What are you 3 investment ideas or thoughts for 2012.

Mine are 

1. ELSE 
2. SMIT
3. CECO

 I just went through the below article and felt reasonable to post it here. The article argues that their model is enhanced version of your way of investing. May be you check it below and comment! Thanks for all the above. Nice reading!
www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investment-ideas/strategy-lab/value-investing/why-smart-stock-investors-use-only-the-numbers-to-make-money/article6139018/

1501 on the S&P500. I think most investors must be quite happy. 

I sold some of my positions and Im hoping to see a small correction by next week and then resume the uptrend for few weeks or possibly until March.

 JB- seems like your quite experienced. On your opinion on tech anaylyss. Ofcourse I also think no indicator is perfect otherwise everyone would be doing it but I think it can be used along with money management and some fundamentals. I started investing much later in 2007 but Iv made up for the lost time by reading a ton of books, analyzing markets and also trading. Made some money on the downside in 2008-2009 but the after 2009, the rally has surprised me. I expected stocks to go up but i didnt expect it to go up for so long but every year it keeps surprising people.

On Fundamentals, Although I have big respect for the fundies, in this world we have no choice but to adopt some kind of technical analysis only because many of the big traders and markets are influenced by them. In a sense technical analysis becomes a self fulfiling prophecy.

Piano- The article sounds interesting idea in a bull market, they tested from 2009-2012. I think their approach was buying strong companies. 

That is an interesting article plano80. I cannot say that I agree with its message though. Allow me to explain this with an analogy.

Suppose you went to a supermarket to buy fish. A salmon filet is marked 70% off. But you also notice that it does not have 'today's catch' seal on the package. Pretend you are a big fan of salmon. Would you consider buying it without (at least) asking how long it's been sitting there (if you can't readily smell any bad odor)? The message in the article conveys that because salmons are usually more expensive than other types of fish it's a bargain price at 70% off - therefore, nevermind checking its edibleness - just *blindly* purchase it. But what if the salmon is spoiled? What are the chances of this happening?

The article does not mention the *risks* or the probability of you purchasing a spoiled salmon. But it does give us statistics on the unspoiled salmon, which translates to: this method of buying has fared better because you paid a much lower price than the fully priced salmon with 'today's catch' seal on the package. Now suppose you happen to be throwing a big party - and instead of one salmon you purchase about thirty. The article assumes that because you bought thirty salmons - the chances of you getting stuck with spoiled ones are the same as the ones the grocery store owner would've gotten stuck with (the worst scenario)  - but there is a possiblitity that you could have picked all of them as unspoiled (the best scenario). Their statistics (84% for the buyers vs the 63% for the store owner) seem to suggest that buying this way has beat the market.

The question then for the buyers is - are they *really* better off buying their salmon this way? What do you think?








 

I think, the above is the differece. Extra effort could mean- extra emotions and false alarm.

Its been almost 4 weeks since my post on 1/16 to buy the following stocks

I just closed some of my positions and some of them putting a tight stop.

SKX  (put a tight sell stop, I have a nice profit on this)
TLK (sold all for profit)
CTCM (sold all for profit)
VIP  (sold all for profit)
RRC (sold all for profit)
AGNC (sold all for profit)
CRNT (sold all for loss)

what companies shares are the hottest at present?

ZGNX is pretty hot right now. Insiders are buying too. Might double soon.

 $RAD

Big companies haru ma kun chahi ramro chha aajkaal?

OK here is one big company- LGF( Lions Gate Entertainment Corp). Again, they gonna rack a lot of money through Hunger Games. They hot right now. Also the Chairman of the company is a genius. Once, he used to work for Carl Icann, the greedy oldman. Just my personal thoughts. I usually go to Dataroma to see who bought what.

@ rk11: $AIG looks highly undervalued. The book value of the stock is $67.10.