PowerOptions WeBlog

Ensco International (ESV), an offshore drilling company gave its stock help by reporting a strong 13% increase in profits for its fiscal fourth quarter. Lead by higher day rates for its rigs, the company best Wall Street analysts significantly to help inspire stock trading.
Fourth quarter net income of $238.6 million translates into a remarkable $1.66 [...]

Counter to recent developments in the retail environment, Framingham, Massachusetts based off-price retailer TJX (TJX) saw a huge spike in its fourth quarter profits. The company, which operates such retail brands as TJ Maxx and Marshalls, says improvements in inventory management, cost controls, and marketing helped lead to the strong showing.
The surprisingly strong report gave [...]

It was a mixed bag for EMC Corporation (EMC) during its fourth quarter earnings announcement. The company boasted a 35% jump in fourth quarter profit from the previous year, thanks to widespread revenue growth. The company did warn that 2008 earnings would likely be below current analyst targets.
EMC is a leading data storage vendor. Net [...]

Prowling bear:
A pesky bearish market has been prowling around as of late, and generally, covered call investing positions don’t fair too well in a bearish market. A method of covered call investing in bearish markets is to take a defensive strategy, i.e. selecting covered call positions for defensive stocks.

U.S. Stocks had a six-session losing streak, especially in the stock investing and stock trading areas. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) bounced back from 325-point deficit to end nearly 300 points ahead. Many investors chose to bet on another rate cut by the Federal Reserve.

A new investment strategy is sweeping developing countries, such as China and the Middle East. This investment strategy is the investment of gold. A new class of investors is adding a twist to the market. The rush to invest gold has helped in the increasing prices. This week, gold crossed $900 an ounce. It [...]

The USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times have all run articles recently on the likely fate of the worldwide housing market. The narrative is fairly similar: Home prices are falling after a decade of double-digit increases in some of the world’s hottest housing markets.

Bill Gates invests through a vehicle called Cascade Investment Holdings. On the blog today, we thought it might be interesting to look at the investment fund’s top held equities and a potential covered call investment strategy involving them.

The Zune’s current market share is around 2.8 percent. This is greater than Apple’s (AAPL) 2.3 percent personal computer market share in 2003 but still described as a pittance by most news outlets. The LA times business section led with an article entitled, “Zunes not likely to get iPod fans to change their tunes.”

Two bits of news caught the PowerOptions‘ blogs attention today: Microsoft (MSFT) releases Halo 3 with over $170 million first day sales and Wal-Mart (WMT) is expanding its $4 generic drug program.