the profits of any individual trade. No two paths to trading success are the same, but intrinsic to every successful trader there is an independent thought process.

Look inside, its there.

A