That article says ChristianInvest.com says you should never short sell a stock but it says right here;
"I won't put my money in any of these but send up short prayers instead"
Stocks to Avoid christianinvest.com
I won't put my money in any of these but send up short prayers instead. I pray in the Name of Jesus that God will help them change into a better company or whatever else God feels will help. I leave them in God's hands. Please don't send up GET THEM GOD prayers but send changing type prayers.
This is a partial list. Our main focus is on finding winning companies but we have listed names that have stood out as ones to avoid. If I listed all of them like Seagram's Liquor, Playboy, Philip Morris and the like, it just wouldn't be practical. Therefore, we have a Dangerous Industries section below and offer many ethical research links to help you decide for yourself.
SPECIFIC STOCKS
SCHOLASTIC GROUP They promote the Harry Potter book heavily and exclude Christian material, so please avoid the book and their stock.
ENESCO GROUP INC. has been contracted to sell Harry Potter paraphernalia. Please don't poison your children with any of the Harry Potter books. They are filled with violence, wizards, magic, and more which will help your kids accept the New Age false doctrines leading to their spiritual destruction.
HARMONIC Update June 13, 2000 This company is in some trouble. AT&T, their largest customer, continues to decrease their orders. They were 50% of revenues and last quarter they dropped to about 43% and as of yesterday it's down to 28%. However, they claim they will still meet all earnings and revenue expectations for the year. I really like their product lines and hope they can manager their company well. If you own it I would hold it but if you're thinking of buying it, it might be wise to see if they really can meet expectations.Update June 26, 2000 Don't buy this one. This company warned today that they won't meet earnings expectations by a large amount after clearly claiming that they would make them only thirteen days ago. This is a big mistake in business honestly. You're much better being truthful with wall street because once you try to fool them they'll loose their confidence in you for a long time. This stock was already down so far since we bought it that we wanted to hold it even after the first problems came forth. It closed about $40 today and will probably open tomorrow about $28. I might sell even at a large loss. Fortunately we are heavily diversified. Update June 29, 2000 We sold for an 84% loss today since at least two class action law suits have been filed in United States District Court. For information or to join in the suits go to Milberg Weiss web site or Cauley & Geller, LLP. Update July 4, 2000 There are now seven law suits pending.
ECHOSTAR & DIRECT TV Both provide satellite TV to the home. They have one of the worse subscriber set ups I've ever experienced. In fact, it was so bad that despite several attempts at both web sites and their associates we were unable to subscribe at all.
GILLETTE They own Duracell which uses very deceptive packaging methods. They add 20-25% to the end of the multi-battery package for no reason except to make it look like your getting more batteries than you are. It's filled with cardboard instead. You have to read the fine print to find out how many batteries you're really getting. They've been doing this for years at Costco where we shop. We're going to try and stay away from their products.
CHARLES SCHWAB They bought a Day Trading company 2-2-00. Update Sept. 7, 2000 We have used Schwab as a broker for about ten years and feel that are probably the best in the business as far as execution of trades and in other areas too. I also just finished his book Charles Schwab's Guide to Financial Independence and highly recommend it, especially to beginners. This might seem like conflicting advice. I don't recommend buying any brokers. But to buy stocks in almost all cases one must use somebody. His book's advice is totally opposite of day-trading. I understand that the more trades the better for their business and that's why they are in business. It's just that brokers, in general, encourage many of the mechanisms that I warn against, such as margin, short-selling, options, day trading, etc.. Maybe Mr. Schwab himself was against buying the day trading firm but was overwhelmed or over-ruled by his associates. In his book he recommends a very long-term holding period of seven years or more. He speaks mildly against day-trading and more strongly against short-selling, options and other very risky financial mechanisms. Although Mr. Schwab could have tried to coerce you toward his business and day trading, I found he did nothing of the sort. He's very open and honest as far as I and many other readers can tell.
E*TRADE Very poor quality company plus one of their top executives is a big supporter with her time and money promoting anti-biblical rights. They also market toward the Day Trading. I can't put my finger on it for sure but there's something about owning part of a brokerage house that just doesn't feel right. It's probably the super easy accessibility to margin? With all the deregulation in the financial institutions. For example: banks are more like brokers and brokers are more like banks.
AMERITRADE Their new slogan is "Believe in Yourself." The same slogan as the Humanist religion.
AOL/TIME WARNER Listed here mostly due to Time Warner's ungodly products. AOL has offered poor services for years.
WWF World Wresting Federation. Nothing but violence.
UPS United Parcel Service has vowed not to issue anymore shares, including for stock splits. Their current stock price reflects this fact as of 1-6-00.
JENNY CRAIG Monica Lewinskyi is the new spokeswoman and role model in their advertisements. Some Jenny Craig franchises have joined in the boycott on 1-6-00 by refusing to let the commercial run and showing old ones instead. Back in Dec. '99 I had an avoid on this stock due to financial reasons. Plus the whole plan has some pit falls.
EXIDE CORP. They've made terrible batteries for many years. In 12-99 they got caught in Mississippi selling used batteries as labeled as new.
IBM Questionable accounting practices. They made the news in 11-99.
RADIO SHACK (Was Tandy Corp. but they changed their name in 2000) Too many poor quality products.
MICROSOFT CORP. Ruled in 11-99 to be a monopoly that used its power to crush competition among other things. I few months ago I sinned. After failing to get Microsoft competitors software to work on my Microsoft based PC, I bought Windows 98 second edition. It was so bug infested that I wanted to spray my computer with Raid to spare it the infestation. I called Microsoft to demand my money back. After six transfers I got a full credit. With great difficulty I finally got the worse software I've ever owned uninstalled. (I'm a former Sr.. PC Technician.) I finally restored my system except for ScanDisk and Disk Defragmenter now lock up the PC 90% of the time. My Dell Pentium III was near perfect before this. More on MSFT
OXFORD HEALTH Very questionable accounting practices in the past.
WALT DISNEY Did you know Walt Disney is the world largest producer of occult movies? Think about it. So many witches, warlocks, spells, potions, magic, violence and more. Did you know that Mr. Walt Disney was obsessed with the real occult world? If you don't think its harmful just look at the incredible growth of the New Age Religions, Cults, Spiritualism, Tarot Cards, Astrology, Palm Reading, Satanism, and Wicca (modern day witchcraft) etc. Think about how callous many have become to the sufferings of others partially due to high exposure levels of violence. If you've been to Disney park, remember how the women in the shows dressed and acted? And these shows are supposed to be for children? We will never take our triplets. Plus our triplets very rarely have nightmares. Of course, God's peace and protection must be recognized as part of their peace of mind. If your a baby boomer you might remember them as sweet, harmless, even non-violent shows. I suggest you watch one or two of those old or new Disney shows with the Bible as your reference.
COMPAQ When trouble first came to Compaq they did an unethical practice known as Channel Stuffing. That's when you ship massive quantities of your product to your retail outlets storerooms just before the end the quarter. Here's the fun part. Although you have weeks and weeks of backlog you count it all as being sold. No one will know it for a little while. Meanwhile it gives some insiders a chance to sell and sell some of them did. I hope and pray the new management team will be the most honest on Wall Street. I would stay away from CPQ until they make many more changes, including the manufacturing of better quality products. I made the mistake of owning one of their PC's for 10 days before I returned the highly volatile device and got my money back. A Compaq technician told me that they just hadn't figured out how to get the hard drive to work without bugs. Then I went and bought a worse PC made by Toshiba. Although CPQ was charging a fee for tech support at that time (if it was your mistake and not theirs) they at least answered their phones. Toshiba rarely answered. Consumers Report confirmed this in one of their issues.
I'm not very familiar with the new management team but believe most of them came from inside CPQ. I could go on and on about CPQ. If you have doubts just do a little research.
PRICELINE.COM Some of us question a couple of accounting practices. Priceline.com is the middle link for bidding on airline tickets. But when they collect the revenues for the tickets they count 100% as their own revenue. Most of that is the airlines revenues. Also, in order to get your business they pay part of your final price. This gives you the false impression that you just got a fantastic deal and will continue to get fantastic deals and that's just not true.
WALGREENS I used to own this stock for 3 years as a safe but steady grower since all other stocks we owned were very high risk. They opened their Internet Pharmacy finally in the last week of October 1999 but their other products won't go online until the spring of 2000. This is much too slow. Drugstore.com and others will be gaining market share that might become impossible to catch up with despite Walgreens size. Walgreens stock price chart reflects this inflexibility to changing market conditions. I'm very disappointed in Walgreens inadequate e-commerce strategy. They open at least one store every day. However, we did make 166% profit.
AT&T It's partially due to the TCI acquisition in 1999. It's been our experience that overall TCI has a very strong anti-Christian bias.
SUTRO SECURITIES I wrestled for over 2 1/2 years with this company trying to close one small account in the early '90's with at least twenty correspondences, maybe over thirty. One of the worst companies I've ever dealt with. A good company to practice prayer and forgiveness on.
TOYS-R-US Now they're giving their same terrible service online too. On 1-6-00 they announced a 2% revenue shortfall at their bricks-n-mortars stores. Wall Street was expecting 6% rise in revenues. The trouble just rolls on and on for this company.
FedEx UPDATE: SOLD Feb. 11-2000 for a 30% loss. I bought a small amount of this stock during desperate times instead of trusting the Lord. The conference call projects some small hope into this stock for February or March 2000. Update: June 8, 2000 This stock and company are still stuck in the doldrums.
DANGEROUS INDUSTRIES
If you work in one of the industries below and/or have a good understanding of the current business influences that could affect your stock, then you're the exception to this
OIL INDUSTRY There are no Biblical reasons. Their products are over-controlled (or should I say lack of control) by OPEC. Any number of things in these foreign countries can go wrong. Update: 12-99 To be fair, OPEC has stuck together in limiting oil production fairly well in 1999. Just look at the rising oil prices and the sinking Transportation Average.
AUTOMOBILE MANUFACTURES GM, Ford, Daimler Chrysler, etc. They have been poor performers for many years. The Internet will continue to help reduce the total mileage driven by individuals, therefore, cars will last longer. People have more money and are spending some of it on new cars but over the long-term it's best not to buy.
HIGHLY REGULATED INDUSTRIES Such as: Natural Gas, Electric, Propane, etc. Update Sept. 7, 2000 We do recommend one energy company because they are also a high technology company involved in Broadband communications, Enron ENE.
WEATHER DEPENDANT INDUSTRIES that success will mostly depend upon favorable weather conditions. Such as: Ski Resorts (Vail Ski resort warned of earnings shortfalls coming around mid Jan. 2000), Coffee Beans, etc.
BRICKS-N-MORTAR Unless they're implementing a strong e-commerce plan too. Sometimes this rule won't apply depending on the type of business.
OVERSEAS COMPANIES America was founded as a Christian nation and I'm praying it starts acting like one again. The risk overseas are much higher than in America. But you can still get in on some rapid overseas growth (or decline) by finding American owned corporations who obtain a fair percentage of revenues from outside the U.S.
Some overseas risks are: currency devaluation's, wars, strange religions, inefficient and ineffective regulations (even worse than the USA), many foreign cultures restrict productivity (sometimes I think they're better off), company property can be seized, many have awful working conditions, some governments don't even enforce copyright laws, etc. There must be dozens of reasons to keep your money in a "Christian Nation."
If you live outside the USA I suggest you invest in your own country unless its an anti-Christian government or some other major situation.
FINANCIAL companies that practice the standard Amortization Schedule used in most home mortgages. I think the practice should be against the law. I'm afraid to think what God might think about such an incredibly unfair payment schedule.
MOST NEWS MEDIA Most big newspapers are primarily used as vehicles to express Liberal political view points, such as, Pro-Abortion, Pro-Homosexual, anti-biblical views, etc.. Many are infamous twisters of the truth. Often the truth is not the point but their political viewpoints is. I have over 800 news articles on my family spread out over 45 years that repeatedly demonstrate their inaccuracies. Take Back Our Media site can help you fight back against the highly biased liberal media.
MOST HEALTH CARE There are many law suits and government interventions. Did you know that 27% of all American hospitals lost money in 1999. Avoid small pharmaceutical companies working on wonder drugs unless you're fully prepared for large one day price drops of 50% or more. Update Sept. 7, 2000 We do feel a bit differently about companies who will receive great benefits from the genomic revolution. Although this might take years to really get going we own stock in a couple of medical companies, such as, CRA, PEB, TECH, and BGEN (I wouldn't buy BGEN at this time).
THE ABORTION INDUSTRY
ENVIRONMENTAL COMPANIES that don't practice Biblical principles. I love God's creations too but a vast majority of these groups are way out of balance. Almost all are pro-abortion with strong anti-Christian sediments. Watch out for businesses that support these groups.
LIQUOR, TOBACCO, JUNK FOOD, ETC. Junk foods includes fast food restaurants like McDonald's and junk cereal companies like Kellogg's, General Mills, or any company profiting from the harming of others.
MOST SEMICONDUCTORS Update April 30, 2000 We're softening our position on semiconductor companies a bit. They are still more volatile than other types of businesses but have shown more stability and dependable growth the last two years. Semiconductor equipment manufactures, like Lam Research, get hit harder than the manufactures like Intel. Our old evaluation: It's a very unstable industry but is showing a lot of strength in 1999. But you still might find that it's hard to hold for years. Many stocks are becoming hard to hold for years unless they're a successful technology company. The market continues to change rapidly and we believe it's important to recognize the new treads and especially industries that get into trouble.
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