PRIS, MGM, and Spanish Borrowing

     I am checking back in on a few stocks I've discussed recently.  My worry that the window on MGM might have passed me by (at least temporarily) has been confirmed.  I was not using a stop and MGM sunk below $9.  Why no stop?  Because I strongly believe it is one of the casino stocks that will violently surge up at positive signs in the American economy.  This explanation is insufficient:  it must also be coupled with a belief (which I have) that positive signs in the American economy will be reported in coming months, whether these signs are accurate or not.  In the meantime, MGM has gone up again, coming near my entry point.  I'm willing to wait.
    PRIS was an easy choice this morning.  News of lower Spanish borrowing costs told me the stock would benefit.  Good news for Spain is good news for PRIS.  So far, so good.

PRIS and EU Follow Up

Well, looks like a number of us (Jubak, Cramer, me, etc.) were right and the EU will effectively print money to save its financial system.  This has had a predictable effect on PRIS, which is trading at $4.80 this morning.  Hope you took my advice and got in when it was below $4.  I got out around $4.40, hedging against the possibility that Europe would just fail to act quickly enough to stave off disaster.  Which, by the way, is still a possibility.  On a meta-level, what is really going on?  Central banks, including the Fed, are instituting financial policies which save financial institutions but provide no clear benefit to the average citizen and, in fact, shift the costs to the average citizen.  The hope is that the U.S. and European economies will begin to grow again quickly enough that the bills can be paid.  Precisely what you would expect from policy-makers:  use admittedly wrong methods to prevent worse evils from occurring today and hope for the best down the road.     

PRIS and Carlos Slim

On November 1, 2011, I wrote that PRIS was trading below $4 and was worth more than that, so long as Europe didn't return to the Dark Ages.  It seems that Carlos Slim agreed with me.  Slim's Carso SA announced today that it bought 3.2% of PRIS.  The stock has responded, up almost 17% today alone and roughly 20% from its closing price on November 1.  Hope you got into PRIS.  I did -- I like to put my money where my mouth is.  I bought it at $3.73.

Volatility; QTM; Quantum; PRIS

On September 9, 2011, I wrote:  "For now, my view seems to hold:  the markets will be hit by repeated and volatile shocks up and down as the very real bad news is countered by the not so real attempts by policy makers to prop them up."  Seems I'm ok on that prediction since then.  One of my favorites, Quantum, is again riding the elevator up and down.  Unless the company is worthless though, it's current price seems awfully low.  I also picked up PRIS -- Spanish multimedia conglomerate at around $4 per ADR (representing 4 ordinary shares).  This stock has traded as high as $13 per share in the last year.  Somehow, I don't think it's worth that much less now but is, instead, a victim of the flight from Europe (which is, incidentally, not unwarranted).  Plus, it has a low stock price -- an absolute requirement for me these days.