Looking for some investment ideas. Do anyone have any undervalued plays to suggest? Primary looking for companies that's been really beaten up.
Most of mine seem to be doing good lately with all this Fed crack cocaine. But 2 of mine that have been hit pretty hard very recently are GTAT and SWHC.
The crack cocaine seems to be wearing off, but dang, I didn't know SWHC went up that high. What happened?
I'm blanking at the moment, but if you want an overvalued stock for some reason, then go with Amazon. ;]
While Amazon may be overvalued its nowhere near as overvalued as Apple. Apple is probably the biggest swan song in the world if you actually look at their market share compared to other companies. I find it amazing that the company has thrived as it has in the past decade considering they have little market share in the world and their products are usually second rate technologically speaking.
Many people with very deep pockets would strongly disagree about Apple being overvalued, particularly compared to Amazon. And that's certainly not true on paper - AAPL is still cheap, and far cheaper than AMZN - with very strong earnings / earnings growth, revenue growth, margins, return on equity, etc. Of course they are apples (no pun intended) and oranges. AAPL supposedly has the best product pipeline they've had in 25 years, but I guess that remains to be seen. http://quotes.morningstar.com/stock/aapl/s?t=aapl
All that may be right but the tides are turning as far as public opinion goes toward those with "deep pockets' as we learn more and more about how they have influenced society and our economy in a negative manner. Plus, AAPL just agreed to pay 400 million in damages for committing what was essentially fraud while conspiring with publishers to artificially raise book prices. I have a lot of friends who own smartphones. 99% of them who do not have to have an Iphone for their jobs would never consider buying an apple product simply because they feel that APPL's moral compass is so far removed from theirs that there can be no consensus. The only reason AAPL is doing so well in the USA is because of the false opinion that their OS is more secure than Android and thus more suitable for enterprise work. Android might not knock them off their perch, but Windows can and will once they get their mobile divisions up to speed. And that my friend is happening faster than APPL would ever believe. Of course both Gate's and Job's are scoundrels. I remember back in the day when they were working out of a garage and Gate's ended up stealing the majority of his friends work and turning it in to Microsoft. Horrible ethics from both companies. I'm what you would consider an ethical investor. I will not invest in or recommend a company unless they follow a strict code of ethics of which most are not taught in modern day business schools. Something I feel should change before the people get sick of capitalism and go off to try something we know won't work!
Ethics, moral compasses, scoundrel CEOs, etc have very little to do with business and investing. And they have virtually no impact on companies like Apple. As long as laws are not broken, these things don't matter to very many people. I doubt that tree-hugger protests are going to do much harm to Apple stock or convince very many people to boycott the company. I doubt Carl Icahn will sell his $4 billion worth of stock due to concerns about Tim Cook's ethics. Most people simply don't care - they want the best products and services at the best prices. $400 million is peanuts to a company with a market cap of over half a trillion and nearly $200 billion in cash on its balance sheet.
I'm not sure where you'd get Amazon being a bad investment from. They aren't doing anything wacky with money like Google does and they play it safe with investments. Sure they're sort of stingy with the dividends but every portfolio needs some safe things to go with the risk. When the tech bubble out in Silicon Valley finally bursts, the bigger companies like Amazon and Google are still going to be going strong. Amazon is just going to do a lot better because they aren't reaching out and grabbing everything hot and interesting for insane amounts.
Amazon has long been expensive on paper and is pretty volatile - there's no denying that. They are a very focused company that does lots of business. I'm certainly not saying they're a bad investment, but they are quite volatile and quite expensive right now. I have owned a small long position for a while in AMZN, but I do also keep a small put position as well for insurance.
