Category: Online Stock Trading Software

Shares of large biotechnology companies posted only slight gains Friday, despite large gains in the market overall. Biotechs have been calm all week, experiencing on average only half the losses seen in the wider market, according to the American Stock Exchange’s Biotechnology Index.

In article, “CME Buying CBOT”, we analyzed Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s (CME) purchase of CBOT with an eye for a bullish strategy for CME. We continued the CME bull put credit spreads saga and for the month of July, the strategy returned a very nice +11.1% return. This strategy has returned over 74% in only eight months.

Analysts are expecting global spending on energy and power infrastructure to grow nearly 10% a year for the next 5 years. Today we will look for values on companies in the global marketplace engaged in the construction of power plants and/or the associated electrical distribution equipment.

News outlets have been very impressed with the performance of technology stocks in the first half of 2007. It is true, tech stocks are performing better than most other sectors and the trend may continue for the remainder of the year. In this blog we’re going to look at 5 fast moving tech stocks and a way an investor can potentially boost the already tidy gains using a covered call investment strategy.

Even though the residential housing industry is in the dumps, the commercial/industrial construction business is on fire. The world economy is booming with developing and transitioning economies turning in GDP’s in the 5% to 6% range. Infrastructures like roads/highways, water, electric power generation/transmission, waste treatment, etc. have to be built in order to support the burgeoning growth of developing and transitioning economies.

As you may have heard, Apple (AAPL) is planning to launch its iPhone this week. The competition in the phone market is brutal and many have speculated how Apple can compete in such a crowded marketplace. Interestingly, there aren’t an excessive number of phones in the high-end market where Apple finds itself.

General Electric (GE) and Microsoft (MSFT) have recently held internal discussions about buying the Dow Jones Company (DJ) and combining it with some parts of NBC/Universal. However, the media reports state the two entities have not reached a point where they are ready to submit a bid.

Chinese stocks dropped Monday as the government made moves to chill the overheated market. The Shanghai Composite Index’s 8.3% plummet marked the largest one-day drop since the 8.8% drop on February 27, 2007. Since last Tuesday, the Shanghai index has dropped 15 percent.

In article, “CME Buying CBOT”, we analyzed Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s (CME) purchase of CBOT (BOT) with an eye for a bullish strategy for CME. We continued the CME bull put credit spreads saga and for the month of May, the strategy returned a very nice +12.4% return. This strategy has returned over 52% in only six months. The bidding war between CME and ICE for CBOT continues as outlined in the article, “Two Exchanges May Enter Bidding War to Acquire the Chicago Board of Trade”. CME recently upped its bid for CBOT, but its bid is still not higher than ICE’s bid. Even if the CME/CBOT merger does not come to fruition, CME is looking bullish and using PowerOptions powerful stock options tools to search for potential candidates returned the following bull-put credit spreads stock options position:

Continuing to evaluate industries with a tendency to hold up well during tough economic times, today we will consider the players in the tobacco industry. Even when the economy isn’t doing so hot, the tobacco industry generally continues to perform well, as tobacco smokers tend to continue to indulge in the product.