Welcome to week 15 of my stock-picking throwdown with Mr. Market. Let's get right to the numbers:
|
Company |
Starting Price* |
Recent Price*** |
Total Return |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM) |
$22.23 |
$9.29 |
(58.2%) |
|
Harris & Harris |
$6.22 |
$3.10 |
(50.2%) |
|
IBM (NYSE:IBM) |
$129.05 |
$71.74 |
(44.4%) |
|
Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL) |
$22.75 |
$15.40 |
(32.3%) |
|
Taiwan Semiconductor |
$10.34 |
$5.85 |
(43.4%) |
|
AVERAGE RETURN |
-- |
-- |
(45.70%) |
|
S&P 500 SPDR (AMEX:SPY) |
$126.28** |
$75.45 |
(40.25%) |
|
DIFFERENCE |
-- |
-- |
(5.45%) |
Source: Yahoo! Finance.
*Tracking began on Aug. 7, 2008.
**Adjusted for dividends and other returns of capital.
***Yahoo! Finance at close of Nov. 20, 2008.
Anyone else feel like they just went 10 rounds with Muhammad Ali? Forget Detroit. My portfolio, down 15% in a week, needs a bailout, posthaste. I also lost ground to Mr. Market.
Bargain-hunting isn't as easy as it seems, either. Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) looks cheap, but it could be a spectacular value trap. Cisco, too -- if you're Rick Munarriz. Here are his three reasons to throw this networker away.
But not all tech news is bad news. Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ) beat back the bear attack with a better-than-expected earnings report. So did cloud-computing upstart salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM). Nibbling at low-priced tech stocks like these now should lead to a feast of wealth later.
Consider history. 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. Tom Gardner's "simpleton portfolio" was also a market-beater. With these five tech stocks, I believe that I will achieve similar success.
Checkup time!
Now, let's move on to the rest of today's update:
- New data from researcher iSuppli suggests that Taiwan Semiconductor and its chipmaking peers are in for a very tough 2009.
- The state of Georgia awarded IBM an $873 million consulting and services contract.
- Akamai cut approximately 110 jobs, while Amazon announced a competitive, if lightweight, CDN service called CloudFront.
There's your checkup. See you back here next week for more tech stock talk.
Get your clicks with more techie Foolishness:
- Why the iPhone is poised to keep winning.
- Obama's candidacy was built on tech. Why can't his presidency be, too?
- No matter what he says today, Mr. Softy is going to learn to yodel. Bet on it.
