Michael,
Thanks for the welcome back, but I can not take credit for selling my IBM Puts before I left, as you had stated. The Puts were sold for me on Monday, while I was at sea, because IBM traded above 140. In essance, I had placed a stop order on my short term IBM Puts. I would like to take credit for the trade, but I'm not sure if it would have worked out for me as well as it did, had I not taken these precautions. Because I knew I would be away, and out of touch with the market, I did not want to take the chance of giving back any more profits, than I already had, on my IBM Puts. That's why I said in my post yesterday, "sometimes you get lucky".
Having now had a chance to look at IBM's Q1 earnings report, I can not believe that the market has reacted the way it has. I will try to write more on this over the next few days, but something must have been said on IBM's conference call to make the stock go up the way it did. Certainly, the 15+ point increase in IBM's stock price, doesn't appear to be justified based on this earnings report. Not with the only positive for IBM being an increase in their Services Div. revenues, which carries GPMs of 19%, while their higher margin mainframe and servers businesses, continued to decline. The lower tax rate, share buyback, and dedreased R & D spending also does not portend good things in the future, either.
As for your question on Jack Rains-- While you were away Jack decided to stop posting to SI. It was becoming too much for him to do both Prodigy and SI. Further, the number of garbage posts on the Intel thread were becomming imposible to keep up with. I also, had dropped out for a time for the same reason. However, I decided to give it one more try by starting this new thread. Hopefully, my request that only individuals who provide their real name and complete an honest profile, will keep the quality of this thread high. If it works out, over time, I will ask Jack to consider returning to SI. Lately though, Jack has been traveling a lot, and with my own schedule being sporatic, we have not been corresponding as frequently as before.
For those of you who were on Prodigy in the old days, you may be pleased to know that before I left I received an e-mail from Bob Bragg. Bob wrote that he expects to be posting here in the near future. For those not familiar with Bob, he is one of the best INTC chartests that I know of, and was the B in the BJJP thread on Prodigy. I anxiously await his posts here and am confident that everyone on this thread will benefit.
Regards,
Jules |
