Stock market investment blog

On September 10, I wrote about why I bought Ebay stock. The short version is that it will be hard for other online auction sites to compete with Ebay. I also like their new deal with Google to supply advertising. I didn’t mention it then, but I also like all the free advertising they get. People email each other weird Ebay auctions and newspapers talk about the big charity auctions that happen on Ebay.

What I really like is that Ebay is now over $31 – a better than 12.5% gain in a month and a half or so.

I’ve read the introduction to his book One up on Wall Street and to summarize what I understand so far, average people like you and I can beat not only the market but alost the stock experts by paying attention to companies around us. Examples that were easily accessible to many consumers would be Hanes (when L’eggs came out), Dell, Home Depot, Harley Davidson, MCI Worldcom, and more.

As some of you may recall, I’ve been leaning toward a more passive investing strategy recently (though I still do some stock picking or this blog would be truly pointless) but I’m keeping my mind open and will let you know if Lynch’s book convinces me to adjust my strategy.

Don’t forget about the stock guru screener I recently blogged about – Lynch is one of the gurus.

There are some excellent investor tools on the http://www.nasdaq.com/ site. You can find analysis of any stock against the criteria of many of the most influential investors (think Peter Lynch, Warren Buffett, The Motley Fools, etc.). Or you can screen the market for stocks that match your favorite gurus. For example I found PTR PETROCHINA COMPANY LIMITED showing up a couple of times as i used the guru analysis tool. This would be an interesting stock to look at: it has a good PE (around 10), a good PEG (0.4 according tot he NASDAQ site), and a dividend that yields close to 5%. On the surface it apperas to be my kind of stock so it may be time for a little digging…

Also, check out Risk Grades, and Custom Heatmaps.