You may notice that the resident trader has refrained from taking profits in the left margin of the Traders’ Edge portfolio this week.
This is due to extenuating circumstances — there weren’t many profits to take and, most importantly, it’s Valentine’s Day.
Yes, the motley trader has been love-struck, ogling an old flame (no, not Cell-Loc!).
If the trader isn’t fully invested, he will be taking her out on Valentine’s Day.
She was the trader’s first true love.
She is a sight for sore eyes, sitting patiently on a desk in the trader’s office watching him go blind pounding copy into a dying monitor with colours that resemble a tie-dyed T-shirt from Woodstock.
The old flame is from the old school.
She is kind, gentle, genuine, old-fashioned, sentimental, faithful, wireless, fibreless and, sporting that trademark red-striped ribbon, sexier than a Madonna video.
She’s a dream, alright.
She doesn’t need downloading.
She has never crashed.
She doesn’t scream out in the night: “YOU ARE PERFORMING AN ILLEGAL OPERATION AND WILL BE ELECTROCUTED IF YOU DON’T SIGN OFF FIVE SECONDS AGO!”
She has never had a paper jam.
She has never been hurled out of a pressbox.
She has never run off with the trader’s credit card.
She never delivers profit warnings from Bloomberg.
She never tells the trader when his stocks tank.
She is peaceful, refusing to resort to violent activities, such as playing video games or burning CDs.
She has never blinked out when the power has gone out.
The old flame rekindles fond memories of pre-email/voicemail/cellphone days when people actually spoke to each other without typing.
She may well be the perfect partner.
Yet, in a world gone tech mad, Rodney Dangerfield gets more respect.
The other day, ol’ Bre-Xer asked his pal why he was pounding the keys on the computer keyboard so hard the cups were rattling in the cupboard. “You mad about something?”
“Nope,” the trader said, blowing the dust off the trusty 1906 Remington typewriter.
“Actually, I’m paying tribute to an old flame. I’m buying the old gal a new ribbon for Valentine’s Day. Tell the boss the next column’s in the mail.”
PRO'S THREE STARS
Bob McWhirter, portfolio manager of Toronto-based Triax Investment Management, cautions investors over initiating positions in technology in a sluggish economy.
“I am cautious on most technology stocks currently, due to concerns about sales and earnings visibility in the coming six months,” says McWhirter.
The three tech stocks he favours are TSE-traded Canadian companies C-Mac Industries (CMS), Open Text Corporation (OTC) and Mosaid Technologies (MSD).
C-Mac, which had a recent price of $68.50, boasted a 119-per-cent revenue increase for the fourth quarter compared to a year earlier.
The company, which has traded in a year range of $48-$113.50, designs, engineers and manufactures equipment for the electronics sector, with about 60 per cent of its sales from Nortel.
Open Text (recent price $52.50, range $25.10-$88) also counts Nortel as a customer, providing collaborative commerce software for e-business.
Mosaid (recent price $40, range $13-$67.50), designs memory chips and tests systems for memory chips.
TRADING TIP:
Successful traders learn from their mistakes by writing them down. Undisciplined traders erase those painful memories.
SITE OF THE WEEK:
www.oiadvisor.com
If your investment adviser hasn’t called in, say, 47 years, you may want to consider taking the bull by the horns and getting your financial planning and portfolio management on-line.
IO advisor is a Canadian site that provides financial services for fees ranging from $200 a year for gold service to $400 a year for platinum services. There are also monthly fees as well as a free trial period.
HOT STOCK: ALLIED OIL & GAS
AOG-TSE $1.57
Up .41 (32.3%) on 325,700 shares (for week ending Feb. 9)
Oil and gas has been a safe haven while over-zealous talking heads on the stock channels send skittish investors scurrying for cover with grim economic forecasts. Allied, the Calgary-based company with interests focused on Western Canada, looks like a shining star in a galaxy of mostly flat junior oil-and-gas companies as investors look forward to financials, which should be out in the near future.
COLD STOCK: CONSOLIDATED ASTON RESOURCES
ASQ-CDNX .63
Down .57 (47.5%) on 4,500 shares (for week ending Feb. 9)
A tip of the chapeau to Consolidated Aston. We’ve been burning the midnight oil just to find a Calgary-based mining company that makes the radar screen. So what if the stock took a bit of a tumble. At least Consolidated Aston, which has an ambitious gold-and-silver exploration program in Alaska, showed some life in a mining sector that has looked deader’n Bre-X.
