You can see when Lehman filed chapter 11 and a few weeks later when the markets rallied hard again. Oh I wish that could happen again. My stomach can only handle that kind of leverage once a year though!

Just looking for steady returns these days. £1000-2000 a month. The biggest challenge is ensuring my cash flow falls as little as possible when the markets are sinking. The DOW is down about 1000 points yet I am up. That puts me in a good position when we rally.

5 Months return on investment

Currently holding:
1000 (LON:SOLA / NYSE:SOL (ADR) )
1 NDAQ100
400 NYSE:BAC
100 NASDAQ:CSCO
150 NASDAQ:INTC
500 NYSE:GE

Ditched BARC and RBS when they were in profit. Same for C and BAC. Bought BAC again though in this latest fall.

Heavier than i’d like on GE, but hoping it will pay off. It’s a risky one!

Southern Water is to freeze the pay of its 1,600-strong workforce, including directors, because of the recession.

The company, which has 2.3 million customers in Kent, Sussex, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, said the aim was to avoid job losses.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7859038.stm

No raises, then lay offs then wage cuts. Looks like depression is on the way.

http://www.amazon.com/Think-Astrology-Grow-Rich-Money/dp/0963884719/

The tags has epic_fail (and many more). That takes you to more books like these.

http://www.amazon.com/Dow-36-000-Strategy-Profiting/dp/0609806998/ref=tag_tdp_sv_edpp_i

http://www.amazon.com/Dow-2008-Different-This-Time/dp/1893958701/ref=tag_tdp_sv_edpp_i

$3k in american banks
£1k in UK banks

Worst case scenario I lose ~£3k. I’ll probably have bigger problems to worry about if that happens though. I hope the risk taking pays off.

Charges – Total : $972M

Q4 – 2006 : $550M
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoom/0,,51_104_543~115444,00.html

Q1 – 2007 : $113M
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoom/0,,51_104_543~116842,00.html

Q2 – 2007 : $78M
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoom/0,,51_104_543~118383,00.html

Q3 – 2007 : $120M
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoom/0,,51_104_543~121475,00.html

Q4 – 2007 : $61M
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoom/0,,51_104_543~123283,00.html

Q1 – 2008 : $50M
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoom/0,,51_104_543~125171,00.html 

Write-downs – Total : $3168M

Q4 – 2007 : $1608M
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoom/0,,51_104_543~123283,00.html

Q2 – 2008 : $876M
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoom/0,,51_104_543~127059,00.html

Q4 – 2008 : $684M
http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/16245

I’m sure there has been more write-downs. I remember a $611M loss which was due to a writedown. Oh well charge write-down does it make a lot of difference. ATI has cost them over $4 billion.

Basically I have two google accounts. My iGoogle for desktop had the same widgets but it would not show in the mobile one. It is not in the mobile “Add Stuff” list either, so you cannot add it. On this link though you can see mobile compatible widgets and enable them on your mobile page.

In short

Last earnings report was -> Sept 31st. 90DMA of EURUSD was 1.50 currently it is 1.33

Quick look at the 10Q : http://www.shareholder.com/Common/Edgar/63908/1193125-08-227354/08-00.pdf

US market is approx 1/3 of revenue
European market is about 20% more than US market

Using last earnings europe was 43% of revenue @ 2688M dollars
If we convert that into euros at the time we get 1792 euros
If we convert that back into current dollars we get  2383M dollars
That’s 300M gone just to currency fluctuation.  

From ~Feb 8 to ~Sept 8 EURUSD was above 1.45 the whole time. After Octobers sellof it dipped down to 1.25 at one point. It soared back briefly into 1.45 and is now at the 1.36 level. I do not know when McDonalds convert their currency, but they are certainly not going to get the summer rates.

Also the dollar is stronger against the JPY too so that might have a little effect. I’m not sure about the rest of asian currencies.

I’ll do a little more research later, I’m not sure what the estimates for MCD are so I cannot comment on how far they’ll “miss” by.

Mcdonalds do not have much cash on hand either.

It just goes to show how bad common investor logic is. WalMart and McDonalds are the subjects of “what is bad for the economy is good for budget stores”. I believe this may be true in the case of stores such as Poundland but they are working with a much smaller customer base and are not global corporations. Their business models are also far less complex.

A similar fallacy is employed when comparing AMD and Intel. People seem to think that a bad economy is good for AMD because they sell “cheaper” processors. People who think this of course ignore all the cheap processors Intel have in their range. They think Intels revenue cut is because AMD is taking share, ignoring the fact that the world economy is down the crapper.

I think McDonalds will be next to pop. Stronger dollar will surely hurt their international revenue. I’ve not looked at their earnings sheets however I imagine a large amount of their income is from overseas. P/E is too high, not looked at the rest of the fundamentals. XOM is over priced too. Oil has tanked and demand is low. All these high P/E blue chips have pathetic dividends too.

Source: http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/UPDATE-Wal-Mart-falls-short/story.aspx?guid={89404347-F906-4100-956C-EF3842C8306B}

Lloyds share price down nearly 60%
http://finance.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=Logarithmic&chdeh=1&chdet=1231286744957&chddm=65919&q=LON:LLOY&ntsp=0

Barclays down nearly 60% too
http://finance.google.co.uk/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=Logarithmic&chdeh=1&chdet=1231286882602&chddm=38325&q=LON:BARC&ntsp=0

HSBC down nearly 30%
http://finance.google.co.uk/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=Logarithmic&chdeh=1&chdet=1231287011850&chddm=38325&q=LON:HSBA&ntsp=0

RBS down over 75%!
http://finance.google.co.uk/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=Logarithmic&chdeh=1&chdet=1231287057025&chddm=38325&q=LON:RBS&ntsp=0

HBOS down nearly 70%
http://finance.google.co.uk/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=Logarithmic&chdeh=1&chdet=1231287099893&chddm=38325&q=LON:HBOS&ntsp=0

Well done to the authorities. What do the ignorant naive short whiners have to say now? These people have the mind set that banning shorts means stocks can only go up! Doesn’t look that way to me!

I still maintain my short WalMart idea however it’s not risen high enough to get in yet.

Markets seem to be staying up at the moment. I still maintain they will start to drop between xmas and January. I’m wondering if people are covering shorts for tax reasons? I’m not completely sure on how things work in the USA. I see a lot of people saying “I sold for tax reasons”, I guess it works the other way around too although shorts aren’t an asset.