– Stock Market Companion – Current Holdings –

Nr.	Co.	Ticker	Action	Entry Date	Current Gain (Loss)
1	Boeing, Co.	BA	Holding	12/22/2011	+1%
2	DEX-One Corp.	DEXO	Sold this Week	12/29/2011	+16.4% (Final)
3	Alcoa, Inc.	AA	Holding	1/3/2012	+4%
4	Dendreon, Inc.	DNDN	Holding	1/11/2012	-7%
5	Mitek, Inc.	MITK	Holding	1/12/2012	+3%
6	Cirrus Logic	CRUS	Holding	1/17/2012	+5%
7	Cree, Inc.	CREE	Holding	1/18/2012	+12%

– Markets “At a Glance” –

(Please scroll down to the end of the report to see your favorite benchmarks – Dollar, Oil, Gold … closing prices and daily direction.)

 

Market	Price (Today’s Close)	Unit of Measure	Today’s Direction
SP-500	1,315.38	Index	FLAT = +0.88 points
DOW-30	12,720.48	Index	UP = +96.50 points
NASDAQ	2,786.70	Index	Flat = -1.63 points

 

– Market Trends –

 

Trend	SP-500	DJ-30	NASDAQ
Short Term	Flat / UP	Flat / UP	Flat / UP
Intermediate	Flat	Flat	Flat
Long Term	Lateral	Lateral	Lateral

 

*Summary of terms from Trader Vic II-Principles of Professional Speculation (pg. 140-141)
*_________* Represents a change in trend rating.

 

– Market Perspectives –

 

For your added perspective, we’ve included this chart of the broader market (Successful stock investors develop and start with a minds-eye view of the broader market and keep it clear) –

 

SMC SP-500 ETF Daily Chart (Please click on the chart to see a bigger, easy to read chart on a separate browser tab window).

 

– Today’s Highlights –

The S&P 500 has now crossed above the October 2011 highs in a well defined uptrend, in anticipation of possibly better economic times ahead.

Economic data for the U.S. economy has so far NOT disappointed those of us who have participated early in anticipation of good news ahead.  It’s not always this good, but we will gratefully receive it.  The market has rallied, beginning October 4th.  On the evening of October 4th, we sent out an SMC Special Alert to all members – identifying this possible KEY reversal day for the markets.

Here’s the good news on the economic front for this week –

• Initial jobless claims are sharply LOWER this week than last week and confirm the DOWNTREND in initial jobless claims.  This means that companies are shedding less workers and many have “right-sized” their businesses for the current economic conditions that we have.
• Capacity utilization remains stable at +78.1%
• Housing starts for December were 657,000, down from 685,000 in November.  This data includes single family and multi-family unit construction.  This can be characterized as good news, even though the numbers declined.  Why?  Because as production decreases, the hope is that more inventory is taken out of the system.  At some point, aggregate demand will exceed inventory and recovery will occur.
• Existing home sales for December reached 4.61 million units in December; a +5% increase over November.

 

 

 

– S.I.M.P.L.E.  Stock Investingtm –
– (Where each investment begins with a Story and ends with Earnings) –

S.I.M.P.L.E. Stock Investing is built upon these core areas –

S = Story (What is / are the key catalyst(s) behind the company of interest?)

I = Investor Interest (Is the stock chart showing investor interest = buying or share accumulation?)

M = Market (Is the background market favorable for investing at this time?  This recognizes that 9 out of 10 stocks move with the overall market, according to decades long research from William O’Neil.).

P = Person or Product (Is there a particular person or product that makes the story work for this investment?)

L = Leader (Is the company a leader in its industry group or is its product a leader in its market?)

E = Earnings (Are current quarterly earnings and annual earnings growing?)

 

Today we sent this Successful Investing Video on the company 3D Systems, Inc.,  (DDD $18.20) informing of what may be favorable developments ahead.

Please click on this link for the video and remember to right click the video to see control features associated with re-winding and playing the video.

Dalene (far right) making dinner with the children. Lucas (in red shirt) was a guest with us a few days.	Mikelle’s 8th Birthday with “Home-made caterpillar cake.	Children make this year’s first snowman.  (L to R = Noelle, Jordan, and Gabrielle = Arms Up!)

 

– Benchmarks “At a Glance” –

 

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