Marketocracy General Forums

awesome. congrats!!!

Congrats, Jim!

Here's what the article had to say:

Denver's James Cummings, 73, a retired certified public accountant from Deloitte & Touche, is another nest-egg investor. Cummings took early retirement in 1992, sold off his mutual funds and currently spends up to four hours a day investing in stocks to supplement his pension and social security benefits. According to Marketocracy.com, a site that has tracked his performance since 2002, one of Cummings's portfolios has an average annual return in excess of 24% vs. 12.9% for the S&P.

Says Cummings, “I am an aggressive value trader. I certainly do not shy away from some speculation. I sell a lot of covered calls.” One of Cummings's biggest scores was buying into the IPO of electronic options exchange, International Securities Exchange (nyse: ISE - news - people ), in March 2005. A few months ago, the company agreed to merge with Germany's Eurex at more than double the price Cummings paid.

Link to article at Forbes site: http://www.forbes.com/2007/11/08/retirement-nestegg-buys-pf-guru-in_ms_1107401kfortune07_inl.html

I was mentioned in a small way in an article on Forbes.com. Marketocracy was also mentioned. The article was entitled "Old Folks, Smart Money, dated November 8, 2007, by Matthew Schifrin.

I really enjoyed the conference in San Mateo. The most enjoyable part was meeting all of the people. Some really smart guys there!!! I am ready to sign up for the next one. Learned a lot (although not enough to get our of the market on November 1)!!! What a brutal month it has been.

I would like to see people post their favorite picks here. I know there are a lot of places that people post but it would be good to see their favorites here. My favorite is UEIC (Universal Electronics). I posted my write-up on this stock in the tech section in October. Since then it has been flat (which is a victory in this market). I also listened to their conference call and heard nothing that would disuade me from the opinion that is stock has built-in growth coming. They will give 08 guidance toward the end of January and I think it will be good.

As far as the title to this post, I am on the board of the Metro Denver Salvation Army and hosted an online red kettle and am doing so again this year. I was #1 in the nation last year and am trying to repeat. You can designate your local area if you wish. Any help would be appreciated. Go to www.onlineredkettle.org, click on "find and support a kettle", search for Jim Cummings kettle and make your donation.

I can’t believe it’s been an entire month since we gathered in San Mateo for the weekend. Time flys and I’m just now getting to some of the things we discussed in San Mateo.

Here is a link to my post regarding the Marketocracy Collector Tool:

http://forums.marketocracy.com/m100/posts/list/537.page#9224

Here is a copy of the presentation that Ken Kam presented about the research process that we are developing for the m100 to drive:

So I'm looking over the chickenscratch notes I made, and I see FCX (Freeport McMoRan) with a question mark beside it. That's it, just the ticker and the punctuation... I don't remember who mentioned it, why, or whether the mention was positive or negative.

I've done some digging on this stock over the past few days, and I like what I see. I'm thinking about doing a deep-dig write up on it, since I do think the company has double potential even with its recent appreciation. (actually, I think it could triple within a coupla years, but let's not get cocky)

It's a $42+B market cap company, it's got China play written all over it, it's growing exponentially with the PD merger, it's listed as a 'large' holding of the m100 (the JULY version of the m100?!?) but isn't in the top 25 of MOFQX on Morningstar.

So... my questions: who mentioned it and why, and does anyone agree/disagree with my thoughts that it'd be a good stock to profile?

with NVO... my opinion of it improved after listening to the presentation. so that's a good thing. =)

with regards to the stock picks... i liked NVO the most. that seems to be a 'nugget' in my opinion.

it was an incredible gathering. rmcduff is incredible at his analysis.
the folks at marketocracy were/are awesome at making everyone feel welcome to express their opinions, and i admire that a lot. it's not your typical firm that forces everyone to think the same because of corporate relations. my respect and admiration for the firm, the folks in the m100 just keeps on getting better.

ah, sometimes i wish i could live in the area. but it's terribly expensive.

sorry i wasn't there for the sunday afternoon session. i meant to say bye to many of you, but it was somewhat of a quick exit. my apologies. it was truly an honor meeting everyone.

i found it amazing as i listened to various stock pitches. i might dislike the stock myself, but the folks there had great track records. that just becuase i hated it, their strategy had worked well for them and so i couldn't blow off a stock pitch just because i disliked the stock. very well done guys (no women?).

i spent that afternoon hanging out with an old friend of mine. we ended up hiking the hills in Berkeley and watching the Blue Angels as they made flips over the Golden Gate bridge.

It was fun. I certainly enjoyed meeting many of you guys in person!

THE WEEKEND IN SAN MATEO

(From my investment blog at www.pettitfunds.com
)

So I land at nearby Oakland Airport 1-ish Friday afternoon. Getting to the rental car facility is a hassle. Have to wait 15 minutes for a shuttle bus. Get on and am immediately told to get back off--full! Another comes along in 5 minutes. I squeeze on. Standing room only.

The bus takes us a long, long ways (to what appeared to be the next county over) to the rental car facility. Long line. Long, SLOW line.

But...I'm finally out and have installed my GPS locator (I'll never travel without one again) and find my way to the Marketocracy headquarters. I chat briefly with Ken Kam (once he was able to get off of his phone!), and head to the hotel. I read a little more of Greenspan's book, so I can drop Greenspan-isms into the conversation over the weekend and try to impress these new peers.

Then it's back to Marketocracy 5-ish to meet the guys who have thus far arrived. Cool! Great to be able to connect names with faces. And everybody's NICE--not pretentious, as I'd feared some might be. I think we're all so relieved to be around "our own kind", rather than with our suffering spouses and bored friends that just don't "get it" when we start talking about finance.

Instant friendships. I'd never seen anything like it. At all of the lawyer conferences I've been to over the years there IS plenty of pretentiousness and condescension. None of that here. I LOVE these guys!

We walk over to a nearby clubhouse for pizza and drinks. (All non-alcoholic. Never saw an alcoholic drink anywhere the entire weekend--which was fine with me, although I've been known to drink a beer or two. Interesting choice...) Nice clubhouse: pool table, shuffleboard. For some reason, I am pooped by about 8:00, though (and only a couple of time zones as an excuse), and a few of us go back early. Zzzzzzz...

Saturday morning we're carpooling back to Marketocracy and arrive at 7:45 a.m. Coffee, bagels, and other stuff to sustain us and we start about 8:30. Ken gives a little history of himself and Marketocracy. Then Tim Erickson ('teriksen") gives a presentation for DHIL--Diamond Hill--a stock he has selected for his m10 fund. Another presentation for Legg Mason. (I might be confused and he gave this second one on Sunday morning). Next up is m10-er Gary Franklin ("cfranklin") discussing AMRN--Amarin--a pharmaceutical company. Looks risky to me. I start thinking to myself, "I'll give this one a '2'..." and then I think, "Wait! This is GARY FRANKLIN recommending this stock. Ok, gotta give it an '8 1/2'..."

Then Randy McDuff ("rmcduff") gives his own jaw-droppingly-detailed analyses of American Pacific (APFC), Mastercard (MA), and Guangshen Railroad (GSH). (Again, I'm fuzzy on the order of these presentations--some were on Sunday).

Sound like pretty dry stuff? Not at all! These guys--the Mount Rushmore of Marketocracy--know every detail of the companies they are analyzing, down to whom the CEO is sleeping with.

Most impressive!

Saturday night finds us back at the clubhouse for salad and lasagna. In addition to the pool games and shuffleboard, poker happens. Texas Hold'em. I stink. So does almost everyone else, until we're down to two players--Tim Eriksen and some Texan. (Sorry, I forgot the guy's name--he's not an m100, but he IS one of WORTH Magazines consistently "Best Money Managers" every year, and a heck of a poker player). They have a marathon twosome and finally decide to split the forty bucks or so (allegedly) that may or may not have been the proceeds of what started out as an 8-man winner-take-all tournament. Fun!

Sunday more presentations as people start trickling away to catch planes. We sit around and have an informal talk about whether Marketocracy should take a position in Apple (AAPL). Doesn't seem to be a consensus. (My own position voiced that morning was that I felt that Marketocracy's strength was in finding the offbeat and obscure little nuggets, as exemplified by some of the weekend's presentations. Apple, on the other hand, has been analyzed to death--so how are we going to have any "special knowledge" to know whether the market has it priced fairly?)

But I digress.

Just a couple dozen guys sitting around for an entire weekend talking stocks. It was fantastic!

I'm looking forward to seeing folks again. Maybe Vegas in May at the Money Show?

Really a great, great bunch of guys. (No women--what's up with that? Or were they off somewhere else with all of the alcohol...?)

You shoulda been there!

hahahahahah

i love california.