Friday, March 13, 2009

Capitulation: This Time, It's For Real

March 12th, 2009.

Bernie Madoff pleads guilty and faces 150 years in prison.

Jim Cramer willingly submits to his destruction from Jon Stewart and faces an indefinite future of irrelevancy.

Meanwhile the market is up 11% in just 3 days.

Capitulation: This time, it's for real.

DISCLAIMER: I've previously predicted stock market capitulation in March 2008 and August 2007...and been dead wrong. The good news is that I'm not a professional fraudster nor a loud-mouthed TV personality, so the consequence of being dead wrong is merely losing significant sums of my own money. The bad news is fundamentally, I'm no more credible than these two clowns, and shouldn't be listened to by anyone. Third time a charm?

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Stock Of The Month: AMSWA

American Software (AMSWA) is a developer of supply chain management and enterprise resource planning software, applicable across a wide variety of industries. Their business should get better as the broader economy turns healthier. They are a microcap at just $86 million, yet have $60 million in cash and no debt on their balance sheet. AMSWA is also very inexpensive, trading at just 11x forward P/E. But the real reason to own them is (not surprisely - for me) the huge dividend yield of 9.4%.

Here's my current portfolio. As always, I believe in all of these stocks - until I sell them.

Terra Nitrogen (TNH) 15.38%
Google (GOOG) 11.14%
Tesoro (TSO) 11.07%
Southern Copper (PCU) 9.82%
Dominion Resources Black Warrior Trust (DOM) 9.75%
Apple (AAPL) 9.51%
Ace Limited (ACE) 7.14%
Frontline (FRO) 5.69%
American Software 4.71%
Tidewater (TDW) 4.40%
The Distressed (AIG, BX, C, F, FNM, GM, JSDA, MOT, WFC, YRCW) 4.03%
Atlas Energy Resources (ATN) 3.53%
Apache (APA) 3.10%