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

To: Paul Senior who wrote (18267)	12/26/2003 5:25:30 PM
From: Paul Senior	Respond to of 78524

Over the past few years I've mentioned here several stocks I've bought of companies involved with electronic payment and transaction processing. I am still holding shares in almost all of these companies, I believe. Regarding the totality of these picks though, -g-, maybe I would've been better off had I been able to judiciously (or otherwise)have made a buy of Paypal or one of the other high-flyers. But I couldn't and didn't. Now I have found another stock in the sector for me though where I believe I see some value attributes: HYC. finance.yahoo.com Although the stock has moved up from lows, it goes for a still reasonable p/s of .97 with a p/bk of 1.17. Cash exceeds debt. The company is expected to be profitable next year, according to Yahoo. Management has announced a small stock buy back. I like that the company is decent-sized (over 1000 employees) and that they sell their terminals and technology on a global basis. The latest quarterly indicates that order backlog is decreasing - that's a negative. However, I'm encouraged by (or maybe that's seduced by -g-) the recent 12/2/03 press release, "China's Top 4 Banks Officially Select and Designate Hypercom as Preferred Payment Technology Provider": biz.yahoo.com I've started a small buy today.

To: Paul Senior who wrote (18267)	12/26/2003 11:12:51 PM
From: James Clarke	Read Replies (16) \| Respond to of 78524

I remember four, five years ago we used to go through the ritual at the end of the year reviewing old picks, previewing the new year. I am sure I'm not the only one really starved for ideas in this market, and kind of at a loss for what to do. I am holding a lot of cash, part by design, part due to lack of ideas that I'm willing to put a lot of money into. Could we structure this this way? Two questions. Whats the stock in your portfolio most likely to be a major winner in the next 12 months (though it may have the kind of risk where you wouldn't make it a big position), and second what is the stock you'd put 25% of your portfolio into if you had to pick one? My swing for the fences pick would be UAIR (yeah, it makes me want to throw up too, which is part of the appeal - that and that 90% of Wall Street doesn't even know it exists - start by just looking at the market cap and then look at the market cap of other airline majors - I think it really may be that simple, though obviously I've done more work than that - there are obviously big negatives) and my favorite holding is (still) ANF - would have said the same last year on that one, and probably 3 years ago too... I will admit I am not as confident in it as I was at this time a year ago, but the valuation vs. quality is very appealing if the wheels aren't falling off, which is the big question and maybe getting bigger. Last year at this time I had four the caliber of ANF, and many many speculative potential doubles and triples, many of which worked out quite nicely. I was more than fully invested then. This year the pickings feel really thin. Made a lot of money in '03, and I see this as a time to be really cautious looking 6-12 months ahead. Would love to hear how others respond to this with their own ideas. Maybe there are more ideas out there than we think there are if we each put just our best ones on the table. If you can't find ANYTHING that is a potential double or a sensible and safe big position say so - that would be good for us all to know too. (To fully disclose I don't have anything near 25% of my money in ANF and UAIR is not a big position - thats the kind of market this is, even my two picks I don't have that kind of confidence in). I don't see a thing undesirable about holding a lot of cash right now. Happy holidays all.