A well-crafted watchlist is critical to smart investing: It can help you find attractive buying opportunities, and it can save you from bad decisions.
After all, investors can be their own worst enemies. When we overreact to the day's news, we make rushed decisions driven by emotion. A watchlist can help you slow down the process, examine the risks, and essentially take a deep, money-protecting breath. The Fool now offers MyWatchlist.com, your customized hub to follow the performance and Fool news and commentary about the companies you're watching.
But what to put on your watchlist? Today, Motley Fool analyst and resident computer nerd Eric Bleeker shares three companies that have taken up residence on his watchlist and one that has since made the jump to his Rising Stars portfolio.
One to watch
Life in the clouds can be lucrative. With cloud computing picking up steam, the demand for data storage is constantly increasing, which makes life good for the folks at EMC
But there's more to the numbers. EMC owns a massive stake in VMware
Two to watch
Citrix Systems
Three to watch
Chip maker Marvell Technology Group
The result has been a 30% climb in share price since Eric put the company on his watchlist. But the semiconductor field is notoriously cyclical -- what goes up generally will come back down. Eric's waiting for a pullback on price to make a purchase.
And one he bought
After an extended wait, he found such a pullback on Cirrus Logic
"That's a great position to have leadership in, because if there's one thing that small and power-hungry smartphones crave, it's power savings and smaller chips," he wrote. "Take, for example, Cirrus' relationship with Apple
By making a purchase after the market looked less than favorably on a recent earnings report, Eric had the opportunity to get into a high-quality business trading on sale.
And that's exactly why it pays to watch. You can make smarter investing decisions with your own version of My Watchlist, new and free from the Fool. Click below to start following one of the stocks mentioned above: