The 5-Minute Blog

I realize that last blog was pretty haphazard and appeared to be poorly put-together. That's probably because it was. So, to remedy that, I'm going to attempt to finish this one in about 5 minutes (or, about the amount of time I have left until I leave work).

So, today, I'll briefly talk about my stock experiment.

For Christmas, my dad included in his gifts to me a check for $400. I wasn't really sure the best way to use this newfound wealth (I suppose I could have used it to pay down my massive debt...), but finally decided to have a go at individual stock investing.

After doing some research on various websites (mainly The Street and Investor's Business Daily), I decided to buy a stock that each highly recommended, and pit them against each other.

Jim Cramer of The Street (and Mad Money) had been going crazy (pun intended) over Cisco, saying that it was sure to beat analyst's "low expectations." After further researching it, I saw that most analysts rated it a "buy", and the IBD gave it an "A" rating.

The IBD runs a list of 100 stocks that it picks based on superior fundamentals and likeliness of strong returns, based on several factors they have isolated from winning stocks. They call this list of stocks, imaginatively, "The IBD 100." Anyway, one stock that they've been pimping for a while (it was #3 on their 100 this week) was the online wedding superstore, The Knot.

Yesterday, through Sharebuilder (good online stock buying site), I purchased $200 of each stock, resulting in the following trades:

KNOT - 6.6467 shares at $30.09/share
CSCO - 7.3180 shares at $27.33/share

Later that day, after the markets closed, Cisco announced earnings and future projected earnings that beat all analyst projections, and the stock shot up in late trading. Woohoo!

Anyway, Knot is announcing their earnings on Friday, and is expected to do pretty well also. For the record, both are in a dead-heat right now:

(As of market close - 2/7):
KNOT - 30.85 (my stock value = $205.05)
CSCO - 28.09 (my stock value = $205.56)

So, after one day, my $400 investment is now worth $410.61. Let's hope this trend continues...