By
Tim Beyers
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More Articles
October 27, 2008
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Welcome to week 11 of my stock-picking throwdown with Mr. Market. Let's get right to the numbers:
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Company
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Starting Price
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Recent Price
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Total Return
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Akamai (Nasdaq: AKAM )
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$22.23
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$12.72
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(42.8%)
|
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Harris & Harris (Nasdaq: TINY )
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$6.22
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$4.25
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(31.7%)
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IBM
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$129.05
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$82.07
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(36.4%)
|
|
Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL )
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$22.75
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$16.20
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(28.6%)
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Taiwan Semiconductor (NYSE: TSM )
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$10.34
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$6.46
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(37.5%)
|
|
AVERAGE RETURN
|
--
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--
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(35.40%)
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S&P 500 SPDR (AMEX: SPY )
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$126.73
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$87.04
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(31.32%)
|
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DIFFERENCE
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--
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--
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(4.08%)
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Source: Yahoo! Finance.
Up, down, up down -- Mr. Market just can't make up his mind. Not that he ever has in the 15-year history of The Motley Fool. I'd just like to catch a wave and ride it for a while, you know?
Good news from Akamai and Taiwan Semiconductor, both of which report on Thursday, could help. Recent history seems favorable; Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL ) still has a great story, and Google is winning even as the recession looms.
Trouble is, too many investors have turned into Chihuahuas -- timid and visibly shaken by the selling around them. So they also sell, sending excellent stocks lower. It's astounding, if perfectly predictable, behavior.
Top investors keep their cool to generate superior returns -- like when David Gardner produced a decade of 20% returns by buying and holding the likes of Amazon.com and eBay in the real-money Rule Breaker portfolio, or when Tom Gardner selected a "simpleton portfolio" to hold for a decade, with market-crushing results. I think these five tech stocks will produce plenty of durable gains.
This week's checkup
Now, let's move on to the rest of this week's update:
There's your checkup. See you back here on Friday for more tech stock talk.
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