Monday Musings

After reading a bit this morning and writing a bit this weekend, I came up with some points for some random stocks. Here it goes:

1. Is oil still going up? It was strong last week and with the guidance of both SLB and HAL, how can you say the producers won't continue a steady upward trend with the increasing difficulty in finding and drilling oil. I've been doing some research on "hard to find" oil drillers that I'm going to try and finish by later in the week. This consists of natural gas sand drillers and oil shale drillers (among others).

2. MO is sitting 2 points below it's recent high. However, it's earnings will be coming up later this month and with a combination of low dollar value through most of this quarter (foreign income) and their recent increase in cigarette pricing by $.10 per pack (both of which without changing guidance), I can't see this stocking NOT kick earnings estimates in the butt AND guiding well for next quarter / year. KFT is just icing on the cake. Interesting side note: according to Stockpickr, common stocks owned by MO owners are as follows: AIG DIS FWLT GS HAL MRVL MS. There are so many things going for this stock, the research is easy and I think this is going to draw a lot of people to the stock. My dad was even recounting commercials for Phillip-Morris ads in his youth.

3. Watch MSFT through May. Last year the stock tanked in May. However, this should be around when Vista's strength will play into earnings. Let's hope for increased revenue through Vista and strong Xbox / Zune performance.

4. Watch CSCO graph. 2006 showed performance to grow from early February through early-April / May. Then the price fell in August only to see a huge rise through the end of the year. Try to get out of CSCO on strength in March-April until the "standard tech cycle" in August.

5. ALU is daily oversold. Weekly, though, it's nowhere near oversold. I'd wait a few weeks to jump on this stock. Then look at the support points daily and weekly. This may be good for a VERY short term trade, but it seems to volatile looking at the longer term. Granted, the large downturn recently has been due to the dilution of the two companies merging and volatile. However, on the value side of the argument, maybe this merger won't make these two stocks worth more as they thought it would.

6. CHK to $34 in 3-4 weeks. I just have a feeling (and a chart, hint)