Ninety days have passed since I posted Scary market -- any safe stocks? and Still scary market -- more SAFE HAVENS.
When I wrote these original posts the market was on shaky ground with higher fuel prices, interest rate uncertainty, housing market questions, common summer market doldrums, and concerns about upcoming earnings reports, consumer spending, and inflation. Well, we made it through this valley of worry with fuel prices declining, interest rates stabilizing, employment and consumer confidence robust, and reported earnings primarily to the upside. The stock market has been riding this wave upward with the DJIA hitting news highs.
I revisited the stock suggestions I made in these posts after thirty days and decided to continue to track them. I believe in some level of accountability if one is blabbing (or blogging) about a subject, and especially since I have been writing for the Blogging Stocks site. All of the stocks have moved up in the last sixty days, but since my original posts in July, the share prices of six have moved up and two have gone down. I have not changed my mind about any of these companies or their stocks during this period.
We considered buying some more United Parcel Service, Inc. (NYSE:UPS) and did not; we added to our position in the Southern Company (NYSE:SO) instead, which has done well, and Huaneng Power International, Inc. (NYSE:HNP) which has done even better; see: GOOG is OK but HNP could be better!
They are listed in the order I mentioned them in my earlier posts.
Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE:BRK.B) closed Tuesday at $3,560 up from $2,995.
Washington Mutual, Inc. (NYSE:WM) closed Tuesday at $43.00 down from $45.50.
Southern Company (NYSE:SO) closed Tuesday at $36.21 up from $32.50.
Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) closed Tuesday at $47.66 up from $43.30.
United Parcel Service (NYSE:UPS) closed Tuesday at $77.61 down from $78.40
Anheuser-Busch (NYSE:BUD) closed Tuesday at $47.07 up from $45.50.
Proctor & Gamble (NYSE:PG) closed Tuesday at $63.20 up from $55.70.
Petro China (NYSE:PTR) closed Tuesday at $116.40 up from $110.90.
As a group these stocks did well and you would have been safe with all of them. There are many others that could have been included in this list and there are companies that have appreciated more. The purpose of this group was capital preservation in a down market. If you are concerned about weakness in the market going forward perhaps some of these stocks belong in your portfolio.
Interested in reading more? Check out my other posts for Blogging Stocks here.
Disclosure: I own shares in BRK, WM, SO, UPS, and PTR.
Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the vice president for Design and Research of an Architecture & Planning firm.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-15-2006 @ 4:43PM
Mark said...
I don't think this market is scary at all as long as you stay atop the trend. Everyone harkens back to the collapse of the bubble which was pretty much the Black Friday of our generation extended into many days of downside. But the truth is had you been on the right side of the trend going down then you would have made as much, or more, money than you did on the way up. The reason that people make so much of the market being scary is that the average investor/person does not even know about shorting or inverse funds or how to use them. I wonder if any business courses on investing even dare to teach people how to make money in a down trending market? I doubt it. I have been using one service online with an incredible return very successfully and they have the market trends pretty much locked so I don't even worry about that anymore anyway and all this is just appeal to emotions when you call a market "scary". Anyway their website is at: http://charitycoinshop.com/matistmainad.html if you want to check out their returns.
11-15-2006 @ 5:18PM
Sheldon L. said...
I do not think that the average investor should even think about shorting stocks PERIOD!
11-15-2006 @ 8:49PM
Mr. noitall said...
O.K., I'll admit that I've been wrong, wrong ,wrong, about the stock market. It's gone up quite a bit during the last 4 months. But I'm still scared. This morning I read ANOTHER BACKDATING story written by Justin Fox for Fortune magazine. It seems that not too many people are paying attention to the backdating scandals. Some just don't think that it matters and the amount of money that's involve is insignificant. I don't think it has become a big story yet because the market has been moving up. Nobody cares about the skimming as long as they are still making money. The article written by Mr. Fox also points out a number of other tricks that are use by corporate executives that can increase the value of their options. Many of these tricks might be legal, but I would consider them to be dishonest and corrupt. What scares me most is not the amount of money that's involved, but the amount of people that are involved and the widespread lack of character and integrity. These same people, who seem to have no problem using these tricks to enrich themselves, are the same people that we all trust to tell us the truth about the finacial condition of their corporations. Does it make sense to totally trust and believe some one now, when you know that same person has tricked or deceived you in the past? I know I've written several comments in the past about this same subject, but I feel it's important enough that it deserves repeating.