

If you had money to invest in tech stock, which would you choose? - andrewtbham

If you had money to invest in tech stock, which would you choose?
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starpilot
I'd choose a tech stock with less than $1b in market capital and little
analyst coverage. Anything larger will have been picked apart by the
professionals doing this for a living. It'd probably take a few hours of
poring through SEC filings and studying the relevant technology to figure out
whether it's viable. It probably wouldn't be a name that's mentioned on HN or
Slashdot.

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rakkhi
Thats popular opinion but for example I bought apple at 240 at a good rate of
leverage and it is sitting pretty behind a trailing stop at the moment.... if
you belive in the fundementals, follow the industry (i.e. invest in what you
know) no reason why you cannot get good returns with large cap stocks

~~~
chengas123
What do you mean by "good rate of leverage"? You traded on margin at a low
interest rate?

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rakkhi
I meant because it is a CFD I am getting 25 / 1 exposure. IG markets interest
is very low also though

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rakkhi
Leveraged bets at the moment personally: Apple - great company, great
management, rosy future Google - dominant market share, interesting new
products expected ARM and Qualycomm - processors for virtually all smart
phones and tablets Was annoyed I missed some of the big security M&A's McAffee
at al - so owning Juniper, Symantec and Checkpoint short term in case it
continues Galaxy - lithium Newcrest - Gold Corning - gorilla glass for
smartphones

Would love to hear HN's readers thoughts the above, loving my trailing stops
at the moment :)

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andrewtbham
i'm bearish on google... dominant market share = low growth. they used to be
taking share from others, mostly yahoo. now they are loosing share to bing.
new products? they have had a string of duds. wave, buzz, etc. furthermore
they are loosing talent to facebook. i don't see it.

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noelchurchill
I'm playing the gold rush in multiple ways.

1) Owning physical gold (and silver).

2) Buying shares of gold and silver mining stocks.

3) Buying the mining stocks on the Toronto exchange, in Canadian dollars, so
as the USD continues it's decent my investment also appreciates through the
better exchange rate.

Thoughts?

~~~
rakkhi
Do you have a good story on why you believe that gold will keep going up for
while? I can think of one maybe the US currency will continue to decline and
the world will change to a basket of currencies backed by gold... Personally I
am going long on a gold company just to benefit in the laging effect of high
gold prices on the earnings of these companies... other than that I have no
real story on why gold keeps going up and more importantly when/if it will
peak and take a major fall Is owning physical gold and silver because you
think the US will colapse like the roman empire and you want some quick
currency to escape?... aka Peter Shiff ? (<http://amzn.to/bTVMIj>)

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noelchurchill
I think you're hitting on some of the key points.

The Fed is continuing it's policy of monetary expansion. Most major central
banks around the world are doing the same. US treasury debt is in a massive
bubble. The Fed is propping it up daily. Money won't find safe haven in any
fiat currency and have nowhere to go but gold to preserve wealth. Good ol'
Greenspan said as much in a recent announcement he made. He advises central
planners to stock up on gold.

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rphlx
A boring diversified combination of ETFs?

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DanI-S
Rather than looking for the next big thing, try to look for what the next big
thing is dependent on. There could be ten companies trying to build a better
electric vehicle battery, but they're all going to have to get their lithium
from somewhere.

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andrewtbham
good point... do you have a good lithium play?

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rakkhi
Galaxy if you want an Australian stock, Western Lithium if you want a US stock

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coryl
GOOG:
[http://www.google.ca/finance?client=ob&q=NASDAQ:GOOG](http://www.google.ca/finance?client=ob&q=NASDAQ:GOOG)

Their stock is pretty much invincible.

~~~
noelchurchill
_Their stock is pretty much invincible._

When people say things like this you know the stock has about hit it's peak
and nowhere to go but down. Just watch :)

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vannevar
Agree, GOOG is just one scrappy startup away from irrelevance. The company is
locked in a Red Queen race with the very content spammers it subsidizes, and
its search results are only incrementally better than they were in 1999.
Google's income is heavily leveraged on its search traffic, and if/when that
collapses the company will go with it.

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nextparadigms
Nvidia. Tegra platform will totally dominate the mobile chip market in 2011.
Most of the tech companies have already partnered with them to get their chip.

~~~
starpilot
Are you sure that you understand this ahead of the rest of the market? How do
you know this positive outlook isn't already built into the price?

If expectations are high, any trip-up by NVDA or its current partners could
send it tumbling.

My point is that it's not enough to know a company is doing well. To make
money off the stock, you need to know it _before everyone else does_.

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jroid
MSFT Their free cash flow last year was $22 bn and their enterprise value is
$177bn, which gives EV/FCF of slightly above 8.

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wslh
Not VMWare, it has a record P/E.

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fezzl
Amazon?

