Fool Portfolio Report
Thursday, April 25, 1996
(FOOL GLOBAL
WIRE)
by David Gardner
(MotleyFool)
ALEXANDRIA, VA, April 25, 1996 -- The Fool Portfolio threw aside the barbells and the weight machines and the Gatorade today and just took one lung huff, closing up slightly but below market standards. After what we've seen in the past few weeks, this is indeed a welcome sigh. It's certainly an easier report to write tonight, and we don't have to brag at all because there's not really much to brag about. So those of you sick of our bragging, I'll just go ahead and brag that we're not bragging about anything tonight!
Seven of our nine stocks closed lower Thursday, despite across-the-boards gains in the market indices. (The S&P 500 rose 0.42%, whilst the NASDAQ's tide lifted higher, up 0.63%.) Why this is, we can't say. It no doubt has something to do with harmonic convergence, biorhythms, and late-night psychic hotlines, but actually breaking apart those factors and weighting them individually blew up our $5 calculator here at Fool HQ. So instead of explaining the short-term movements of our stocks through a painstaking analysis of planetary gyration and gremlins, we'll look take a brief look at a few of the stocks themselves. Then we'll send you off to the most important document in Fooldom tonight, for your reading pleasure.
Let's take a brief glance at our NYSE stocks, for starters. Chevron, GE, and Gap all suffered drops of $3/4 or worse, bucking the rising Dow trend. (Sears actually rose $1/8 today.) Chevron, 1996's Foolish Four star, was actually down much more earlier in the day, closing a point above its low. The stock has batted around between $55 and $59 all month, which ain't too bad when you consider that it began the year at $52 3/8. At its current price of $57 3/8,CHV is up 9.5% for 1996. That's a pretty good performance for this stodgy old megabillion-dollar oil monolith, and is slightly ahead of the Dow for the year (the Dow is up 8.8% so far in 1996).
You know, a lot of our regular readers who follow the Dow stocks may not be aware that we give a DAILY summary of the Dow stocks and the Foolish Four in our Investing Foolishly section. Penned faithfully and expertly by the copacetic MF DowMan, this writeup is accessible at any time you're at The Fool Online, and provides both textual and numerical summary. Just follow these steps:
Hit the Index button below (or from any screen at The Motley Fool), and you'll have an alphabetical listing of our editorial offerings here in Fool Financial. Select "Dow Dividend Approach." That takes you to our DDA screen, where you can hit the "Foolish 4 Model Portfolio" button every day for a fully Foolish recount. Today, DowMan focuses on Dupont and Kodak.
Our semiconductor stocks were weak today, both dropping after strong recent runs. We still remain down about 30% in both of our semi stocks, Applied Materials and KLA Instruments. But you know, one pleasant consequence of the recent rise in these equities is that we now receive highly unusual e-mails that read something like this: "Guys, thanks for KLA Instruments. I found it because of your portfolio, did my homework, bought in at $24, and now I'm very happy. Great work!" And those notes are sincere, no irony intended.
Sheeeesh.
OK, go KLAC!
Finally tonight, Iomega rose $1 5/8 to poke back up over $50. We like this. . . and Iomega's counterbalancing of America Online's decline (down $3/4) was the Portfolio posted a gain today. But rather than spend any time discussing company news (because there wasn't any), we'll just mention two key things to close the Fool recap today. First is that CEO Kim Edwards will be appearing on CNBC's Squawk Box tomorrow morning. I'm not exactly sure of the time (the show goes 8:30-10:00 AM ET), but suffice to say that (a) if anybody knows, THEY know in the Iomega message folder, and (b) you can be sure we'll provide a summary of the important stuff right here in Fooldom tomorrow. CNBC's Mark Haines dropped a note in the Fool Suggestion Box to let us know of that today. Thanks, Mark.
Second, and to close, we've issued a slightly abbreviated report tonight to give you time to read "Templar Contra Greenberg," which is one of the best things I've read in Fooldom in 1996. It's right there on our main screen. . . just click 'at button in the upper left. (If for any reason you can't find it, just send a note to MF Templar and he'll guide you there himself.)
For now, Fool on!
---David Gardner, April 25, 1996
Day Month Year History FOOL +0.30% 29.18% 64.19% 206.58% S&P 500 +0.42% 1.14% 6.00% 42.42% NASDAQ +0.63% 7.52% 12.55% 64.43% *Scroll down or expand screen for full portfolio accounting AMER - 3/4 ...AMAT -1...CHV - 3/4 ...GE -1 1/8 ...GPS - 7/8 ...IOMG +1 5/8 ...KLAC - 1/2 ...MDRX - 1/4 ...S + 1/8 ... Rec'd # Security In At Now Change 5/17/95 1005 Iomega Cor 5.04 50.50 902.39% 8/5/94 680 AmOnline 7.27 65.00 793.73% 4/20/95 310 The Gap 16.28 28.75 76.65% 8/5/94 165 Sears 28.93 51.00 76.32% 8/11/95 95 GenElec 57.91 78.00 34.68% 8/11/95 110 Chevron 49.00 57.38 17.09% 1/29/96 250 Medicis Ph 27.86 28.25 1.40% 8/24/95 100 AppldMatl 57.52 41.13 -28.51% 8/24/95 130 KLA Instrm 44.71 30.50 -31.78% Rec'd # Security Cost Value Change 5/17/95 1005 Iomega Cor 5063.13 50752.50 $45689.37 8/5/94 680 AmOnline 4945.56 44200.00 $39254.44 4/20/95 310 The Gap 5045.25 8912.50 $3867.25 8/5/94 165 Sears 4772.65 8415.00 $3642.35 8/11/95 95 GenElec 5501.87 7410.00 $1908.13 8/11/95 110 Chevron 5389.99 6311.25 $921.26 1/29/96 250 Medicis Ph 6964.99 7062.50 $97.51 8/24/95 100 AppldMatl 5752.49 4112.50 -$1639.99 8/24/95 130 KLA Instrm 5812.49 3965.00 -$1847.49 CASH $12147.13 TOTAL $153288.38
