The contest is ending,
Our picks have been made,
There isn't much time,
For another slo trade.

We invested in Apple,
First Solar and chips;
In Garmin and Baidu,
And Exxon and ships;

Cisco and miners
And makers of blenders
Some even made money
On home mortgage lenders;

Transocean and RIM,
T, brewers and cash,
And ETF shorts,
In case of a crash.

Some we held long,
And others we'd trade,
This market was tough,
The months that we played.

We entered our blogs,
Even when it was bleak,
Strategies, buy points,
And Q of the week.

Stocky and James,
Keith and some more,
Are all near the top,
In search of best score.

Vad's one of the favorites,
He blogs with the best,
If he starts a hedge fund,
I'd like to invest.

Duff picks his stocks,
From bottles of beer.
When I tried that trick,
My head didn't stay clear.

Eileen and Bianca,
Are running a trust,
Their family counts on them,
Not to go bust.

Toroandbruin,
Used soap opera script,
To tell us about,
The stocks that she picked.

Tom's Mastercard blog,
Was scored very high.
But we both were quite wrong,
When we said not to buy.

A boat carried Armin,
Across the great ocean,
At least when it's virtual,
There isn't much motion.

I've missed many folks,
In this short piece of work,
But the verses aren't flowing,
Like posts from Don Ferk.

A big heartfelt thanks,
To Ken and his crew,
We had lots of fun,
And hope you did too.

As the open soon closes,
My wish for next year,
May God bless you all,
With peace and good cheer.

Comments: View Comments |  Sunday December 23, 2007

Let's talk about AT&T. ... However, a lot of this anticipation is stemming from AT&T's new TV service, U-verse, .... The company plans to have it available to 30 million homes and businesses by 2010. Is this feasible? Can AT&T successfully break into the cable television oligopoly?

Thought I might be done blogging and the QOTW pops up on a stock I own ...

Is it feasible to reach 30 million homes by 2010? Lets look at the numbers. That gives them two years, or roughly 500 workdays. That means they need to reach 60-thousand homes per day. Not sure how many installs a technician can do in one day, but Verizon Fios took about 4-hours. Ballpark, they need 30,000 techs doing installs - although it may go much faster in apartment and condo buildings. That's a lot of technicians running around in AT&T U-verse vans, but it should be feasible.

The more important question is how many of those 30 million homes will sign up for U-verse and the triple or quadruple play. Again, no telling - however I believe they will have some success. The even more important question is how much success they need to have - I think not much, all they really need to do is not muck it up.

I disagree with the question's premise that much of T's run up is anticipation of U-verse success. U-verse is certainly part of the picture, but T isn't priced at much of a premium to the market, is generating lots of cash, raised the dividend to about 4% when a two-year note only yields 3.3% and announced a pretty sizable buyback. Most of the stocks with that kind of yield are financials with mortgage exposure and all the other gremlins running through the credit markets. I believe income investors create a solid, concrete floor under the share price here.

T doesn't need a big hit in TV because, if the rest of the teenagers and young adults in the country are like my kids, text messaging fees alone will more than make up for the loss of land lines. And maybe AT&T wireless will find a few customers like this fellow from Canada. OK, so not many folks will run up an $85,000 phone bill - but file downloads, e-mail and internet access over cellular certainly has a lot of growth potential.

All T needs to do to meet expectations is capture a slice of the pie and run it at a profit. Potential marketing schemes to do that are pretty easy to come up with - free or discounted i-Phone with a contract; wanna watch the Patriots in game 16? - we have the NFL network, does your cable company?

Bottom line - Ma Bell's had a makeover and she's lookin' mighty fine.

Comments: View Comments |  Friday December 14, 2007  |  Stocks: T, VZ,

In case you missed it, AT&T raised the dividend from .355 to .40 per share per quarter and announced a $400 million share buyback today. On a day that saw the S&P tank by 2.5%, T was up over a buck and a half or 4% to 39.46 a share. Even with the nice bump today, the stock is yielding over 4% at the new dividend rate.

T's trading at a forward PE at 12.5 vs. about 16 for the S&P 500. To match the S&P's forward PE ratio, T would need to trade up to about $50 per share. I don't see any obvious reason why T should trade at a substantial discount to the market. Closing even half the gap would bring it to $45, a 12+% gain from today's close.

I consider this a buy up to about $40 per share. The safe and relatively high dividend yield limits downside risk and there's good potential for a 15% to 25% total return over the next 12 months.

Disclosure - I own shares of AT&T.

Comments: View Comments |  Tuesday December 11, 2007  |  Stocks: T,