Vinayak

Really like your fundamental analysis and I agree wholeheartedly with your conclusion. Also, I want to share here how I found Exxon Mobil Overvalued According To Net Asset Value. I know there are a lot of assumptions in the NAV and the article itself alludes to the flaws in the calculation. But it's a start, don't you think?

I make things pretty crystal clear about what to do with the EUR/USD.

Heavy week for US corporate earnings Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) rallied 15% over the last week after an impressive earnings report. The upcoming week will be dominated by the retail sector with earnings report releases from the Dollar Tree (DLTR), Macy's (M), Sears (SHLD), Best Buy (BBY), JC Penney (JCP), Saks (SKS), Gap (GPS), Kohl's (KSS), Lowe's(LOW) and Target (TGT). The big retail sector releases means that its going to be a bumpy road for US indices like the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones and it would be best not to do options trading on them in my opinion.

I guess he's fixing all of it since he is the ECB President; but with a special emphasis on the EUR. This week it won't be much about Draghi though. We've got the ongoing elections in Italy. The EUR/USD and other EUR related currency pairs should be watched closely. If the media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi were to win the election, it would not be good news for the Euro zone currency and I would expect it to fall below the support level of around 1.3230. If he loses, then the EUR should soar. Talking about the EUR/USD, it has shown some weakness recently. The positive news out of Germany (ZEW survey, GDP figures, etc) haven't really changed the fortunes of the Euro as was widely expected. However, it is nowhere near any long-term support levels and there could very well be a pull back in the upcoming week. Nonetheless, I would look to trade the pair based on what happens in the Italian elections. Getting back to the macro news out of the Euro zone - it was good. The two major indices - the DAX and the FTSE 100 - soared mainly due to remarks from the respective Central Banks. Even as stock markets rose in the Euro zone, the Euro and the British Pound fell. The aggressive bond buyback as part of the stimulus is partly to blame for the currency devaluations.

Sprint Nextel, Hewlett-Packard, Dell: SEC Filings for February 20, 2013 In today's SEC filings digest, Sprint Nextel's 10-K shows light at the end of the tunnel, Dell price action is healthy and Hewlett-Packard may gain from Dell's privatization plans. Sprint Nextel 10-K filing reveals make or break year for the tech firm Seeking Alpha walks you through Sprint Nextel's (S) 10-K and explains how the losses suffered at the telecommunications giant may not be an issue given that its stock price rose 141% over the last year. Additionally, the recent earnings release beat most analyst expectations. The Japanese telecommunications and Internet firm SoftBank has seen something nice in Sprint and invested $20B in the Overland Park, KS based company. This investment puts Sprint back in the hunt with market leaders AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ). Still, the fundamentals don't look good for Sprint and value investors may want to shy away from a stock with a negative P/E for five successive years. More bad news comes in the form of the negative EPS and net income figures during the same period. Dell earnings report release just a few hours away It's been rough for PC makers as of late and Dell (DELL) bulls will be anxious to see what the company reports for its earnings for January 2013 at 12:00 a.m. ET tomorrow. It is true that the stock price has climbed over the 100-day MA (moving average), but this could be a little deceiving after taking into account the stock's decline over the last year. Nonetheless, tools like the MACD indicator confirm an uptrend and Dell stock is technically healthy. For more detailed information on the PC firm, head over to the company's 10-K filing. Forbes reports on what Dell has been struggling with and now the company wants to go private; a plan that not everyone is in favor of. Hewlett-Packard is pursuing new opportunities This week is going to be a slow one for corporate earnings releases and it will be dominated by the large cap tech stock sector . There is none bigger than Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) which is gearing up for its highly innovative Android-based tablet release. The PC maker is exploring new grounds (territories it hasn't excelled at in the past ) as it aims to have a big turnaround under new CEO Meg Whitman. Whitman revealed the company's focus to make a comeback; it will be extensive R&D to improve HP products and compete aggressively. Read the company’s latest 10-K and join the earnings call to hear more from management. The call starts at 5:00 p.m. ET on February 21, 2013.

Two Large Cap Tech Stocks to Watch This Week Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) The 100-day MA can be rather deceiving since the stock has been on such a decline as of late, but the good thing for HP bulls is that the MACD indicates an up trend. The earnings release this Thursday, Feb 21 will be pretty big! Dell (DELL) The same story can be seen with Dell here and it seems like PC makers are more or less hurting right now and the situation may not improve. Watch out for the Dell Earnings tomorrow at midnight.

Starbucks Corporation (SBUX) is proving to be a good buy for bulls The stock price is above the 100-day MA (moving average) and the MACD confirms the upward trend. I think any price from now till $56ish is a good time to buy for this stock that will appreciate as a result of Starbucks recent sales and EPS announcements that beat analyst expectations. These consumer discretionary stocks might be the sector to turn to with the S&P 500 quickly running out of gas.

FB pick worked out! The 100-day MA (moving average) chart in the main panel shows that FB stock is looking good technically. FB bulls might be elated but when we do technical analysis, we look at several tools/indicators. I have used the MACD from time to time and in the sub panel it indicates a bearish crossover. If you are trading intra-day or on a weekly basis, it seems like its time to sell. It is also dangerously close to zero further indicating downward momentum.

The USD/JPY recent bullish trend is set for a pull back I strongly believe.

Here is something to revive this thread: USD/JPY Running Out Of Gas I have a variant view right now of what is going to happen to the USD/JPY. I mean the long term technicals for the greenback are sound and the Yen should appreciate again back to the long term support level of 90 as it will come under pressure from other countries that have been hurt by Japanese exports.

I know this is three weeks old, but I have a different take on the whole USD/JPY situation. The USD/JPY is not going to keep up its recent bullish trend because it was pretty much agreed by Shinzo Abe to set the target at 90 and now we are passed that and it was also mentioned by Bank of Japan Governor Masaaki Shirakawa that the Yen has declined more than intended. I can't seem to find any recent developments as to any target adjustments by Abe even though I was informed by some Japanese sources that the target has been altered to 100 after taking into account the recent free fall. It still appears to be overvalued to many in the Japanese press and government. But all of this is puzzling to me given that we are heading into a gathering of G20 members over the weekend and they will not be happy about the Yen's decline.

I have a few more things I want to mention here on Exxon Mobil and specifically oil stocks and why investing in them is such a great idea for bulls. The thing about Exxon is its been around for a long time and it is a long standing most valuable company before losing the top spot to Apple (AAPL). If you held Exxon for 40 years, you would have seen a 9.7% return in addition to a juicy 2.6% dividend. This past performance and the encouraging signs for the future of Exxon Mobil due to increasing energy demand and population growth mean that past performance could very well translate into the future. And talking about past performance: I talked about the last 40 years and now I want to mention that the oil price has gone up from $15/barrel to $90/barrel. That is incredible and is a factor of around 6. But since oil and oil stocks are such a hedge against inflation, we must look at how the USD has fared. The USD has also seen severe inflation with a factor of 5.91 over the last 4 decades. Nonetheless, Exxon is a buy and will continue to be so until the new century dawns. The environmentalists have got it all wrong. Forbes has estimated that oil production will only halve 50 years from now on and the same will happen to natural gas at least a century from now.

Mario Draghi has had such an impact on the Euro and the state of finances in the Euro zone that congress services had cut wi-fi signals and frequency inhibitors to stop the words of Draghi from leaving the closed room and becoming public. The man that describes himself as European first, Italian second has come to pass as a signal for forex traders to initiate positions on the Euro and its related currency pairs depending on whether his remarks and attitude be hawkish or dovish. He stressed the resurgence of the Euro and it soared a couple of weeks back and then he talked extensively about the need to prevent the Euro from rising too high and it hit some record lows. Super Mario as he has come to be called by fellow Europeans ignited fears across the continent when he became the front runner for the ECB job as inflation and Italians are such a happy couple. The good thing is his measures have been quite in contrast to this. The one thing that puts Draghi apart is his "international mentality". Draghi was one of the people who helped in getting the Euro of the ground in the first place. Anyway, I am going to use this thread to keep you in the loop on Draghi and the fate of the Euro.

Another large cap tech stock to short The price action over the last year has been very good for Sprint bulls, but if you were a long term Sprint bull, things aren't looking very nice now as can be seen from the stock chart below: Sprint Nextel 10-Year Price Action Source: DailyFinance Sprint Income Statement Table Negative growth rates and figures jump at you when looking at some of the noteworthy numbers that I compiled for you in this Sprint Income Statement Table. One thing Sprint can be proud of is the revenues that have increased every quarter last year. Sprint Balance Sheet Table It's not the greatest thing to have such large intangible assets especially since it brings down the net book value. The cash has been pretty healthy with $8.2B in Q4 2012, but that's the only thing positive worth noting on the balance sheet. The shares issued has persistently increased in the last five years and equity has just been declining quite rapidly.

Hey DbPhoenix, I really enjoyed reading "The Trading Journal" thread on the WF. It was a nice way to realize how important individual trader mentality and comfort zone is to each trader in their success timing the markets. Thanks for putting it up and I am going to use it as sort of a guide that I'm going to keep coming back to from time to time. It was an hour well spent indeed.

Definitely a big help for me anytime a master trader such as yourself finds any of the strategies I outline here useful. Really liked the way you simplified things here. After further research on this, I guess your right! Interesting. I had no idea how sophisticated floor traders have become as of late. I'll see if I should use the clunkier version so that I can get more trader's opinions on the strategy's name. I am backtesting it right now and I will do some demo trading and then live trading with small amounts of money using this misnomer strategy :haha: and I will surely let you know the results and percentages.

Lol.. :haha: I am usually up by that time as I need to plan out my trading day and make the most use out of it. Besides, I had a hunch that Draghi would have an affect as he did last time; only last time it was positive for the Euro and the EUR/USD.

The Bank of England kept interest rates at 0.75% and QE unchanged at 375 billion pounds at 12:00PM GMT. Just as I was thinking that it was going to be another uneventful day for us forex traders, things got interesting during ECB President Mario Draghi's opening remarks at the ECB Press Conference. I quickly started puts on the EUR/USD and also puts on the Euro itself. And sooner rather than later, EUR/USD was falling due to Draghi's dovish attitude and remarks. Draghi talked about how a strong Euro would slow down the economic recovery that is ongoing in the EU. It seems like the Euro will continue to be weak for the early part of 2013.

More on XOM... XOM Balance Sheet Note: All values in the table are in Millions If you're a value investor, it is is the balance sheet that will be very encouraging. XOM has around $13B in cash and the equity has been rising with a 5-Year Average of 5.2%. The other positive signs are no intangible assets in the books and the fact that the shares outstanding have been declining.

Hey Sandro, I couldn't disagree with you more. I know you made a post on my thread, but I want to share some of the great analysis that I did on Apple stock. I hope you will then reevaluate your price target for the world's most valuable company.

Silver is one of my favorite commodities to trade on. This is a very informative thread, but there is another one that I started on another nice trading site that I want all of you to check out.

Why I think an end of the month put on MSFT would be great? Windows 8 and the Windows smart phone haven't done enough for MSFT as the tech giant still narrowly missed revenue expectation in its recent earnings release. One good thing was that the earnings report managed to beat analyst expectations overall. Still, MSFT's lack of innovation of late and short product life cycle have dampened the stock price in 2012 after price action has been fairly stagnant over the last decade. Source: DailyFinance Coincidentally, this is the period in which Steve Ballmer presided as the company's CEO and a lot of investors are surprised that Ballmer is holding the top job. But it was also a period with steady increases in the dividend being paid out and the dividend yield is now a juicy 3.35%. Liquidity seems nice, but the EPS growth is not Net Profit Margin 29.72% Earnings Per Share Growth Rate -2.56% Current Ratio 2.807 Quick Ratio 2.76 Short Interest 11% When I did the valuation on MSFT, it suggested a buy. However, with the troubles the large cap stocks have been having as of late coupled with the fact that MSFT has lacked innovation and products like Windows 8 that haven't been as well received, I feel its time for some puts. Moreover, the technical analysis confirms this. Bulls can argue all they want about the dividends and the cash pile, etc, but I feel like I've made my case.

Support – Resistance Custom Indicator Here is a nice illustration of what the S/R indicator can do for you. The next time when your looking to do some technical analysis on forex or even for a stock/indices it will be very useful. You guys probably already know this, but let me include it here anyway for the newbie traders out there. After all, this strategy is mostly for newbie traders. The more experienced ones would do be better without it as they will be faster. It can be still useful for its confirmation value when implementing a strategy. The Support level will put declining prices back into higher territory. The more times we see the price go back and forth to the support level, the stronger the support becomes. The Resistance is a level that rejects rising prices into lower territory. Just like Support, Resistance becomes stronger if it rejected price many times in the past. The problem sometimes is that support and resistance can be at the same level. Just take a look at the picture below: So use common sense when identifying S/R. The main drawback with the indicator is that it is not good at identifying S/R zones and rather draws several lines that can make it hard to do technical analysis. Download the Support Resistance Indicator from the attachments section here. You'll have to extract it using Winzip/Winrar. Then go to your Meta Trader 4 platform and click on Insert – Indicators – Custom – Support-Resistance and then click OK on the little box that comes up. Support-Resistance.rar

NAV Analysis - Exxon Mobil Stock (XOM) XOM which is currently trading at $90 a share appears to be overvalued according to the NAV analysis. I did a conservative estimate which gave me a NAV of $66.40 per share. The more optimistic one gave me an NAV per share of $82.14. High growth rates should closely mirror reality since oil & natural gas reserves will only really start declining at least a century from now contrary to the complains of environmentalists. It's the assumptions in the NAV calculation that cause the trouble as is the case with most valuation methods. :haha: We all know that the stock market often has a mind of its own and it can be very erratic and hard to predict. NAV analysis is a tool and its one of the tools we can utilize to gather something most market participants wouldn't necessarily know. The NAV is a major valuation metric for energy companies and it is widely used to value uptream oil companies. I know that XOM is an integrated major, but the graphic below which is directly taken from the 2011 XOM company annual report will verify why XOM stock is great for the NAV. XOM 2011 Annual Report As can be seen, XOM earns a large part of its revenue (>80%) in the upstream oil business. The problem with the NAV is that, unlike the DCF, it focuses on asset depletion as is the case with most energy companies. To the NAV's credit, it is very effective for sensitivity analysis to compare scenarios with different commodity prices or growth rates. Exxon Mobil has been and always will be an oil & natural gas play The NAV analysis was deceiving and it is really just one of the factors investors should consider when making investment decisions. What really struck me as attractive about Exxon Mobil is the growing EPS of 9.69. The EPS has soared 3.56% on average over the last five years and in the same period, the dividend has risen by 7.7%. XOM-NAV-Conservative.xls XOM-NAV-Optimistic.xls

Your welcome. I am more than happy to do so. Moreover, it really helps to share ideas and be able to compare and analyze. In the sense that there is a lot to gain by giving and receiving tips!