Sunday, June 26, 2011

Unawarness of Positive Black Swans

I ran a Google search for the phrase "Black Swan" to see what bloggers and analysts are saying about Black Swans, each and every one of the results was about the negative ones: market crash, crisis, downtrend... No wonder people hardly know about positive Black Swans.

Nassim Taleb mentioned briefly positive Black Swans trading in his book, here are some quotes

"There are both positive and negative Black Swans.William Goldman was involved in the movies, a positive-Black Swan business. Uncertainty did occasionally pay off there."


and

"Aside from the movies, examples of positive-Black Swan businesses are: some segments of publishing, scientific research, and venture capital. In these businesses, you lose small to make big."


My strategy isn't about "positive Black Swan businesses" but about "Positive Black Swan Practices".

and

"You have little to lose per book and, for completely unexpected reasons, any given book might take off. The downside is small and easily controlled."


similarly to my portfolio you have little to lose per stock but for some reason one them might take off, just like happened last year with INSM.

"In these businesses you are lucky if you don't know anything—particularly if others don't know anything either, but aren't aware of it."


Mr Taleb speaks most of the time about practices that would greatly hurt the economy, he warns the world of the disasters that would happen if we continue to take big risks, but the Negative Black Swans are not the full story of the Black Swan.
Despite the brief paragraphs in the book, I developed deep and advanced understanding of Positive Black Swans.

Mr Taleb speaks most of the time about practices that would greatly hurt the economy, but that is not the full story of the Black Swan.

I picked the above quotes for people who didn't get absolutely anything about my strategy, as important as it is people don't seem to appreciate much of it.

I think it is very important for the Economy to identify it's fragile points and work on them to be less in the way of Negative Black Swans, I believe it is of equal importance for the Economy to identify the opportunities of big growth and be more in the way of Positive Black Swans.

Monday, June 20, 2011

Cheap Stocks picked on June 2011

Here is a list of my actual picks of cheap US stocks of small cap companies, this is not my full list but this one is good as it is:

Company | Listing | Price when picked

Aehr Test Systems | NASDAQ:AEHR | 1.25 |
Uluru Inc. | AMEX:ULU | 0.0499 |
Banks.com Inc | AMEX:BNX | 0.132 |
Capstone Therapeutics Corp. | NASDAQ:CAPS | 0.237 |
Rosetta Genomics Ltd. (USA) | NASDAQ:ROSG | 0.3 |
Cycle Country Accessories Corp | AMEX:ATC | 0.33 |
Energy Focus Inc. | NASDAQ:EFOI | 0.405 |
China Nuokang Bio-Pharmaceutical Inc. | NASDAQ:NKBP | 4.25 |
Digital Power Corporation | AMEX:DPW | 1.46 |
eOn Communications Corporation | NASDAQ:EONC | 1.82 |
Escalon Medical Corp. | NASDAQ:ESMC | 1.22 |
Good Times Restaurants Inc. | NASDAQ:GTIM | 2 |
Ku6 Media Co. Ltd. | NASDAQ:KUTV | 2.85 |
Jacada Ltd. | NASDAQ:JCDA | 2.26 |
Intelligent Systems Corporation | AMEX:INS | 1.31 |
Marshall Edwards Inc. | NASDAQ:MSHL | 1.04 |
Onstream Media Corp | NASDAQ:ONSM | 0.96 |
Peoples Educational Holdings Inc. | NASDAQ:PEDH | 1.21 |
Pressure BioSciences Inc. | NASDAQ:PBIO | 0.97 |
Spherix Incorporated | NASDAQ:SPEX | 2.68 |
Tofutti Brands Inc. | AMEX:TOF | 2 |

The different companies are not of equal importance, therefor I wouldn't invest in them equally, the importance of a company is a degree on a scale of ten that won't be published.

The investment horizon is for more than 1 year, give it time and watch how some of these babies will grow...

I don't recommend investing in one stock in particular, nor do I recommend a portfolio limited to these companies only, personally I wouldn't make a portfolio of less than 80-100 stocks. This is mostly for demonstrative purposes...