My Computer Ninja

After reading the dismal report that AT&T managed to sign up “only” 146,000 new subscribers for the iPhone, Apple’s stock started spiraling downward in the days before it released its quarterly earnings report. The street was abuzz with people speculating that Apple couldn’t move the iPhone as predicted, and according to AT&T’s records, the proof seemed to be in the numbers. That was Monday.

Today, July 25th, Apple released its quarterly earnings numbers after the bell, and melted people’s faces off with their numbers. According to an article on BloggingStocks.com, Apple earned investors $.20 a share ABOVE expectations for the quarter. I know $.20 is something you generally pick up on the street, but when you own 5.5 million shares, as Steve Jobs does, well, you can just mess around with the decimal place to see what kind of money that is.

If ever there was an example to show that doing as much research as possible is a good thing, this would be it. Mr. Yared, who wrote the Bloggingstocks.com article mentioned above, said it best “The iPhone became available the evening of June 29th and the quarter ended June 30th–30 lousy hours of activation time for AT&T.” This shows that the hype surrounding the lack of activations reported by AT&T was just an overreaction to some seemingly pretty strong data. I did not catch this fact either, and thought a few friends who are apple holders would be in for some sticker shock when their stocks dropped as a result of the iPhone release, rather than go up as they expected. I was wrong, and it seems that because of this date discrepancy, Apple may be able to report more of their iPhone earnings in the next quarter as well. The price to earnings ratio is still out of my league, but here is to hoping that all who do own Apple stock get to see yet another stellar earnings report later on this year.

The admin of this site and author of this post, Jon Steege, is not a financial analyst or a stock broker. He is a Computer Scientist with a knack for data analysis. He has always marveled at Apple’s stock, but has never had the opportunity to invest in it. As always, Jon has no direct financial interest in any stock he mentions, he is simply a speculative observer.

Welcome to another installment of Stock Picking 101 here at mycomputerninja.com. In this series, I have already shown how to pick a stock using criteria for Strong Forecasted Growth, and also how to find stocks that fit the Small Cap Value model. Today, I will go over criteria involved in picking medium market and large market capitalization value stocks, according to the pre-set screens found in the Yahoo.com Stock Screener, which by the way, is free for all you penny pinching types.

In the previous lesson, I went over how to select small market capitalization value stocks. In it, I explained that small cap value stocks generally fit these criteria:

• Market capitalization between $250 million and $1 billion dollars
• Price to earnings ratio of less than or equal to 10
• Quick ratio greater than or equal to 1.0

If you find yourself wondering what any of these criteria mean, go ahead and brush up by reading through the Small Cap Value article as a refresher.

Medium Cap Value

I will start now with the criteria for medium market capitalization value stocks, in which you will find only subtle variation on the small market capitalization value stocks. Medium cap stocks generally fit this model:

• Market Capitalization between $1 billion and $5 billion dollars
• Price to earnings ratio of less than or equal to 15
• Quick ratio greater than or equal to 1.0

You will notice that medium cap value stocks vary in only 2 of the 3 variables listed, in comparison to small cap value stocks. The 2 criteria are the market capitalization and the price to earnings, or P/E, ratio. By adjusting the market capitalization value, you are effectively selecting stock from companies that are perceived to be of greater dollar value overall, at least in investors eyes. It is still important to evaluate for yourself whether or not you think the dollar value of the company is accurate. Research is always your best friend.

The second variable that medium cap value criteria is different is with regard to the P/E ratio. The P/E ratio in this case reflects the amount of money you need to invest in order to see $1 in profit, and also the number of years you need to wait to see a return on your investment. A lot of investors tend to use P/E as a gauge to decide if they can make a lot of money quickly on a stock, and as always, this may not be entirely accurate. Even so, adjusting the P/E to another number in a screener is an easy task, just don’t email me if Rooftop Assassins, Inc with a P/E of 2 goes belly up.

Large Cap Value

Large cap value stocks are different from medium cap value stocks in a single criteria, and that is market capitalization. Large cap stocks involve companies with these criteria:

• Market Capitalization equal to or greater than $5 billion dollars
• Price to earnings ratio of less than or equal to 15
• Quick ratio greater than or equal to 1.0

It is easy to see that most large cap stocks are companies that you may recognize from every day life. A quick settings change on the Yahoo.com screener reveals Exxon Mobile, Proctor and Gamble, and a host of other widely recognized companies as large market cap companies. Companies that fit into this model are generally large blue chip companies which you probably own anyway if you have a low risk mutual fund. Companies that fit this criteria would not tend to disappear overnight, which may comfort some of you who remember the Dot-Com bubble. Companies using the large market cap screen have been around the block a few times, figuratively speaking, and generally offer goods or services that people cannot live without. Stocks fitting these variables can be considered “more safe” than medium and especially small cap value stocks, but the wise ninja never lets his guard down. As always, don’t forget to do your homework before you buy.

The admin of this site and writer of this post, Jon Steege, is not a financial analyst or a stock broker. He is a Computer Scientist with a knack for data analysis. He does not own Exxon Mobile or Proctor and Gamble, and does not make any recommendation as to the stability, or lack there of, of any stock mentioned. Buy smart, but buy at your own risk.

See other posts in this series by visiting the investing section on mycomputerninja.com

Welcome to another edition of “Stock Picking 101” at mycomputerninja.com. My second lesson in the series is going to cover a stock picking method that helps in selecting small market capitalization stocks. As I mentioned in Lesson 1, these stock picking methods can be found as a part of the set of preset screens in the free yahoo.com stock screener application.

The aim of this series of lessons is to give speculators some interesting criteria with which to find new stocks, hopefully before everyone else finds them. Not only will I provide the criteria for picking the stocks, but I will also explain why these methods may or may not work.

The Criteria for picking a small market capitalization stock are as follows:

• Market capitalization between $250 million and $1 billion dollars
• Price to earnings ratio of less than or equal to 10
• Quick ratio greater than or equal to 1.0

The first criteria, market capitalization, is defined by Wikipedia as “A measurement of corporate or economic size equal to the stock price times the number of shares outstanding of a public company. ” Market capitalization is easy to calculate by hand, and in most cases, is provided for you as part of a summary of the stock. Market capitalization numbers contain information on the overall worth of the company in investors eyes. This provides a number with which analysts could value the company. An interesting way to explain it is to look at Google’s market capitalization, currently hovering around $162 billion dollars. Not a small cap stock, but its interesting to see. You can ask yourself, “is search, and the advertising Google does with search, worth $162 Billion dollars.” Of course, this is a very subjective question, and I leave it to you to decide.

The second criteria, price to earnings ratio, is again defined by Wikipedia as “a measure of the price paid for a share relative to the income or profit earned by the firm per share. ” Price to earnings, or P/E is calculated by taking the price per share and dividing it by the earnings per share of the stock. Effectively, this calculation defines how many dollars you have to spend to receive $1 in profit. It is easy to see why a lower P/E is more attractive. A stock with a P/E of 20 means you have to spend $20 to realize $1 in income, or that it will take 20 years to earn back your original investment. It is not so easily cut and dried, as the P/E is generally a trailing ratio, and as we all know, “Past performance is no indication of future returns”. There are criteria to define a “Forward P/E”, which use estimates of future earnings, but these can be wildly inaccurate and subject to manipulation.

The last criteria to discuss in using these criteria is the “quick ratio”. Once again, I return to Wikipedia for a concise definition. “Quick ratio measures the ability of a company to use its near cash or quick assets to immediately extinguish its current liabilities.” Effectively, this criteria defines if a company has enough cash on hand to extinguish all of its outstanding debt. This criteria is set at 1.0 or greater because at lower than 1, a company would have difficulty paying back its outstanding debt with liquid assets. This criteria can be calculated by finding a number representing current assets, and dividing it by current liabilities. Using my favorite whipping boy, Google, a quick run through the Yahoo Stock Screener reveals a quick ratio of 10.693. This is good, because it means that Google has plenty of extra cash on hand.

With that, I conclude Lesson #2 on picking stocks. Stay tuned, Lesson #3 is coming up soon.

The admin of this site and writer of this post, Jon Steege, is not a financial analyst or a stock broker. He is a Computer Scientist with a knack for data analysis. He does not own Google stock, and does not make any recommendation as to the stability, or lack there of, of any stock mentioned. Buy smart, but buy at your own risk.

See other posts in this series by visiting the investing section on mycomputerninja.com