Festival of Stocks #1

Welcome to the first Festival of Stocks! The Festival of Stocks is a blog carnival dedicated to highlighting bloggers best recent posts on stock market related topics. I want to thank everyone for helping me start this new weekly online event for the investor blog community.

Before I continue, I would like everyone to take a moment to reflect on 9/11 on this fifth anniversary. This horrible event had a tragic impact on the New York City financial district, the Pentagon, and also on the passengers and crew of the three flights involved.

As host to the first Festival of Stocks, I encourage you to take a short tour of Fat Pitch Financials by visiting what my readers consider to be the best investment articles at Fat Pitch Financials. I have also included my post, “Katrina Stocks One Year Later” in this week’s festival.

Now for the main event, I am proud to present this week’s best entries to the Festival of Stocks. The articles are listed by category. I have indicated the author’s stance on the stock or sector being discussed.  I’ve also listed the stocks referenced in each article and linked them to Yahoo! Finance for quick reference to current quotes and fundamentals. I tried to keep the format simple and straightforward so other bloggers interested in hosting the Festival of Stocks could copy this format.

Stock Analysis

Consolidated Tomoka(CTO)- Hidden Value In Long Lived Assets by Inelegant Investor
* Editor’s Favorite *
The Inelegant Investor examined the true asset value of the land on the books of Consolidated Tomoka (CTO). The properties look really interesting but I don’t think I would want to own property in Florida right now.
Stance: Neutral
Stocks: CTO,BKFG.PK

Ahold- Breaking Up is Hard to Do by Value Discipline
Rick over at Value Discipline takes a close look at the improvements in year over year growth and margins in latest quarterly report for Ahold (AHO). It’s not often you see a retailer reporting good news, so I recommend taking a look at this interesting situation.
Stance: Neutral
Stocks: AHO,TSCDY.PK

Why Verizon Looks Cheap by Stock Market Beat
Trent at Stock Market Beat digs deep into the accounting arcana associated with the treatment of wireless subsidiaries held by major telecom companies. After making adjustments for different accounting methods used by various telecom companies, Trent sees Verizon as a relative value bargain.
Stance: Positive
Stocks: VZ,T,Q

On Blyth by Gannon On Investing
Geoff Gannon does an in depth analysis of Blyth (BTH), a scented candle company that also makes other “personal indulgences [for] women at affordable prices”. Geoff does a great job walking through Blyth’s competitive position, profitability, cash flow, recent history, and valuation.
Stance: Neutral
Stocks: BTH,SLE,YCC

ArmorGroup International by Controlled Greed.com
Taking the old adage of the time to buy is when there is blood in the streets, John of Controlled Greed.com instead takes a look at where the blood is in the streets and examines ArmorGroup International (ARG/LN or AMGPF/OTC). ArmorGroup Internation is a British private security company heavily involved in Iraq. John does a great job at laying out the risks associated with investing in this stock, even though he likes it.
Stance: Positive
Stocks: AMGPF.PK

3 Steps to Gold Stock Investing by Gold Stock Bull
The graph of the Gold Bug Index definitely shows how the gold sector has been hot. However, I’m not sure I follow the logic of the 3 steps laid out in this post.
Stance: Positive
Stocks: NEM,GFI,FCX,HL,BGO,CDE,MDG,GSS,GLG,IAG,GG,AEM,GOLD,KGC,HMY

Commentary

Getting Frustrated by ROIC Blog
Justin Brand, founder of the Rule One Investment Community, responds to one frustrated investor following Phil Town’s Rule #1 who bought Chico’s FAS Inc. (CHS) stock. I found Justin’s comment that he doesn’t think Rule #1 investors should be investing in anything right now to be interesting. However, I think the two problems here are that I’m not convinced Chico’s has a moat and that too much faith is being placed on technicals.
Stance: Neutral
Stocks: CHS

Threats to Advanced Nutraceuticals Delisting Attempt: Attack of the 499ers by Cheap Stocks
Clyde at Cheap Stocks discusses how Advanced Nutraceuticals might not go through with its reverse split going private transaction because of the number of shareholders purchasing shares below the reverse split level. I’m one of those speculators, so I was interested in reading Cheap Stocks’ different take on this stock and how he wants to own it regardless of the reverse split.
Stance: Positive
Stocks: ANII.OB

Book Review

The best stock tip that I can give by My 1st Million at 33
My 1st Million at 33 recommends the book, “The Four Pillars of Investing”. However, he’s still going to try his hand at active investing. Find out why.

Backtest

Katrina Stocks One Year Later by Fat Pitch Financials
I took a look back at seven stocks I mentioned a year ago that were battered by the direct impacts of Hurricane Katrina. My theory that there would be some good bargains from that carnage panned out. It looks like I’ll be looking for value next time disaster strikes.
Stance: Positive
Stocks: HBHC,PNK,PXT,RUTH,SIZ,WTNY,COF

That is it for this week’s Festival of Stocks. As you can tell, it has been a huge success, especially given the short lead time I gave. My guess is that next week’s Festival of Stocks at Gannon On Investing will even be a bigger hit. Start sending in your submissions now so that Geoff will have plenty of time to read your great entries. You can use this handy form to send Gannon On Investing your best recent stock market related articles for Festival of Stocks #2.

Since this is a new blog carnival, I’m asking you to make a special effort this week in spreading the word about this first edition of the Festival of Stocks. Please post a link to this Festival on your blog, email it to friends, and bookmark it the top social bookmarking sites.

If you are interested in hosting a future edition of the Festival of Stocks, please visit the schedule to find a free slot. Then contact me with the name of your site, blog URL, email address, and the date your prefer to host. I’ve tried to make hosting the Festival of Stocks as easy as possible. I’m release an optional template for the carnival in the next few days (after I make it understandable) that utilizes a spreadsheet that will generate the html code automatically for the Festival. I’m also allowing hosts to limit the number of entries to twenty to encourage quality and also to prevent hosts and readers from being overwhelmed. Please feel free to make further suggestions on making this weekly Festival of Stocks a great success.

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