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

To: Paul Senior who wrote (19826)	10/11/2004 11:11:12 AM
From: E_K_S	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 78741

Hi Paul - What's your strategy on tax loss selling? The value investor tends to be a long term holder and really should not be concerned with managing taxes. However, I have found that using the 31 day rule and selling a stock that I have acquired in the previous year (to establish a short term loss), there are times where it makes sence to do the sale. I try to complete these tax loss sales no latter than October 25 because I can usually establish the same position in 31 days and still participate in an end of the year rally. Tax loss sales that deal with long term losses are less attractive to me, since they can only off set long term capital gains. These tax rates are already quite low so generally if I am going to sell such a position, I do not get back in. I sold a few shares of MRK today that I acquired in 11-03(at around $41) with the idea of buying them back in 31 days to lower my cost basis. I think the real money will be made on this stock when it trades next year in the low $20's. It's no guarantee that it will trade there so using this "tax loss" approach should allow me to capitalize on the recent negative trend regarding their Vioxx product. The risk is that the stock must trade near it's current lows for the next 31 days. EKS

To: Paul Senior who wrote (19826)	10/11/2004 12:25:08 PM
From: FHM	Respond to of 78741

dig a little deeper into the insider transactions and you will be even more impressed.....

To: Paul Senior who wrote (19826)	10/11/2004 12:56:19 PM
From: FHM	Respond to of 78741

IIIN now the #1 stock featured in IBD's "Where the Big Money is Flowing" thanks to eben22 for picking up on this cbs.marketwatch.com.

To: Paul Senior who wrote (19826)	10/11/2004 3:45:41 PM
From: FHM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 78741

<<OTOH, for a cyclical business and in a sector that has had - in past anyway - chronic overcapacity, I'd say most people would say earnings aren't sustainable and so the stock deserves a low p/e>> the times, they are a-changin'.... Less profitable product lines have been discontinued (e.g., nails), higher margin opportunities have been pursued (e.g., engineered structural mesh), productivity has increased, and LT debt is being reduced with a vengeance (and may be eliminated entirely by YE 2005). Furthermore, financing costs associated with operations have been substantially reduced as a result of the new credit facility (the benefit of which will only really be appreciated in this qtr's numbers). The supply constraints identified by mgmt in the last CC have been relieved to a great degree by the reopening of the Georgetown/ISG facility. Additionally, the demand side should increase significantly looking ahead to 2005 as the commercial construction sector begins to pull itself up off of the floor, and Congress appropriates the hundreds of billions of dollars necessary to upgrade our nation's crumbling infrastructure (TEA-21). In the dramatic industry downturn from 2000 to 2003, many competitive suppliers were wiped out or shut down. To my knowledge, only 3 significant competitors are still operating: IIIN, American Spring Wire and Sumiden Wire. Moreover, much of the foreign competition has effectively been denied access to the U.S. market by onerous anti-dumping duties imposed earlier this year concreteproducts.com w/r/t pc strand in particular, IIIN is the largest player in the market (and the number of competitors has grown quite small in recent years due to the abysmal economy of 2000-2003), and is 3x larger than the next largest supplier now that the market is heading back up, even modest increases in demand should translate into very healthy profits for the three remaining players also, if you look at CAT's forward guidance (as recently reported) -- as well as other construction industry sources -- you will see that demand for IIIN's products should pick up appreciably going forward BTW, make sure that you study the recent insider transactions .... there is gold in them thar hills.....