Trade Alert: Upticks, optimism, Apollo and Zynga
Let’s jump right in this morning. First off, let’s hit on my comments about the marked uptick in optimism at yesterday’s UNM Alumni Board meeting. I even asked the new President of the University about his concern that more austerity would further cut the UNM budget, and he said “I’m confident that we’re set for this year and that next will be okay or even better.” The last couple years have been full of double digit budget cuts, especially from state funding.
There was about 25 people in the meeting and they are a cross-section of small business owners, corporate executives, attorneys, and university employees and other workers and several commented about how strong the stock market has been. Of course there were the “fiscal cliff” and “Europe debt crisis” comments, but they were in passing yesterday rather than the focus of the discussions about finance/economy/markets.
Secondly, I was tickled when the President mentioned University of Phoenix and their owners, Apollo Group, by name. There was a palpable disgust in the room when we talked about those guys. I told everybody there how I am short Apollo and told them to let me know if they wanted to read some of the analysis we’ve written about it here on TradingWithCody.com.
Finally, our smallest position, Zinga, just pre-announced and is down this morning. It’s our smallest position, but I’m down more than 20% on this overall position and I’m disgusted at myself for owning any shares of this thing at all. I was wrong to step into this one. I don’t want to tie up my capital in this name any longer and while I wouldn’t be shocked to see it bounce off these levels this morning, I don’t want to sit around and let this fester. You guys have seen me many times step into weakness and buy our stocks. I am not going to do with this ZNGA here. I’m cutting my losses in ZNGA this morning and selling it. Mea culpa.
Don’t forget that we’ve rescheduled this week’s Live Q&A Chat for today at 2pm EST at http://tradingwithcody.com. Be there or be square.
