Money and Investing Thoughts

I have felt stagnated lately with the financial news and blog I have been reading, so I decided to research some new sources. I went to one of my favorite sources of information, Jeff at a Dash of Insight and clicked through his blogroll.

I found some interesting reading and ended up adding a few links to my blogroll. I use my blogroll as my personal reading resource. I click through it at least every couple of days to see what is new. My interests tend to be a bit focused, but these sites or blogs usually have good and interesting reading. Enjoy!

Note: The picture is of something growing in my backyard. Trying to fill a little space.

I am going to be away up country for a few days and leaving the laptop behind. Probably good time to take a few days off. I find it interesting that the page views on this site go up and down at about the same rate and time the market does. When the market is going up, many more seem to want to read about investments, on the way down fewer want to read about stocks.

I am pretty much fully invested in stocks (with the money in the accounts for that purpose) at this time. I made a couple of purchase as prices of interesting stocks fell, but no where near the current lows. I am not a good predictor of when the market will go down, and also not when it will rebound. My process is to look for good companies with stocks that will appreciate or pay an excellent income over time. From this point they are more attractive than they were 10% or 15% higher.

A new news cycle for earnings is about to hit, so I am looking forward to see how the companies of the stocks I discuss here have fared in there pursuit of profits. Fear currently rules the market, but some good earnings news can turn that around.

I hope the market rebounds significantly in the next few days, but the emotional swings of the overall market are not something I can predict.

GM has unveiled this fuel cell powered hybrid prototype Cadillac. It uses the same drive train architecture as the Chevy Volt. I like the use of wheel motors to provide all wheel drive. If GM can get some of the advanced hybrid technology to market at a competitive cost and in numbers, the next decade could be very good for the General.

The claimed largest photovoltaic solar system has gone into operation at Nellis Air Force Base, on the northern edge of Las Vegas, NV. The 14 megawatt system will provide 25% of the base’s power requirements.

I put up these pictures because I spent 3 great years flying F-16s out of Nellis back in the mid 80′s. Things were a lot different then. In the squadron we had a Wang word processor the size of a washing machine. Flight planning was done by hand and there was no GPS. The F-16 did, though have some pretty slick bomb dropping and navigation technology, at least for that era. So without any further ado, here are some pictures courtesy of cleantech.com

As I have written articles for this blog, my personal investment criteria have evolved and changed. I have discovered the types of companies that interest me as investments and subjects to write about. I do not manage money for anyone and want my personal stock accounts to reflect my philosophy and views. Through the research I have done here, I have found there are a few areas that I prefer to focus on. Here they are:

• Income stocks: I am very interested in stocks that pay large dividends. I like getting the cash to put back to work. Short term stock prices reflect a lot of fears about a company that may affect the stock price, but the dividend can still provide a balance to the return.

• Small cap stocks. For me, this is companies with a market capitalization of less than about $2 billion. Small caps have more room for multiples of the initial investment returns. They are also less analyzed, and often inaccurately, by the Wall Street analysts.

• International and emerging markets. The U.S. is a very competitive place, and if a company has a really good, really profitable idea, competition will soon follow. In many other countries a good company with a good business can stay that way for years with little or no competition.

That about covers the types of companies I am looking for. I then try to find those that have something that sets them apart and will allow continued and growing profitability. It is a fairly simple idea, but I put a lot of work into digging into whatever I can find about a stock that catches my eye.

Back to the title of this post, I have simplified my category list to more closely align with the bullets listed above. The 20 Stock Articles page on this site give a listing of selected posts by their categories. I believe it is a good way to get an overview about what is going on here.