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Strategies & Market Trends : Value Investing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bob Rudd who wrote (13532)	1/2/2002 2:18:33 PM
From: Dale Baker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 78536

I glanced at EPEX and the recent lawsuits put me off - any thoughts on those?

To: Bob Rudd who wrote (13532)	1/2/2002 10:13:58 PM
From: isopatch	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 78536

Hi Bob. Energy stocks are very cyclical. So there are huge swings in earnings. The stocks tend to trade in anticipation of those swings. So you buy into the trough and sell when earnings are peaking. Easier said than done, of course. But we try. My approach to trading/investing is very unorthodox. Instead of focusing first on earnings, I attack the growth equation in reverse. If the company has a good balance sheet, and an exceptional record of drilling succes there will be good earnings and shareholder value growth. Use some fundamental screens. But once I've got a basket of good stocks to work with, most of my focus is on timing Intermediate (1-7 month) entries and exits. So most of my work is in trend and trend reversal analysis via sector and market sentiment, flow of funds in the underlying energy commodities, the impact of weather and seasonal factors, etc. Getting back to your question about earnings. You've probably already found it, but Yahoo has a good layout on earning estimates for each company along with a lot of other useful information about how many analysts are following them and what their opinions are. biz.yahoo.com In addition to EPEX, some other good small natural gas explorers I've been trading in recent years and recently reentered are CRZO, CRK and PQUE. Hope that's helpful, Isopatch