Brazil cuts the cable to save money...has to go to bar in Ecuador to watch World Cup.

Oh Brazil, between your crummy economy and you're not wanting to be spied on.

On to investing...

We have been considering GE as a potential investment, but we weren't sure what that would do to our sector weighting, since they do so many different things in such a wide variety of sectors. It is almost like a one company ETF in a way. Then we started to look at EXC: 

Fund/Stock	Pros	Cons	Good/Bad?
EXC is a power company based in Chicago, that is the result of some mergers. It is huge. They might turn on your lights.	High Dividend (4.1%)* Low Beta (0.35)* Helps balance our portfolio since it is a Utility.  Gets us a little more invested in the US *Yahoo Finance	On a steady decline since 2008, especially when compared to others in its sector (see chart below).	This might mean that it is either in the crapper or undervalued.

   

As we were going through the pros and cons of EXC, we decided that it might be good to combine a buy of CHIQ and EXC which would give us a great deal of balance. We compared these to others in their sector and started to realize the both EXC and CHIQ, though great for our portfolio balance might not be the strongest players in their respective sectors. This is the point in the program where we remember that investing is about balancing all those plates you have in the air and not just focusing on that one red one that looks so shiny, so spiffy...oh Fiestaware...

For next week: 

More Avi stocks. 

Profit

Cobra Commander would like to make you aware of a lucrative investment opportunity.

Members present: Brian, Bickford, Danak

After a thorough discussion of the finer points of political commentary in Rocky & Bullwinkle vs. G.I. Joe, we got down to talking about finance.

EWZ hit $40 and is basically oversold at this point, which means that the price is artificially low. This is kind of like the opposite of a bubble--would that make it a black hole? Since we bought it around $72, we might as well hold onto it for a while.

We really need to buy something, anything, anything at all. None of our prospective investments are perfect, but we are trying to balance several factors as we understand them. For example, AAXJ has a high expense ratio but has a better risk to return in its category. CHIQ and MAPIX are really diversified, which is comforting.

We are trying to avoid having high expense ratios, having too much of our portfolio in a single sector or company, or having too much in emerging markets. Diversification does mitigate losses but also gains. This is the double-edged sword of conservative investment. Since we are in it for the long haul, we have anticipated this.

The standard investment advice is to invest heavily in the US economy, and we wondered a bit as to why. We were curious if we are too heavily invested in foreign markets. Is it time to start thinking about making a more domestic buy? The US is still probably the most stable economy in the world, which is reassuring. The S&P 500 is on the upswing, which implies that the US economy is not a good "buy" right now. If we want to catch something on the upswing, we might want to find something that is low or wait for a downturn. In the meantime it seems logical to try and find something that is undervalued.

To get back to our three contenders for the next buy, it seems like CHIQ and MAPIX are good, but AAXJ seems to make the most sense. CHIQ is heavy in consumer cyclical and defensive, which would balance out our portfolio. Its emerging markets in Asia (which is exciting), the returns have been good, etc. There's a lot to like, a lot that is even exciting. However, CHIQ could hit a very frightening bump with all those exciting factors. AAXJ seems more responsible, because it is cheap, it is out of Japan (MAPIX is 22% in Japan), it is well-diversified, and it seems to be performing really well. We could take a look at its peer group of stocks to see if there is an even better buy.

We must remember, that a high risk investment scheme seems good in the long run, but you don't want to end up like COBRA.

For next week, Income Inequality.

Profit!

Excel tables... it's like I'm still at work.

Attendance:  Really?!  9am Mother's Day plans? Ha!

Tesla is doing very well.  This stock has been a group favorite for a while.  It appears that the auto that they've designed is getting good ratings and their stock is up.  Now, will people buy the car?  There are also some new transmission designs on the way from companies such as Ford to increase efficiency.  Mazda is pushing something fancy as well.  A fun discussion.

We also talked a bit about HTC's fall in the mobile sector.  They were once top tier, but now are falling below Samsung.  That company will be something to notice in the following chart:

Here are the four ETFs from last week.  AIA is fairly similar to AAXJ, but the latter has qualities that make it more desirable such as the lower exposure to Samsung and the more even geographic distribution.  AIA is out for now.  Comparing the other three stocks, there are positives and negatives to each.  They all have good spreads in terms of top holdings.  They all hit sectors that are not overweight in our portfolio.  CHIQ is especially good in this regard.  The 22% Japan isn't a deal breaker for MAPIX, but it is something to be wary of.  That ETF is very low risk and has a good return for its category.  Slighly high expense ratio, though.  AAXJ has some posities all around, but we'd like to bring up some other sectors in our portfolio.

Our current portfolio is doing well.  We're a few percentage off of the S&P 500, which is having a great year.  It still may be a good exercise to compare EWZ to other items in category.  EWZ is our only loser now and it has held fairly steady for the last year.

Next week we'll dive into the categories for our three remaining Asian stocks to find the best performers.

Profit!

I would gladly pay you tuesday for a burrito today.

Members present: Brian, Bickford, Danak...Darkness shrouds them as they approach a new buy. 

Today we are going to look at another company and analyze some companies that sell the same sort of service or good, in order to determine if that stock is under or over valued. Specifically, we are going to take a look at Chipotle Mexican Restaurant. This means that we are going to compare it to other restaurants that are at a similar level, i.e. not schmancy.

Below is a handy infographic from http://www.freestockvalueranker.com/, which despite it's sketchy name, is a handy tool.

From what we see CCSC (Country Style Cooking Restaurant Chain Co., Ltd.) is undervalued, however if you take a look at the 200 DMA, it looks a bit scary: 

In this case, this doesn't seem like a good investment just yet. However, it might be worth keeping an eye on for some growth. Right now it is a bit risky, especially since it is a market we don't know about---namely Chinese fast food, in China.

Then there's something like Cracker Barrel (CBRL), which we understand and see as having a responsible and clear growth model--always along major highways, always filled with tons of people looking for their eggs in a basket and crap on the walls. A look at the 200DMA over five years says that we missed the boat, though:

As you can see, it doesn't look like their is a lot of unforeseen growth potential.

We took a look at Kraft, but it's only been around six months as KRFT. Wawa is privately traded, so no good for us. Then there's Hormel (HRL), which is undervalued

The search continues. However, it must be noted that we are starting to get comfortable with the process of picking stocks and analyzing them for their potential investment value. It should also be noted that we haven't actually purchased one of these yet.


Profit!