Wednesday, May 18, 2005

New Favorite Show

Forget CSI. Forget America’s Next Top Model. Forget How Clean Is Your House.

My new best-favorite show in the world is now Mad Money, on CNBC.

Oh my God. I laughed, I cried, I argued with him (always a fun exercise, shouting at the host of a television show), I asked myself, “What? What was that? Geez! Talk slower, talk slower!!!”

I hereby vote Jim Cramer extremely likely to drop dead of a heart attack mid-show. Good lord. I’m watching the ‘lightening round’ right immediately now, and he has given opinions on about five hundred stocks in less than five minutes. Holy smokes.

He is a much faster mover than yours truly. Well, duh, of course he is. He’s a hedge fund manager. I’m one of those ‘buy in and then sit there for a year or two or five’ types. He’s looking to buy a stock that is right immediately now undervalued and then !BOOM!, the instant it slides up, sell-sell-sell!!

But he did interest me on a couple points. For example, I've been keeping an eye on my 7-Eleven (SE) position lately. They’re trading on a 52-week high right now (and have been for about a week now). I bought in a little over a year ago at $15, it’s now trading at almost $30. When I bought in at $15, I had set a target of $28 a share.

Hmmmm, I said to myself, sipping my second cup of coffee at 6:10 this morning. Methinks perhaps I ought to take some profits on that deal…

And then what does this guy blurt out but “7-Eleven! It’s been good to you, now sell, sell, sell!”

Wow. Weird. Because just about everybody else is still hollering, “Buy! Buy! Buy!!”

Me, I’m meeting him halfway. I’ll be selling some of my position, locking in most of the profits I’ve made. I’m not exiting the position…just scooping the profits off the top. I have no crystal ball, damn the luck; I can’t guess whether this stock will continue to rise or crap out next week due to some bizarre confluence of assorted moons and stars and a new diet that bans the Slurpee sweeping the nation. All I know is, I like their balance sheets, I like their net income, I like their Slurpees, their distribution system rocks the free world and, by the way, I like their gas prices. Our local 7-Eleven has one of the lowest priced pumps around.

Oh thank heaven. (Sorry, couldn’t resist – but then, my van takes up to 28 gallons at a crack, so low(er) gas prices do make me sing…)

2 comments:

Very Herodotus said...

America's Next Top Model rocks! I was hoping Kahlen would win, but oh well.

I wish I had a clever comment about stocks or investing. Alas, I have none. Hmmm, what does that say?

Myownigloo said...

I wish I had your savvy about buying stocks. Of course, I have nothing with which to purchase said stocks, but I figure I should plan for the day and learn in advance. Reading your blog is almost as good as Cliff Notes!