Stock Gumshoe

Well, OK — exciting for me, anyway. Folks have been asking me for a few improvements to the site for a long time, and I’ve started to make a few of them.

First, the tracking spreadsheet is now updated again — it now includes every stock I’ve looked at, some 350 or so of them, but it is split between two spreadsheets (one of stocks teased by newsletters in 2007, the other, you guessed it! — 2008). Once again, I’ll promise to try to keep these up to date. We’ve got some new leaders and laggards, but, as you might guess, a strong majority if all the stocks I’ve looked at are down right now — and the club of 100%+ gainers remains very small, indeed (only one 2008 pick, and a few 2007 picks, make that cutoff).

And second, I have significantly upgraded the search for the site — so it is now a custom Google search, and with one search you can find out if there is anything of interest on StockGumshoe.com OR in the Stock Gumshoe Forum (you can also narrow it down once you’ve done the search, if you only want one site or the other). This should work much better, and it will also enable you to search the often very valuable comments, which was impossible with the old system. There is a search box at the top right of the page, and also one at the bottom. Give it a try and let me know if you run into any problems, there may still be a kink or two in the system.

So, you may be yawning already … but I’m happy to have gotten at least slightly updated here. There are some interesting new stocks atop the tracking spreadsheets if you’re interested in a little tour — and if you’re new to the site, you can go through and see if any of the stocks interest you, the individual writeups are linked from the spreadsheet, too.

I wish all my US readers a wonderful Independence Day, and I hope the rest of you get a break from the hubbub with Wall Street closed down for a day. Enjoy the weekend, and I’ll be filling up your inboxes with exciting ideas again next week.

It’s been a little while since I looked at something from Outstanding Investments, so this one caught my eye. It was buried in a long teaser email that was all about Saudi Arabia lying about their oil reserves, and the various solutions to the oil crisis … but about halfway down, Byron King started teasing us about a company that will be helping to enable the “car of the future.”

Part of the reason to pay close attention, by the way, is the recent track record of Outstanding Investments — it has been the strongest performer in the Hulbert database for the last five years, thanks in part to a focus on commodity-related stocks, so although it’s had a few different advisors and past performance is no indicator of future results, I do like to keep an eye on what they’re doing.

King goes through the various options for solving the problem of making cars more efficient and green, essentially saying that the Prius is great but is not a mass solution because of expense and weak highway performance, and that natural gas or hydrogen will not be taking over immediately, either. Hard to argue with him in the short term, since natural gas seems largely destined for fleet use and there is no infrastructure to speak of for hydrogen (though a hydrogen fuel cell car comes along every now and then, like Honda’s recent foray).

He focuses on the gunk that comes out of the engine … and says that the key to the future is Read the rest of this entry »

Robert Hsu has been sending out several teasers related to Chinese oil demand lately, no big surprise as we watch oil toy with $140 a barrel (should we even pay attention to $10 moves anymore? Boooorrring …)

In his words, “China’s hunt for oil is one of the most extraordinary, untold stories of our time. It also offers one of the greatest investment opportunities for investors today.”

And … “China’s epic hunt for oil doesn’t need much explaining but I’ll state the reason, bluntly: without oil, China’s economy goes back to the Stone Age, fast. And the ensuing civil strife across China would make the Mongolian Hordes look like a Sunday school picnic.”

He paints a nice picture, eh?
Read the rest of this entry »