Portfolio of the week - 2007

[spikefader]

ROS long fer me thanks.

Peanuts, thanks fer all the effort you put into POTW these past 4 months dude!

[peanuts]

The POTW is only half the POTW without daily updates, but in a pinch we could do without. That is, in case really nobody steps up to the plate. People with a pinch of accuracy and hopefully some writing skills present? We know you are there!

I'll do what I can for as long as I can. The scorecard isn't the tough part. I'm running low on time these days.

You know...I thought it over. I'm just not going to be able to do it.

I apologize for the confusion. I would have liked to be able to keep things going.

You probably made a good decision, though your commentary would surely have been entertaining

Thanks, Peanuts, for putting forth all of the effort these past months on the contest. I believe I speak for many of us when I say you've really made it fun, and I hope you get a nice break from it and can come back and do it again soon with the same passion.

Thank you, Jiesen for the kind words. Yes, I would like to be able to take a break from the POTW scorekeeping. I do enjoy it, but time is running thin nowadays, and I have been getting frustrated with a few aspects of the scorekeeping duties (not anyone here). I hope someone will be able to pick up the daily scorecard and maybe throw out a few jovial comments about the individual performers. If anyone would like to do it, but may have reservations regarding their ability to do so, then they can use the same format I have been using in Excel: http://www.mediafire.com/?3nz3z2znzgi

Please start me in cash if anyone is going to keep this going. Good job , good luck to all!!

Hi Gary. I do what I can for this week if nobody can take the reins. It might not be as good or timely as it has been.

I can still do the yearly tracking scorecard and charts. That can be done at the end of each week without a time problem for me.

[Lyehopper]

There are two ways to approach this problem: the lazy one and the cumbersome one.

In the lazy approach, we assume you are pulling our collective leg, because you know very well that the ground around human habitations usually is so thoroughly trampled, that poor Lilly will not find even one square foot of grass to graze on.

In the cumbersome approach we take this as a mathematical challenge only, and then realize that we don't have the formula for the curiously curved form (at least I don't have it). So here comes an approximation:

The first thing that strikes me is that the circumference given translates to a 38 foot diameter for the fort. That isn't much of a fort, but OK. (I think the Jamestown was about 3 times bigger, but the I'll stick to the measures given by Lye.)

Now the fort obstructs Lilly's movements, so the area she can roam, if not graze, is smaller than a circle with a radius of 100 feet, or about 31,400 square feet.

In this circle the fort itself is excluded, so we subtract as the first obstacle a circle with a radius of 19 feet, or about 1150 square feet. That leaves about 30,250 square feet.

Now for the difficult to visualize boundary that Lily traces as she works her way around the fort and tries to get as far away from it as her tether, wound about the fort, allows. I tried to draw this with a pair of compasses, and found that the area Lilly can't reach looks really small, compared to the 100 foot radius circle. To give an indication: if Lilly is halfway around the fort, she has used up 60 feet of rope, which leaves her 40 feet of freedom. As the diameter of the fort is 38 feet, this means that at that point she still can be 78 feet away from the place were the chain was fixed, so at this point she only gives up 22 feet of range. At a quarter of the circumference, Lilly has 70 feet of freedom, and she is almost 27 feet removed from her "center", so she has only lost three feet range at that point. This means that initially Lilly loses hardly any range, with the loss building up gradually (and accelerating) as she walks around the fort.

Now we have a problem. Lilly, being a cow, would probably keep walkin around the fort until 5/6 of its circumference (when her neck is against the wall), grazing all she could get, and looking wistfully at what she couldn't get. But perhaps we can allow for her getting bored looking at grass she can't get at anyway, and let her find her way back to her starting point, so she can make the circuit in the other direction. What I mean to say is: the problem is symmetrical, and the ranges walking in both directions overlap. So it doesn't get worse than the loss of 22 feet at the point halfway around the fort, and the gradual loss towards those 22 feet. I estimate (looking at my drawing) that the loss would hardly be more than what she loses because of the fort just being in the way, and aiming for a nice round number my estimate becomes 29,000 square feet.

Regards,

Karel

OH! And I forgot to tell you that the rope is fastened at the TOP of the fort wall which is exactly 18 feet high....Ssssssss!

[Lyehopper]

Peanuts.... I know how much time it takes to be the scorekeeper here. Your efforts are appreciated by me as well..... so I'll do my part to make things easy for you again this week.

.... I'll just take Ca$h

[BoSox Jon]

Pick

I'll take GSIC Short this week.

Thanks,

Jon

[JohnHenry]

I know a number of younger and older women that have them and they are the real thing. They don't wash off. They are permanent.
Here's a funny little story. My dad was in the Navy for 21 years and never got one. Almost everyone of his buddies that flew with him had one or two of them. I asked him why he never got one and his answer was that they were all homos and that only homos had them. I never understood his answer and certainly knew it wasn't true so I let it go and never pressed him on it. He had been in the European and Pacific theatres and had seen alot of shit so I guess he has his reasons. When I was shipping out for Viet Nam one of the last things he said to me was don't be coming home with any tattoos. I remember saying to him jokingly if they send me back in a body bag and I have a tattoo will you accept the body or not. I never had an intention of getting one anyway. About 8 or 9 months into my 1st tour we had been out in the field for about 3 wks. and had seen some pretty heavy fighting and lost a couple of guys and took some wounded. When they extracted us they took my outfit to a base somewhere in the south where there wasn't to much fighting going on and we had a week or two before they would send us back out on another mission. We were special ops and we stayed pretty much to ourselves coming down off of the last 3 weeks in the field. The only thing we had to do was clean our gear and get our heads straight. At this particular compound there was a guy who had tattooing needles and all the equipment that went along with it. I didn't know him and never got to meet him because I got drunk the first night in and stayed pretty drunk for a few days before I realized that I had a bandage on the inside of my right forearm about 5 or 6 inches above my wrist. I didn't realize that I had it there being in the condition that I was in. We never got the two weeks we were supposed to get and were sent back out into the field again in less than a week. Anyway I had to sober up and straighten up real quick and that was when I realized that I had this bandage on my forearm and didn't know what the hell it was from. When I took off the bandage and saw the tattoo the first thing I thought of was that my dad was going to be pissed off for sure.
Several months later I'm out of Viet Nam and home on leave and at my mom and dad's house when I'm coming out of the shower and my dad sees the tattoo and goes ballistic. I had forgotten it was even there. He was so pissed I thought we were going to get into a fist fight. He wanted to know if I was a homo. That was after just being at war and doing some killing for the previous 11 months or so. I never met the guy who put it there but everytime I look at that tattoo, which is probably hundreds of times everyday, somewhere in the back of my it reminds me of those times and everything that I did during that portion of my life. It's never that far away from me because of that tattoo which I never wanted to get in the first place.

Dude I'm sure I will be needing glasses after reading is...where's the page break? Just joking ski...

[JohnHenry]

Btj

Cograts to the top three winners.

Peanuts please short BTJ and thank you for keeping score...thanks

[Karel]

OH! And I forgot to tell you that the rope is fastened at the TOP of the fort wall which is exactly 18 feet high....Ssssssss!

In that case I certainly prefer the lazy approach

Regards,

Karel

[Karel]

Long Chap

Congratulations, Rob and ski!

I am still long CHAP. The spike this week was due to speculation about "strategic alternatives" mentioned by the board, so we'll see what happens this week.

Regards,

Karel

[peanuts]

UA long for me this week

[peanuts]

Why don't you just use a site like http://www.stockalicious.com for this Portfolio Of The Week contest? It's very confusing to see through so many posts to find out who buy what.

Welcome to the forum, dalion!

The POTW contest has always been open for suggestions to improve what is already in place. I appreciate your post, thanks. At this time, however, I think that the current set-up works fairly well, and the scorekeeping duties really aren't that tough once you get a hang of it.

Maybe a democratic approach would help to answer the idea that you presented, ie switching to a different way of scorekeeping and running the contest. If you'd like to step in and take over the scorekeeping, may I suggest that you take a poll of the membership to determine the comfort level of switching to a new format?

Maybe you can start a new thread to see what everyone else thinks.

Oh, and what is your pick for the week?

btw: to see what everyone has picked for the week, simply click on the link in my signature that says, "Current Player Holdings" or, just go the first post of the thread, it is updated at my earliest convenience

[RL]

good morning peanuts I tried this some weeks ago did not work please put me in Q - LONG thanks have a GREAT DAY

[Rob]

OH! And I forgot to tell you that the rope is fastened at the TOP of the fort wall which is exactly 18 feet high....Ssssssss!

Okay, Lyehopper, I give up. Why don't you tell me the answer?

[Rob]

Rob's Pick: AXS

Rob is going to take Axis Capital Holdings (AXS) long this week.

Rob bought this stock in real life for 33.97 on Nov. 27, 2006.

So it has taken about 5 months to gain 10.42%, but Rob believes that at a mere 6.7 multiple there could well be more upside to this one.

Rob knows it is risky this week, because AXS is slated to report earnings after the market closes today, but Rob also knows that AXS beats the estimates pretty consistently. Over the last 4 quarters AXS has beaten the estimates by .06 (5%), .21 (17%), .07 (5%), and .35 (26%) respectively. So on average over the last year, they beat by 13.25%.


The consensus estimate for Q1 '07 earnings is 1.16. If they beat by 13.25% they will report 1.31, making their TTM EPS 5.82 and the P/E 6.4 based on Friday's closing price of 37.51. This is a mere 55% of its industry's average P/E of 11.75.


AXS's PEG is 0.53 compared to its industry's average of 1.24.


Rob likes AXS.

[jiesen]

Nice writeup, Rob!