Ya' know, this business with the up/down market is still far from over. But, I've explained ad nauseam what it's going to be like while we burn through the remainder of it - I'll spare you another sermon.
Besides, we've got several trade updates to get through, and I just want to dig in with them.
Elephant Talk (ETAK) is undoubtedly this week's busy bee. The big news is that it filed its quarterly numbers a day ago.... decent results. We all pretty much knew the quarterly yoy and the six-month yoy comparisons were going to come in lower, and they did. The reason they came in lower is because Elephant Talk was/is getting out of the landline business; had it not been for that, the top line and bottom line would have both been stronger. It stinks in the short-term, but the decision to focus on the mobile business (where margins are higher) was the right one. Revenue from that venture was actually up last quarter.
I suspect by now that no matter where you are in the country, school has resumed for the children in your locale. School isn't the only place to learn some new things though. I've got something of a market-based lesson for today that may make a difference in how much market exposure you're willing to take on this week after a reasonably strong end to last week.
After that, a couple of updates on our open picks.
OK guys, we've been talking about Lihua International (LIWA) with an asterisk behind it for several days now. Well, that pending footnote is no longer just a pending footnote - LIWA is confirmed to be the great company it looks like on paper. An independent report prepared by China 360 Solutions has verified the numbers found in its SEC filings totally jive with what it's reporting to the taxation body for the state of China.
In other words, Lihua is exactly everything it says it is... which is one heck of a company currently priced at bargain levels.
So, this small cap stock - which we likedseveral days ago just because it was handily outperforming the market - is a stock we love as of today now that we've read the report. And, against the backdrop of Tuesday's earnings figures, it's tough to find anything wrong with it. In fact, let's just start with last quarter's numbers and get to the China 360 report in a moment.
Quite a turnaround today, eh? We went from bad to worse to just plain awful on Monday, only to recoup half of yesterday's disaster Tuesday. Still, though the market may have been able to overcome 'worse', Monday's move to just 'plain awful' - despite Tuesday's bounce - may have been a deep wound that won't be so easy to overcome.
On the flipside, please don't add us to the list of the hysterical fear mongers; there's enough of that everywhere else you look. We've said from day one our goal was just to be a voice of reason, and that's not changed today. While everyone else is biting their nails and screaming gloom and doom, we're actually offering a sound strategy that will at least help you survive what's going on right now, and maybe even let you make some money from it.
We're going to run down the key components of small cap stock trader's "Bear Attack Survival Kit", in a second, but first we need to note some things for a handful of our open trades.
Did everybody enjoy yesterday's decimation? Geez. I've just got one word to say about the last seven trading days.... ugh. Actually I'm not even sure 'ugh' is a word, but it's still a fitting description.
Anyway, as my brilliant teaser headline (and tribute to Eddie Cochran) suggested, I do have a cure for the market's summertime blues. You just have to go overseas to find it because - in simplest terms - the U.S. market is just too much of a mess right now to bother with.
That's right, we're going back to China, where the fraud fears are now overdone yet the stocks are still oversold.