The Swain Flu is scaring everyone to death. Everyone major news outlet has this on and many people I see are terrified of it. The question is how bad can it get? There are trades on this, I played the bird flu in 2006 and it worked, so look at a few posted below for some ideas. The worse it gets (and lingers) the higher the stocks normally go. It’s really crazy actually, sometimes I have seen stocks at $0.40 go to $2. However, I will say Biotech is a very, very risky game, so know when you put the chips on the table, the stocks jiggle either way, in a hard fashion.
As for my strategy, I will sit on cash and see how the market goes. We could tank of this news because the market is manic like that. I see myself going back to my old strategy of rich balance sheets. I miss my old favorites, like NTGR at $10, FLR at $32, LOGI at $8, FWLT at $14, WFR at $13, UNH at $17. However, there are still firms will “class A” balance sheets in this environment but tougher to find because the great value isn’t there, due to the huge run up. I think technology will remain the hot area, regardless of the big move. GLW looks interesting here and the charts look good as well. For chips, I like TSM. I mean if you want to all crazy, AAPL at $126, still has $28 of net cash per share in the stock price, which represents like 25% of the stock price. You can’t find that anywhere these days, most of the big tech firms have 10% or less. Plus from a multiple perspective, it’s kind of low. I know big money is starting to short AAPL here but I wouldn’t. Frankly, below $100, I am a buyer. If you are interested in Healthcare, HUM still has a lot of cash of their books.
Regardless, I will sit on a huge cash position (around 50%) so if we pullback, I will cost average in on some good names. I think that is the best strategy and should create good profits in the near future. As for May, I believe it will be ugly, but I could be wrong. Right now my biggest position is the SDS and GIGM is right behind it.
Below is a list of earnings, good luck this week.
Monday:
Baidu
BIDU, Corning
GLW , QUALCOMM Inc.
QCOM, Valero Energy Corp.
VLO , Verizon
VZTuesday:
Buffalo Wild Wings, Inc.
BWLD , E*TRADE Financial Corp.
ETFC , Hercules Offshore
HERO , Honda Motor Co. Ltd.
HMC , Jacobs Engineering Group Inc.
JEC , Level 3 Communications
LVLT, Office Depot Inc.
ODP , Panera Bread
PNRA , Pfizer
PFE , RF Micro Devices, Inc.
RFMD , Under Armour, Inc
UA United States Steel Corp.
X, VF Corporation
VFCWednesday:
Aflac Incorporated
AFL , Agnico-Eagle Mines Limited
AEM , Akamai Technologies Inc.
AKAM , Baker Hughes Incorporated
BHI , Barrick Gold
ABX , First Solar, Inc.
FSLR , Genco Shipping & Trading Limited
GNK, Hess Corporation
HES, JDSU
JDSU, NutriSystem
NTRI, Starbucks
SBUX Visa Inc.
VThursday:
Apache Corporation
APA , Celgene Corp.
CELG , Cummins Inc.
CMI , ExxonMobil Corporation
XOM, Hartford Financial Services
HIG, Kimco Realty Corporation
KIM , Monster Worldwide
MWW Motorola Inc.
MOT, Patriot Coal Corporation
PCX , Procter & Gamble Company
PGFriday:
Chevron
CVX , MasterCard Incorporated
MA