CHESSNOID

Last week I had put a limit sell order on 2 of the stocks I owned. I put Apple to sell at $149 and Amazon to sell at $89. I didn’t want to be too greedy. Just a little bit. Anyways, my sell orders didn’t trigger because it never actually touched those prices. I remember when it was hovering a dollar within range of those amounts. Nevertheless, now it is about a week later and the prices have come down quite a bit. Apple is at $131.85 and Amazon is at $76.80.

Those are still good prices and I hope they will bounce back near their 52 week highs. I have owned both of them since the year 2000 after the dot.com crash when these stocks plummeted along with many others that didn’t make it. Since then, I have been investing in the old proven method of dollar cost averaging through Sharebuilder. This is a great and cheap way to buy stocks on a regular basis. Before the internet became as efficient as it has become today, I would wait for investment material in the mail. My first dividend reinvestment plan was McDonalds. They had a $25 monthly minimum and a $100 to open the account. I was just 18 at the time and was only able to buy a few shares. I remember it had split, then the stock went back to the same price in a short period of time. I essentially doubled my money in about 4 years I think before I sold it.

Anyways, that got me hooked on investing. I haven’t bought Mcdonalds since then, but that stock would have made me some money if I had stayed in it. They have tools at sharebuilder that allows you “what if” questions such as if I had invested $10,000 in this stock 10 years ago, it would be worth this amount of money today. The investment tool is free to use and you don’t have to sign up for anything.

For me I like to pick stocks that I actually use. That was the main idea I got from Peter Lynch’s book Beating the Street when I read it way back when it came out. I still like that idea so much that every stock that I own I actually have a product or service from them that I use.

I have taken the limit orders off for now on my two best performing stocks. I think July was the bottom of the cycle and we should head back up all the way up to mid January of next year (knock on wood). At that point, I will probably sell all my stock and park it in cash, then restart my dollar cost averaging. Let’s see if this plan works.

The analysts are forecasting Apple to go up to $205 by year end. I think it has that potential to hit because it has products everyone seems to want and willing to spend on. Christmas will be a good season for them. I keep thinking about the chance I missed to buy Google at $100. When it first started trading I thought well I will wait till it gets back down to $80 or so. Then it zoomed to $200 then $300. Every time it broke the $100 dollar barrier mark, I kept wishing I had bought it when it was $100 cheaper. Now Google is sitting about $510 off its recent 52 week high. Is it time to buy? If I stayed with my philosophy and dollar cost averaged into that stock, I would be happy right now like I am with my other purchases. I do use google everyday as my primary search engine. Maybe I will start at the beginning of the new year buying google. I wonder if it will be over $600 by then.