Saturday, March 24, 2012

Etch-a-Sketch: The stupid continues

I've said before, many times, that the stock market is NOT logical. There are whole networks, websites, blogs (like this one) and every other kind of social media devoted to explaining, predicting an "understanding" the stock market. And just when everyone starts believing they got it nailed down, stupid rears it's ugly head.

This past week, one of the officials for one of the presidential candidates mentioned "Etch-a-Sketch" during an interview on TV. I can't say that was the total cause, but on Thursday Ohio Arts (OART.PK), the company that owns the Etch-a-Sketch, went from $4/share to $9/share. And they hadn't made any announcements.  And the volume that day was about 800 shares traded. That's not a typo. What about the PE ratio? What's Ohio Arts' beta?  Did the sector see a boost? None of that mattered. As it never has.  The stock went up over 100% because it's product was mentioned. Period.  Nobody necessarily bought any more Etch-a-Sketch's, the company didn't announce record earnings. Their product got mentioned. And somebody with 800 shares sold them and made about $4,000.

Today the stock is back around $4. Stupid went back to sleep.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Unexpected Consequences

Recently the restaurant across the street from "my office" (Panera Bread) shut off their free wifi for about 2 weeks.  Since my office only allows you to be online for 30 minutes at a time (to cut down on traffic), it's common knowledge that if you have to stay online longer you log onto the other restaurant's wifi (I'm on it now) and surf all day.  I wonder if Panera saw a decrease in business over the last 2 weeks, and if so, did they realize it was because of a competitor?

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Smackdown

I don't know why, but the market opened and is down between 1-2% in 15 minutes. Good time to look for bargains. Those stocks that are getting beat down because the rest of the market is.