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

To: Paul Senior who wrote (18088)	11/28/2003 12:04:18 PM
From: Paul Senior	Respond to of 78661

Going through Harry Lew screens of stocks below cash, I find a few that have some cigar-butt appeal to me. As I've done before, I'll try to go for a package. And for Very small amounts in each stock. If I get to understand the companies a little better I might be willing to add shares -or close the positions if adverse information surfaces. So far, I'm getting all my data from Yahoo, whose numbers sometimes are wrong or mislead me. Here are two stocks that I have small fills in this morning: MTON. The company provides directory assistance services for telephone companies. I believe the stock was mentioned on the Value Thread after MTON lost a big contract when Sprint decided to do this service in-house. They may have lost other contracts as well. I see now that within the past couple of days MTON has been mentioned by several SI posters on other threads as a (speculative) buy. Stock price: <$2.00 and sinking Cash/sh: 2.18 p/sales: .23 p/book: .31 p/e: na Not really selling enough below cash to make me enthusiastic. (I've rejected other stocks on Harry Lew's lists for this reason.) However, if MTON's business model can be modified, the stock might recover. The company, with 5900 employees, might have the management talent and resources to do this. AIK: "holds government-insured mortgage investments primarily on multi-family housing properties, and distributes the payments of principal and interest on such mortgage investments." From a cursory look, it seems they have about 12 investments, they've sold at least one recently, and they paid a large dividend to stockholders. Perhaps the company is slowly liquidating itself. Looks like the business is structured as a limited partnership. That means additional tax paperwork for US investors. (ugh) Stock price: $1.30 Cash/sh: 1.57 p/sales: 4.74 p/book: .33 Company pays a dividend. Apparently 1-cent monthly. Perhaps has some safety: " The Partnership's investment in insured mortgages is comprised of participation certificates, evidencing a 100% undivided beneficial interest in government-insured multi-family mortgages issued or sold, pursuant to the Federal Housing Administration programs, mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by the Government National Mortgage Association and FHA-Insured mortgage loans." JMO, and I've been wrong many, many times.