Festival of Stocks #144

Welcome to the June 8, 2009 edition of the Festival of Stocks.  The Festival of Stocks is a blog carnival dedicated to highlighting bloggers best posts on stock market related topics. Fat Pitch Financials is the actual birth place of this online weekly event, so it is always a special occasion when I get the chance to host this roving event.

If you aren’t already familiar with my blog, Fat Pitch Financials, it is a value investing blog with a focus on wide moat companies selling at substantial discounts and Graham style workouts. I encourage you to subscribe for free to my blog feed to keep up with my latest postings.

You should also check my Fat Pitch Financials Contributor’s Corner while you are here. It is my premium members only community dedicated to unique arbitrage and special situation opportunities.

Now that you are familiar with Fat Pitch Financials, let’s take a look at this week’s Festival of Stock participants. Here are this week’s entries:

Special Situations Real Money Portfolio May 2009 Update posted at Fat Pitch Financials. This unique opportunistic portfolio continues to trounce the market. Note the mention of XTENT (XTNT), a stock trading below net current asset value last week. It’s up well over 400% since this post mentioned the stock.

List of Gold ETFs posted at OneMint. With all the talk of inflation and the need to hedge for it with gold, many will find this list of ETFs helpful.

Is This Stock Market Rally For Real? posted at Jeflin’s Investment Blog. That’s my question too. This informative article may help you decide.

I’m Not Buying this Rally posted at My Wealth Builder. Another blogger questions the current rally and decides to remain disciplined and wait for the inevitable correction before making major additional purchases.

Stock Prices Do Not Represent Stock Value (or Company Value) posted at ABCs of Investing. A lower priced stock isn’t “cheap”.

AFLAC Inc. (AFL) Dividend Stock Analysis posted at Dividends Value. Linked here is a detailed quantitative analysis with commentary. The author finds AFLAC to be a strong buy.

Can the Piotroski Method Improve Magic Formula Results? posted at MagicDiligence. In the investing nightmare of 2008, only one stock screening strategy returned positive results – the Piotroski method. Learn about this technique and see Magic Formula stocks that are ranked highly using it.

How To Be Listed on Dow Jones Industrial Average posted at Jeff Rose. A look at who is on the Dow Jones Industrial Average and how it might change with the removal of GM and Citi.

Sometimes You Bend Your Trading Rules… posted at My Simple Trading System. Taking an early profit to ease your comfort in a volatile market may seem smart or it might just increase your regret later.

What is investing? posted at Cash Money Life. A look at the difference between investing, saving, and trading.”

TradeKing vs Scottrade – Online Stock Trading Comparison posted at Investing School. Many people ask me whether Scottrade or TradeKing is better. Here’s a comparison for you.

How to Avoid a Mutual Fund’s Minimum Investment posted at The Dough Roller. Here’s an easy and inexpensive alternative to a mutual fund’s minimum investment requirement.

Long Term Investing posted at Everything Finance. Investing has its own language and understanding it can make it easier to be a confident investor. Two common terms you hear when people talk about investing are “bid” and “ask.” Here’s an explanation of what they mean.

Colgate Palmolive (CL) Dividend Stock Analysis posted at Dividend Growth Investor. Why this blogger would only consider initiating a position in Colgate Palmolive on dips below $58.66.

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That concludes this edition of the Festival of Stocks. Be sure an leave comments as you visit each of the blogs that participated in this week’s Festival of Stocks. They’ll appreciate knowing folks are reading their articles.

Next week’s Festival of Stocks is still looking for a home. If you are interested in volunteering to host a future edition of the Festival of Stocks, just contact me right away with the name of your site, blog URL, email address, and the date your prefer to host. Submit your blog article to the next edition of Festival of Stocks using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our Festival of Stocks index page for those of you interested in reviewing the archives.