Current personal holdings and why

I own Dendreon (DNDN) and Micron Technologies (MU) in my personal fund.

Dendreon has a solid research team with a new drug before the FDA. Provenge treats prostate cancer and will generate sales growth similar to the Gardasil vaccine for HPV/cervical cancer. The drug has passed its research tests and is now in the final application process. I expect Dendreon to be acquired by a larger pharmaceutical - AstraZeneca (AZN) is rumored to be a candidate.

Micron Technologies is a manufacturer of chips for a variety of devices. I like their niche in the smartphone sector, an area that I believe will see substantial growth as competition ramps up. I believe the company has become undervalued for the long-term due to a crash in technology investing throughout the recession.

I will continue to discuss these in more detail as time goes on, but they are the focus of my current investing.

Reading the long-term tea leaves

The Fed's announcement was absolutely mind-boggling today for the markets. Bernanke stated the low rates would stay in place for some time (good for the markets), that the Federal Reserve was watching inflation rates as the trigger for rates (good for the economy), and that the decline in consumer and business spending was moderating (good for everything, duh). And what did the markets do?

They freaked out. Of course. It was all too good, see, and the markets didn't know what to do with it.

I have a hunch, and you can take my hunches with a grain of salt, that the markets will be up tomorrow as they realize the Fed might just be on their side. I have marked the chart with a long-term trendline that I will accept as a sign that things are truly back to normal. Should upward momentum fail, I see support at the 100 and 200 day moving averages. On a short-term basis, support at the 50-day if we sustain a pop above it.

Skynet Awakes

When I see the commercials for the Google/Verizon phone Droid (let's be honest, they're trying really hard not to advertise that Motorola makes the thing), I can't help but pay attention. While Apple leveraged the indie-cool factor of the iPhone - after all, wealthy hipsters drive their business - Google is taking a different tack. It looks like Droid is going directly after the sort of dorks that really get into Star Trek, would be quite all right with robot overlords, and who want their phones to be computing powerhouses and not just nifty gadgets with fruit on the back.

As it turns out, that's me, so I love the commercials. Anyway, video down at the bottom.

Hotseat from Purdue University

http://mashable.com/2009/11/03/hotseat/

Hotseat is a new classroom tool that leverages students' familiarity with social networking to provide a dynamic, interactive educational environment. It combines Facebook, Twitter and SMS to allow students to ask questions and leave comments in real-time in a format the professor and other students can see.

I love the idea. Imagine you're in a class, and the professor begins lecturing on some obscure economic theory. Rather than stop the discussion every time you wish to ask a question, you just send it to Hotseat and the professor can answer it when he/she wants - or just let another student answer it in the stream. I only see it being useful with people who are familiar with the Twitter-stream, but those people are often devout and willing to bring anyone in who wants to learn.

Check out the video:

Calling Out Cramer (YRCW)

I wish CNBC had never given Cramer a TV show. The man's a genius, as evidenced by his book Real Money - one of the best books on modern investing I've ever read. Cramer accepts that fundamental value is a major component of a stock's price, but it isn't the only component. The market can take good companies and overbuy the company's stock until it's doomed to eventually crash. However, the wise investor can study the momentum in a stock and hold it even after it's overvalued, selling only when the momentum dies. Cramer provides data from his own trading to prove a point.

But it was a mistake to give him a TV show. For starters, he doesn't have personal stakes in many of the companies he recommends. If he recommends a buy and the stock tanks, he loses nothing except a little credibility. In addition, he doesn't have near enough time to study a stock and make an informed decision on it. He's got to come up with calls, on the fly, every single day. Most traders I know keep a watchlist between 20-30 stocks, but that's it. I can only imagine Cramer's watching around 200 just to keep up.

Allow me to call attention to one in particular: YRCW, or YRC Worldwide.

On September 23, 2009, Cramer called a buy on this stock. A big quote here: "You missed the bottom. You haven't missed the top." Please, please, let me show you how much you "missed the top."
That giant red line there would be the stock price plummeting on news.

See, if you'd actually done your homework on the company, you wouldn't have made a dumb mistake like this. My associates and I did - we got out in the spring. YRCW was once a great company, but now it's almost bankrupt. Don't trifle with companies like this unless you're prepared to do your homework. And don't listen to Jim Cramer if you can at all help it.

Introduction

Welcome to my personal blog. I'm afraid my interests are spread around politics, technology, investing, economics, social media, and hybrids of each - thus, feel free to filter out whatever is noise to you. Thank you for reading!