The Oxen Report: Weekly Reflection

Does everyone remember when Microsoft was the greatest American company? I saw this interesting chart this weekend, and it really shows how much market share the company has lost in the past ten years. While I do not tend to play much in the way of technology, I did find this to be astonishing.

This past week was quite a great week for The Oxen Report as we made four successful trades for 38%, 4%, 3%, and 2% gains with no misses. We also got involved into a new long term position in the Long Term Portfolio in an overvalued coffee maker. This week we investigated the IMF and its role in third world loans as a four-part series for The Daily Discourse. Finally, we did our monthly portfolio update for the three portfolios: The Buy Pick Portfolio, The Short Sale Portfolio, and The Long Term Portfolio. The Buy Pick portfolio is up 19% for the year as of June. The Short Sale Portfolio is up 8%. The Long Term Portfolio just began at the end of May.

Winners for the Week:

Quiksilver Inc. (ZQK) – ZQK was this week’s Play of the Week. We were intrigued by ZQK due to the fact that the company looked poised for a great quarter with earnings being reported on Thursday evening and the fact that the company had had back-to-back 80%+ quarterly gain surprises. We got involved on Monday at 4.60 looking for a 4-6% gain, but the market’s tank on Monday quickly dropped the price of ZQK. We were not able to move back up to 4.60 and beyond until Thursday. We exited at 4.78 on Thursday for a 4% gain. It was unfortunate for us as the stock rocketed up past 5.50 on Friday, but we still took a safe exit.

Hovnanian Enterprises Inc. (HOV) – HOV was our Buy of the Day for Wednesday. We liked HOV for the fact that Wednesday afternoon it was reporting its earnings. The company had had a lights out quarter in Q1 of 2010, and I was expecting the company would get a nice buying interest for that reason along with the fact that the company was heavily undervalued. Further, the company looked to get some interest from a pending home sales announcement. We got involved at 6.00 and exited at 6.18 for a 3% gain.