Welcome to week 126 of my stock-picking throwdown with Mr. Market. Let's get right to the numbers.
|
Company |
Starting Price* |
Recent Price |
Total Return |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Akamai |
$22.23 | $48.93 | 120.1% |
| Harris & Harris | $6.22 | $4.69 | (24.6%) |
|
IBM |
$123.46** | $155.50 | 25.9% |
| Oracle | $22.37** | $32.51 | 45.3% |
| Taiwan Semiconductor | $9.35** | $13.27 | 41.9% |
| AVERAGE RETURN | -- | -- | 41.72% |
| S&P 500 SPDR | $120.57** | $128.37 | 6.47% |
| DIFFERENCE | -- | -- | 35.25 |
Source: Yahoo! Finance.
*Tracking began on Aug. 7, 2008.
**Adjusted for dividends and other returns of capital.
Score one for Mr. Market. After a huge victory in the wake of the annual techpalooza known as the Consumer Electronics Show, my five stocks gave back a point and a half in this three-year contest. Such is the yin and yang of investing.
Indexers suffered more yin than yang this week. Of the major indices, only the Dow rallied during the week. The S&P 500 was off by 0.76%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq gave back 2.39%. Small caps took the biggest beating, as the benchmark Russell 2000 fell by 4.26%. MannKind
Maybe the skeptics have a point. Not only are we fed a constant stream of news about U.S. municipalities nearing bankruptcy, but we also had a meeting between President Obama and China's President Hu at the White House this week that accomplished little. The Sino superpower's currency still isn't market-based, and while an order for 200 Boeing jets is an improvement, the U.S. remains on the losing end of a $250 billion-plus trade imbalance.
The week in tech
Silicon Valley pays attention to that number, since China remains a hotbed for tech manufacturing. But it wasn't the trade deficit that drove down the share prices of so many techies this week. Disappointing earnings and downgrades gave traders all the selling momentum they required.
Consider Seagate Technology
Google
Page, meanwhile, will be called on to manage a global workforce of 24,000 at a time when The Big G faces competition in every market in which it competes. Bulls are hoping he can be the next Bill Gates. Bears see him as the next Jerry Yang.
For now, I'm siding with the bulls. Page helped unleash one of history's greatest disruptive innovations when he and Sergey Brin reinvented the search engine in the '90s. If he's able to rekindle even a fraction of that innovative mojo as CEO, today's investors will be handsomely rewarded.
How do I know? Look at David Gardner. He produced a decade of 20% returns in the real-money Rule Breaker portfolio by betting on a collection of innovators and then holding them for the long term. Tom Gardner's "simpleton portfolio" was also a 10-year winner. I believe that, with my tech portfolio, I will achieve similar success.
Checkup time!
Now let's move on to the rest of today's update:
- Akamai and several other unrelated "cloud computing" stocks took a beating after F5 Networks
(Nasdaq: FFIV) on Wednesday reported earnings that failed to meet the Street's expectations. Call it a repeat of October's buying opportunity.
- On Tuesday, IBM reported yet another quarter of market-pleasing results. Revenue improved by 7% in Q4 after accounting for currency effects. Per-share earnings rose by 16%, easily beating the average Wall Street estimate. The results continue a winning streak for Big Blue, which last week emerged victorious in a contest between its "Watson" supercomputer and two all-time champions of the television game show Jeopardy!
There's your checkup. See you back here next week for more tech-stock talk.
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