Is your favorite stock on fire? Has it gone up in the last couple of weeks on no or limited news? One of my favorites, Intuitive Surgical (NASDAQ: ISRG), has already gained more than 100% this year and continued to fly over the past month reaching yesterday a 52-week high of $256.76 from a 52-week low of $95.00.

This is not the only high flyer. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) finished the day at $167.91, up $6.46 and Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) closed out the day at $95.85, another 52-week high, and both are up over 100% this year also. Adding to the momentum picture, Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) finally topped $600 closing at $609.62 or nearly a 3% gain on a day the market was down. Are there Ghosts in the Machine?

I can name many stocks that just won't quit. What's going on? Are we building up towards earnings reports that won't sustain these numbers just to watch profit taking or disappointment cut these stocks down to size? I have no idea, but I'm sure that stocks rising on no news day after day have either become speculative momentum plays or inside information is running through some brokerage houses. I believe the former, not the latter, but would love to hear some facts from anyone who has some. Otherwise, while I'm enjoying the ride, my skeptical side is telling me the music has to stop soon.

To find potential opportunities and verify my track record, read Chasing Value or Serious Money.

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the principal for design and research at an architecture & planning firm.

AAPL, AMZN, GOOG, ISRG: Momentum taking hold of growth stocks? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 09 Oct 2007 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This rather interesting blog post from Search Engine Watch accumulates some evidence that Google could be gearing up to launch an Internet telephone service. What is the investment community to make of it?

Like all rumors, there may be just a shred or a whole pile of truth to this. But if Google is entering the Voice-over-IP market (VoIP) to potentially compete with services such as Vonage (Blogging Stocks' Tom Taulli posts about its IPO here) or eBay's Skype, investors should pay close attention.

It has been in the news recently that Google plans to implement "click to call" features in its AdWords program. That would allow potential customers to click to actually call a Google AdWords advertiser instead of going straight to a website. That would improve conversions I would think. Perhaps Google will be adding VoIP capabilities to its Google Talk instant messaging service -- which has yet to gain any ground against competitors like Yahoo! Messenger and AOL Instant Messenger.

Perhaps Google plans to actually launch a VoIP service to compete with established players in the marketplace? This seems less plausible (where's the revenue model). But don't put it past Google. It's known for launching services that aren't monetized yet and then figuring out a way to generate revenue. Wait, where has that happened outside the search arena for Google? It hasn't yet -- but that hasn't stopped Google from launching services left and right.

Is Google preparing to launch a voice-over-IP service? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 14 Jun 2006 11:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.