ZAGG Incorporated

Here is a free little gem that was uncovered by the Stocknod neural network earlier this year and has been an absolute gang buster – and reading the analysis you will understand why. What is Zagg Incorporated?  Well everyone is aware of the Iphone craze and Apple’s soon to be dominance of the PDA and phone markets, so as an investor you must be asking what are the opportunies (other than buying APPL Stock directly) that this Iphone dominance might yield. 

Have you ever noticed how the majority of cell phone screens (the protective covers) always tend to get scratched up rendering your phone almost useless within the first year?  Well not with the IPhones and the reason being is because there is a little company called Zagg Incorporated that designs, manufactures and distributes a powerful new protective covering for hand-held devices called Invisiblehield. The invisibleSHIELD is designed specifically for iPods, laptops, cell phones, digital cameras, and other type digital assistants (PDAs) and watch faces. Read more on ZAGG News brought to you by Stocknod.

The Company’s flagship product, invisibleSHIELD, is made from a protective, film covering that was developed to protect the edges of rotary blades of military helicopters. That’s right the same stuff that is on military helicopters. The film also permits touch sensitivity, meaning it can be used on devices that have a touch-screen interface. The film provides long lasting protection for the surface of electronic devices subject to normal wear and tear. The film is a form of polyurethane substance, akin to a very thin, pliable, flexible and durable clear plastic that adheres to the surface and shape of the object it is applied to.

So what has Zagg’s stock price done recently? The Stocknod neural network fired a buy on ZAGG in February, 2009 at $1.22 and yesterday (7/29) ZAGG closed at $6.56. For the buy and hold investor that’s over 450% growth since our member’s received the initial buy signal back in February. The Stocknod swing traders have also made out like bandits on this hot stock pick with very similar gains.

What does the future hold for ZAGG?  While most analyst recommendations still have ZAGG as a strong buy, my personal opinion is that it is still a good buy but I wouldn’t expect to see 450% growth like we have seen over the last 6 months. Stocknod will continue to monitor ZAGG and recommending to our member’s when to buy the dips and sell the rips as detected by the neural networks and there will still be opportunity but I would look for ZAGG’s stock price to settle in between $6-$8 share over next six months.

Free Investing Tips

There are lots of things you have to keep in mind before going to invest in a stock market. Many people are ignorant about the investing strategy. Any investment may have to face certain risk, so before investing you should acquire better knowledge about it.  A wide range of investing stocks is accessible today which can give maximum profit for your investment. This article will surely help you to know the accurate investing tips.

Following are the free investing tips for a better investment:

Be knowledgeable about the investing

People who are investing at first time should be careful of all the rules and regulations under the strategy. You can access lot of information about stock picking and investment plan from the internet, periodicals, books and other educational materials. Also watch the headlines and videos related to investing so that you can get updated about the current situation.

Study about analyzing the stock

Investing through the mutual funds especially through indexes are right one for an average investor. It is the right choice for one who is unable to follow his or her investments. If you are a long term investor then it would be better for you to stick to the no load mutual funds, index funds, target funds or index ETFs.

Try to set up a fake portfolio first

It would be better if you spend a few months with virtual portfolio. You can track your investment portfolio from some sections in ino.com, google and yahoo. You have to research your stock frequently in order to own individual stocks. It is highly essential for you to have an idea about the things that can affect your stock. Before playing with the real money, be sure that your virtual portfolio is making some.

 Try to eliminate credit card debt:

If you are having a credit card debt, the high interest rates on these cards can eliminate the gains in your investment. Even though getting rid of debt is not possible completely, the best thing would be to have no debt.

As an investor you must be learning constantly. Most among you may not be as knowledgeable as you might be thinking about your self.  Your first investments should be to learn how the stocks are moving in the current world. Also try to invest only in those stocks which is familiar and in which you have confidence. It would be better if you invest in more than one stock so that there is diverse chances fro gaining profit. Keeping all these things in mind can definitely make you successful investor. More on Best Investment Strategies.

US Stock Market Slow to Rebound

Even though there is the risk of unemployment, payment cut-offs and decline in the money value which is shaking the financial system currently, there is still a ray of optimism for the Federal Reserve that US economy can still recover in the later 2009. According to latest news sources federal reserves says that they are less concerned about the current situation as the pace of economic contraction is slowing down and deflation no longer remains as a serious danger. There is improvement and stabilization in the aspects like fall in housing market, household spending and financial confusion which had affected the market condition and financial stability of the US economy. A certain degree of progress is visible in the financial market recently as the pace of economic slump is getting slow down. Since the financial stress is still continuing it may continue week for some time.

It also seems that the rigid credit situations, crash in asset price and increased aversion risk can continue heavily and can put forth burden for the US economy. According to the latest news credit crisis has led to the closure of four banks in Georgia, Minnesota and California by the regulators. The closure has resulted in this year’s national tally to become 44. FDIC has stated that it will soon mail a check to insured depositors of Community Bank of west Georgia. Recently, 19 banks in the country were subjected to stress test and it is found that 10 out of 19 need to raise the capital for combating with the current circumstances. As banking giants like Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup etc were also included in the test they can help in returning the government funds by raising the capital.

The country is slowly restoring the financial stability under the administration of Barack Obama. The government is hoping that the economy will remain stable and there will be improvement in the immense economic growth contraction of 6.1% seen early this year. The economic situation can improve a lot under this government in the near future. Even though there is slight improvement in job losses in May which was about 345000 compared to January this year which was about 741,000, there is possibility for rise in unemployment in the coming months. It is expected that rise in unemployment will be by 9.6%in the coming months. Though there is a gradual economic progress, a certain degree of uncertainty exists because of the tight credit conditions prevailing today.

US Unemployment Rise

US economy is getting stabilized and has improved in the pace of economic contraction when compared to economy during mid 2008. But there still exist some sort of uncertainty because of the rising unemployment and tight credit conditions. According to the recent news, labor department has said that the number of people getting unemployed is raising more than expected. Unemployment is supposed to rise to 9.6% in the coming months. It is also seen that about 51% of the corporate chiefs are going to reduce the capital spending and about 49% is going to cut the jobs. All these can very badly affect currently achieved pace in the recovery. 

It is found that gross domestic product is now facing an annualized decline of 5.5% from the months of January to march which is better compared to that of the preliminary reports which was 5.7%. The decline in GDP by 5.5% in Q1 2009 is mostly contributed due to the decrease in the business inventory. Most of the economists believe that the pace of downturn is about 2% currently. Investors are also finding a hope with the low pace of recession. It is seen that Dow Jones Industrial average has risen to 2.1% and there is also ascend in other gauges by 2%.  The standard & Poor’s500 Index has recently increased to 34% from the lowest hit it had during the March this year. Most of the businesses and investors are now anxious about the recovery from December 2007.

It is noticed that there is only a slight improvement in the rise of home sales and that too is below the expected pace. Reports say that there is a rise in the initial claims for jobless benefits by 15000 in the seasonally adjusted 627000.  But a drop to 600,000 was predicted by the economists. But most of them still expect that the number of the initial unemployment insurance claims will be lowered in the coming months. Even though Wall Street is having a little contentment with the current decline in the economic slump, the situations of the families are still pitiable. The rising unemployment, descend in family wealth and financial misery are posing serious threat to the families. In order to raise the economic security and living standards there needs to have public investments in health care, energy independence, and public education. Only with these, there can be increase in the job opportunities and acceleration in the productivity.

How to Read Stock Charts

Unfortunately for the average investor, stock market charts are not particularly intuitive. It takes a fair amount of knowledge to decode and understand them thoroughly, but the basics can be grasped fairly easily. For example, every stock has a ticker symbol consisting of letters taken from the company’s name. While this may seem unnecessarily complex and unreadable, it is actually a byproduct of the times when stock trades were made using the limited space on ticker tape. The ticker symbols can easily be looked up through online tools, and because they are based upon the name of the corporation, they are usually fairly easy to remember once known.

Other numerical figures are important to understand for accurate stock market interpretation. The last trade figure represents the price of a specific stock in the last reported trade. The change figure tells how much the price of the stock has changed since the closing figure of the previous day. This gives a sense of the price trend or stability of a particular stock. The close and open figures tell the investor how much that stock was worth when the day opened and when it closed.

While stock market charts include many other symbols and figures, these are the basics, which an investor must know to get started. These basic terms can be used to expand knowledge of the chart’s terminology and significance. An understanding of the measurements of price and stock trends included in stock market charts is essential for stock market success. So, be sure to expand your knowledge whenever possible.

A new stock charting website that I would reccommend for fundamentals is www.ycharts.com. New website in beta but by far the cleanest and easiest stock charts I have found today. For technical analysis there is no need to learn how to read stock market charts because the Stocknod algorithm already has all of the best stock technicals baked into the proprietary formula.  If you are looking for stock signals, then let Stocknod read your stocks charts automatically with no learning curve on how to read stock charts.

US Mortgage Industry

It is no more news splashing everywhere that the US economy is going through a recessionary period; the sub-prime crisis washed away everything like a tornado. The rallies in the mortgage industry were so swift and quick that the reversal in trends made everything fall apart like the house of cards.

It all started like this – the housing industry was on a boom, the interest rates for mortgages were low and attractive, so more and more people applied for mortgage loans. Earlier the banks had stringent rules for lending. They assessed the customer’s credit worthiness and ensured that the loans would not go bad. There were hardly any delinquencies and defaults. So when the demand for mortgage loans increased the banks took the recourse to the secondary market. They had to off-shed the assets lying idle on their balance sheets, so they packed these assets and made them into bonds and sold it to investors to raise funds – the activity, more popularly known as ‘securitization.’ The banks started lending more and more. They now were negligent of the credit worthiness of the borrower and started lending randomly as they had the recourse to the secondary market to off-load the assets. They were not worried about the credit risks that were attached to these loans. This meant borrowers with high credit risk and bad credit history, who had no access to the loans could very easily avail such loans. This was supported by a favorable and flourishing refinancing market. Household debt in the past 15 years had risen from 65% to 135% post tax income and savings had fallen from 10% to practically nothing because for every practical purpose their was a loan available. This was like filling the balloon with too much of air and it had to burst.

After the bubble busted the scenario was exactly the opposite. There was no money, no loan, no job, house prices falling and no one is talking about the mortgage loans. The unemployment rates rose from 7.2 to 7.6%, coupled with fall in consumer spending, credit availability in the market was bad and the inventory of houses was on an all time. It is what I term ‘the ripple effect’ in an economy.

The new government introduced a lot of stimulus packages to unlock this credit crunch. Several aggressive measures are being taken by the government to off-shed the load of toxic of the burdensome assets of the banks’ balance sheets. Despite the assistance from the government things have not as yet stabilized.

A barometer for interest rates in mortgage loans and other loans happens to be the bond yields. So when there is an increase in the bond yields it was followed by a rise in the rate of mortgage loans. The government has raised the yields on the 10-year Treasury rates to 3.99%, rates of the 30 year home loans jumped to a 5.57%. The interest rates for 30 year and 15 year fixed rate mortgages have increased from 5.25% to 5.57% and from 4.8% to 5.1% respectively in June, 2009. So with the increase in the mortgage interest rates the refinancing activity has slowed down (a fall about 62% since April, 2009), will this slowdown the recovery pace or is it an indication that the investors are ready to enter the market again, we will have to wait and watch.

Obama’s Restructuring Plan

A man with motivational speeches, carrying a strong conviction that he has the vision of all that America needs and that he would bring to life all that the past governments have been incapable of doing.  President Obama says that he is more than shallow promises and says that ‘change is what he believes, he can’ is the right of Americans and they shall have it. He says that in times of ‘unusual situations’ he is doing the unusual to baptize the US economy.

With a lot of hope and belief the people of United States of America extend their support for Obama. There were several issues that the government was to address in times of serious crisis. There was a large fiscal deficit to address, one of the most matured financial markets was sagging and the liquidity crunch led to the slow down of growth, the big bulls of the finance market –likes of Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutuals, Bears Sterns collapsed like a house of cards, others had fractured their spinal cord and were looking for bail out support for revival. The sub-prime crisis had washed away the remaining confidence of the people that the economy was soon to see revival, and it had become official that United States of America was in the recessionary phase, a phase that was to stay.

With such challenges to take up the Obama administration jumped headlong to delve with all these issues. Obama’s agenda during the campaign hit the nail right, the key areas of focus was a) higher employment levels by creating jobs in America, b) Immediate relief for struggling families, c) assistance to the homeowners and lastly to salvage the economy from the ongoing crisis. More than 7.5 lakh jobs were lost in the year 2008. People started parking their funds in gold or kept them locked in their cupboards rather than making investments. The basics of macro economy would not work if the money supply went any haywire. So to keep the consumer spending alive, it was important that jobs remained intact and employment levels increased. This is where from the ‘buy American’ drive began. Next on the agenda of ‘change’ was relief to the struggling families. A lot of thinking had been done on this front and several tax exemptions and remedies were provided. The Housing market would make rigorous efforts in collaboration with the mortgage industry to revive the markets there is still no progress seen on this front. The treasury would regulate the interest rates and the refinancing industry was sure to act like a catalysts. North American Free Trade Agreement was to be amended, outsourcing of jobs to be reconsidered so that the companies cannot escape the tax burden simply by outsourcing and reducing job prospects in America. Next and the most important on agenda were using ‘tools and means’ to revive the economy.

Now that more than 100 days of Obama administration are over and people are all over, meticulously analyzing every move that he has made so far, there are people questioning whether the reforms implemented are doing any good to America or is Obama and his team creating a bigger mess of an already messy situation.

Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package, now a law, would add $400 billion to the fiscal deficit and bring it to 10% of the GDP levels which are currently at 8.3% of the GDP. The benchmark Federal fund rates are at zero. Money supply in the market has been increased by 20% in the three months of his administration. The Congressional budget office has announced a fiscal deficit of $1.19 trillion which is 8.3% of the GDP. The unemployment levels are on an all time high. Revision in the financial markets regulations have been eyed; making them more transparent and pro-investors and looking for the systemic risk approach to ensure that no company’s risk appetite would cause the economic downturn.

What does the layman understand of all these policies? Is America on its way to recovery or are they digging a bigger pit for themselves. A lot of analysts have been calling names and ridiculing every move that Obama is making. From outsourcing policies, to health and environment issues, shedding billions of dollars in bailout or increasing the burden on the government or investment in clean energy and technology, because people love to take potshots at others.

An economy is not driven by a particular factor but several factors – significant, insignificant, big or small and affects everything. So there is a Herculean task. A policy is not bad unless the shortcomings start to show. So to understand the economies of recovery we will have to wait for a while because what took eight years to destruct can’t be rebuilt in only 100 days.