<p>General question: preferred stock. Talk to me about it plz. Pros, cons, when do you buy some if ever. (Recommended by broker for purchase on issuance for income based portfolio.)</p>
<p>From recollection: you don’t get to vote and you’re in front of common stock for dividends and repayment if the company goes bankrupt. I don’t think that I’ve ever owned preferred stock.</p>
<p>Preferred stock also often has a higher dividend than the common. But the important thing is the condition of the actual company itself. I am not sure I would spring for the preferred stock of a bank…</p>
<p>One other issue is liqidity. Liquidity is usually a very big consideration for me unless the fundamentals are so good that liquidity is a lesser concern.</p>
<p>Preferreds are tricky. They are usually issued as what I would call a capitulation financing. By that I mean that the company “needs” to raise equity (usually because rating agencies are threatening a downgrade or banks are threatening to lower credit availability, or any one of ten similar reasons) and they feel their stock price is too low to sell, or their investment bankers tell them that they couldn’t raise as much as they need in a common stock offering.</p>
<p>Consequently, they are usually of lower credit quality (regarding the dividend sustainability). They are extremely high cost to the company because the dividend is not deductible, but if they suspend it it has to be made up before they can pay anything to the common shareholders. Companies only issue them as a last resort (note:utility preferreds are a little bit exempt from this criticism).</p>
<p>Preferreds are exempt from taxation if held by another corporate entity (85% exclusion, although I may be out of date on that). Many preferreds that are of higher quality are bought by insurance companies. The rest get sold at high commisions to retail investors who focus on the current yield.</p>
<p>That sell in May and go away has worked out well for you seasonal traders.</p>
<p>Russell broke resistance yesterday and copper today. Two good technical signs.</p>
<p>Of course Europe tomorrow, jobs on Friday and Bernanke next Thursday loom a lot bigger.</p>
<p>When the Iphone 5 is announced on Sept 12, will apple stock go up (great product) or go down (sell the news)?</p>
<p>Hard to tell.</p>
<p>I actually think the economic macro factors are bigger than the iPhone 5 launch. It seems to me that there shouldn’t be any surprises on the phone - it seems to be the most heavily leaked product launch that I’ve seen. What will be more interesting is the sales estimates - we’ll see how strong the luxury buyer is with this launch.</p>
<p>I plan on selling the news and buying back a bit later</p>
<p>$compq 3,400 back in play.</p>
<p>Must be some nice targets out there on the $SPX - but I don’t follow that index closely.</p>
<p>Nasdaq reachest highest level since 2000!! Woo-hoo!! Perfect timing for the fireworks right before someones speech?</p>
<p>Apple announced that it will be setting up a service similar to Pandora music. If Pandora gets a lot of its revenue from the iphone, I suspect it will be a big short soon.</p>
<p>Where’s dstark? I understand that he said that he had some decisions to make regarding his trading work a while back.</p>
<p>dstark was playing Intel as I recall and they made several disappointing announcements. I would be interesting to see dstark’s take on them.</p>
<p>I don’t know they along with samsung and tsmc have put a lot of money into the company that I work for. It seems to me that they’re pretty confident of the future.</p>
<p>Plenty of warning to exit Intel technically.</p>
<p>IDF is next week where they get to show Haswell and maybe the roadmap beyond.</p>
<p>Phones and tablets are getting all of the love right now and people don’t have a lot of money and computers that are a few years old run just fine. So Intel has a setback. The long-term fundamentals of Intel are fine. But I don’t like to give up gains.</p>
<p>American Express is really beating the bushes for business.</p>
<p>My mother said that there was a letter for me addressed to a company that I started with a friend back in the early 1980s. I shut it down many years later because a company made me an offer that I couldn’t refuse. At any rate, the company has been dead for about 20 years but American Express dug up the corporate records and sent me an offer for a credit card. I asked my mother to toss it.</p>
<p>I’m here.</p>
<p>My positions are really, really tiny. I wish they were larger. ;)</p>
<p>Disclosure purposes…I am short 6 puts in Intc. The sept 25’s. I was short more puts than this before but I traded INTC back and forth. Started selling the 27 puts months ago. i was down 75 bucks and I was out of Intc…but a couple of week ago, I decided to sell 6 sept 25 puts to see if I could get a tiny profit out of this issue.
Doesn’t look good but 6 puts is not going to hurt me. :)</p>
<p>I don’t like INTC that much. I am not working in the tech field, but…The company is not much of a grower. PCs suck. I think tablets are going to be frisbees. Amazon is getting more aggressive in the tablet space. Great for consumers, not so great for profits.</p>
<p>I think the profits on the hardware side in smartphones are going to
eventually go close to zero too. Not yet. </p>
<p>I did see an article about the tvs of the future. The 4ks. They are going to be nice. I am long IMAX…not a lot. I don’t know. Looks like movie theaters are going to in big trouble.</p>
<p>I like to watch movies in movie theaters, and I like the community feel
of movie theaters, but these new tvs kick butt.</p>
<p>Back to INTC for a second, I thought INTC would be ok because of Windows 8. MSFT has been performing better than Intc. I liked MSFT better and I am short more than 6 puts in MSFT. But the premium is too cheap there for me to increase my position right now.</p>
<p>I have been trading more FB puts than I thought I would. I like the volatility better.</p>
<p>The CBOE is applying to trade 15 year options. That isn’t good for Warren Buffett. Clarity takes profits away.</p>
<p>No interest in GOOG during the $100+ runup?</p>