Gun Sales Thriving In Uncertain Times

 

Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 27, 2008; Page A01

 

20 Investments every Investor should know

I found this great article on Investopedia

Most people will find that their investment objectives change throughout their lives. Capital appreciation may be more important for the young investor, but once she enters her golden years, that same investor may place a greater emphasis on gaining income. Whatever your objective, knowing what investment options are out there is key.

Furthermore, as most successful investors will tell you, diversification is king. A diversified portfolio not only reduces unwanted risk, but also contributes to a winning portfolio. And having a well-diversified portfolio doesn’t necessarily mean just buying more than one stock; branching out into other areas of investment could be a viable alternative. Click below on the link and learn about 20 investments that Investopedia feels every investor should know.

http://www.investopedia.com/university/20_investments/

Outdoor Channel Partners With Congressional Sportmen’s Foundation for Voting Campaign

TEMECULA, Calif., Oct. 22 /PRNewswire/ — Outdoor Channel, America’s Leader in Outdoor TV, has partnered with the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation (CSF) to encourage outdoorsmen to vote in the upcoming 2008 presidential election. The on-air campaign launched this week features Outdoor Channel on-air personalities highlighting the role of hunters and anglers as a voting constituency with a call to action.

According to a national poll of outdoorsmen conducted by CSF, nine out of ten sportsmen are registered to vote with a solid majority of sportsmen (83%) saying they will vote in the November election. It is estimated that over 40 million hunters and anglers are of voting age.

“This voter survey proves that sportsmen hold tremendous political power. While the economy and war in Iraq are key issues for all voters in this election, the survey findings show that outdoorsmen prefer to elect a president who hunts or fishes (76 percent), and they will vote to protect the outdoor lifestyle on Election Day,” said Tom Hornish, COO of Outdoor Channel. “By using the data, we are educating outdoorsmen and encouraging them to let their voices be heard about key issues, like the future of hunting, fishing and habitat management.”

Outdoor Channel has recruited popular on-air personalities to participate in a series of promotional spots to communicate the survey’s results and encourage outdoor enthusiasts to cast their votes. Network talent like Joe Thomas, host of “Ultimate Match Fishing,” and Michael Waddell, host of “Realtree Road Trips” and “Gander Mountain’s We Live Outdoors,” have volunteered time to star in the promotional spots that will appear both on-air and on-line leading up to the election.

“Outdoor Channel is a valuable partner and resource for reaching the millions of sportsmen whose values we represent at the political level,” said Jeff Crane, president of CSF. “It’s important for outdoor enthusiasts to understand how powerful their voice is in this upcoming election.”

The “Sportsmen Voter Survey” presented interesting key findings about the values of outdoorsmen, which greatly align with current Outdoor Channel initiatives. For example, sportsmen perceive loss of habitat and loss of access as the biggest threats to hunting, and they want Congress to prioritize management of lands for habitat. In parallel, Outdoor Channel is a strategic partner to over a dozen conservation and outdoor awareness organizations, including the National Wild Turkey Federation, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and Safari Club International, among others. This year the network also launched the “This Land is Your Land” campaign to educate viewers on the many facets of conservation.

Outdoor Channel’s promotional on-air spots with a call for outdoorsmen to vote are available for viewing online at http://www.outdoorchannel.com.

About Outdoor Channel

Outdoor Channel is America’s Leader in Outdoor TV, offering programming that captures the excitement of hunting, fishing, shooting, off-road motorsports, adventure and the Western lifestyle. The network can be viewed on multiple platforms including high definition, video-on-demand, as well as on a dynamic new website. Outdoor Channel is a wholly owned subsidiary of Outdoor Channel Holdings, Inc. (Nasdaq: OUTD). For more information about Outdoor Channel, please visit http://www.outdoorchannel.com.

SOURCE Outdoor Channel

Olin Announces Third Quarter Earnings

 

 

CLAYTON, MISSOURI–Olin Corporation (NYSE:OLN) announces achieved record operating income in the third quarter of 2008 of $87.0 million, which increased 130% from the third quarter 2007 level of $37.8 million. Income from continuing operations in the third quarter of 2008 was $37.7 million, or $0.49 per diluted share, compared with net income from continuing operations of $32.7 million, or $0.44 per diluted share, in the third quarter of 2007. Third quarter 2008 income from continuing operations included the previously announced $26.6 million impairment charge on corporate debt securities. Third quarter 2007 earnings include one month of results from the Pioneer operations which were acquired August 31, 2007. Sales during the third quarter of 2008 were $502.9 million compared to $350.3 million in the third quarter of 2007.

Joseph D. Rupp, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer said, “We experienced record performance in our Chlor Alkali business during the third quarter, despite the impact of two hurricanes, and continued strong performance from our Winchester business. Chlor Alkali segment earnings were $103.6 million, reflecting higher ECU netbacks. Overall volumes in the quarter were negatively impacted by approximately 3% due to hurricane-related outages at our St. Gabriel, Louisiana facility and our SunBelt joint venture. We expect continued improvement in ECU netbacks in the fourth quarter. Winchester’s segment earnings were in line with the third quarter of 2007 as improved pricing offset higher costs and lower volumes. Third quarter 2008 earnings were also positively impacted by favorable tax adjustments resulting from the finalization of our 2007 tax returns and lower stock-based compensation expense.”

In the fourth quarter of 2008 we anticipate earnings per share in the $0.65 per diluted share range. In Chlor Alkali the improvement in ECU netbacks is expected to offset seasonally weaker volumes. Winchester expects approximately breakeven results in the seasonally weak fourth quarter.

SEGMENT REPORTING

We define segment results as income (loss) before interest expense, interest income, other income, and income taxes and include the results of non-consolidated affiliates in segment results consistent with management’s monitoring of the operating segments.

WINCHESTER

Winchester third quarter 2008 sales were $140.8 million, compared to $129.0 million in the third quarter of 2007. The combination of higher selling prices and increased law enforcement and government, including military, sales volumes were partially offset by lower sales volumes to commercial customers.

Winchester segment income for the third quarter was $9.8 million, compared to $10.0 million in the third quarter of 2007. The favorable impact of higher selling prices was more than offset by higher raw material costs, including copper, lead, and steel, and higher manufacturing costs.

Read more

Who’s Bailing Who?

 

In case yall dont read Alan’s Blog or newsletters heres a little part of todays edition.

The lamestream media told you:

The $700 billion bailout is good, bad, ugly, pretty, pretty ugly, will help, will hurt, is designed for the fat cats, will protect the average American, is run by insiders, is a normal management move, if we don’t do this the sky will fall, if they do this the nation’s financial system will be nationalized by czars and money dictators and turn the nation socialist. — ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, FOX, virtually all newspapers and radio broadcasts.

 

The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that:

Not a single report the Uninvited Ombudsman could find provided the number of the bailout bill, which would be needed for a person to look up the proposed bill and see what it actually says.

Failure to provide the number strongly indicates the reporters and pundits, as is standard practice, have not looked at the bill themselves before making wild claims that can’t be backed up and don’t match each other.

Politicians speaking on the “news” have apparently not read the bill (HR 1424), because it was not even posted on thomas.gov where it would normally appear when they voted for it (originally HR 3997, when it was three pages but still had the $700 billion in it). But…

Politicians haven’t written it either. Bureaucrats and “staff” in cubicles in the vast dungeons of government buildings sat and typed, anonymously deciding for themselves how to write the (formerly three pages) and now hundreds of pages that became law. As a writer, I can assure you that one small turn of phrase creates a slush fund or quashes it.

It has been impossible so far to identify, much less interview, the people who actually wrote whatever it is this bill says. They are more protected from view than prisoners in Guantanamo — no one in the outside world knows their names, locations, ranks, pay grade, home addresses, level of education, agendas, voting records or anything that would shed light on who they are and what they’re up to.

The “news” media, in its wisdom, only reported on the bill as either — a horse race between the parties and houses of Congress, or, as a “he said she said” stew of competing contradictory dreamscapes whose link to reality is unknown — and obviously wrong for at least half the partisan pundits with their pie holes open.

Real reporting would include the actual content of the bill or who is actually choosing its words, and the verbiage would be vetted by certifiable experts instead of “pundits” and pretty faces.

Whether reporters and editors fail to do this out of ignorance, incompetence, laziness, alliance to the power brokers, misguided morals, personal agendas or plain stupidity is unknown, though some observers say it is all of the above. News consumers generally agree the current methods harm the nation.

A quick glance at the table of contents for HR 2414 reveals entries for college tuition, mine rescue team training, Indian employment, motor sports racing tracks, film and TV productions, mental health parity, disaster relief, Exxon Valdez litigation, and tax exemption for wooden arrows used by children. Don’t believe me? Trust your own eyes:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c110:6:./temp/~c11004f7Di

Listless economy can’t stop hunting sales

http://www.wdnweb.com/articles/2008/10/21/news/news01.txt

Some cutting back, but election year spurs others to buy

By TED STRONG

Staff Writer

When Wall Street is in a funk, deer don’t act any differently and hunters don’t alter their behavior much either, local shop owners say.

“When it comes to hunting in eastern North Carolina, folks are going to hunt if they have to walk to the field and get up in the stand,” said L.D. Thomas, of Dellinger’s Pawn Brokers Inc., a downtown Washington shop that stocks hunting rifles, among other items.

The number of people buying and selling rifles in his shop hasn’t changed much, in spite of the economy, he said Monday. Firearms season for deer began Saturday in eastern North Carolina except for part of Dare County.

And the number of people headed afield this fall hasn’t slumped, said Sgt. Ed Alston of the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission. Based on archery season for deer, which began Sept. 13 in Beaufort County, as well as other hunting seasons, he said hunting numbers remain strong.

“It looks like business as usual as far as I can see,” he said.

Joey Pinkham was in Warren’s Sport Headquarters on West Main Street Monday to buy his hunting license.

He gets out as much as he can, but it isn’t much, he said.

“What time I ain’t working, I’m hunting,” Pinkham said.

Warren’s actually has seen a slight increase in sales, said owner Tracy Warren.

“We’re up about 6 percent according to the computer right now, of course you have an election year right now,” he said.

Election years usually either help or hurt gun sales tremendously, he said. This year he’s hearing concerns from customers that Barack Obama might institute stricter gun controls or higher gun taxes if elected, he said.

At Dellinger’s, tighter gun control laws requiring national background checks have cut the number of people willing to pawn guns, Thomas said.

“Unless a person’s absolutely sure they’re going to be able to pick them back up, they’re not going to bring it in,” he said.

Gun repairs at Warren’s are up as well, as more folks work to get slightly damaged firearms working again, rather than selling them and getting something new, Warren said.

The most commonly needed repair is general cleaning and maintenance, he said.

That matches what Steve Williams, owner of Awesome Outdoors on West Fifth Street in Washington, has experienced.

“People are trying to make good decisions,” he said. “They’re getting what they need to use with what they have,”

Williams’ business replaced the former Washington Marine and Sporting Center 10 weeks ago, so it doesn’t have the license it needs to sell firearms yet, he said. He hopes to have the license in a week, he said.

But other items have been selling well, including ammunition and rigs for flounder and trout, Williams said.

“Our ammo sales have been phenomenal,” he said.

But Alston said the best hunting hasn’t come yet. High temperatures and a bright moon have been prompting deer to move at night, instead of during the day, when they can legally be hunted, he said.

That should change in coming weeks, he said, as temperatures drop and deer activity patterns change.

He said, “We’re getting ready to get the rut to start kicking in the next couple of weeks.”

Books Every Investor Should Read

Books Every Investor Should Read

Successful investment strategies are based on your education or knowledge about that particular strategy. Trophy deer hunters have a good foundation on how to hunt deer, but how they hunt the big monster bucks, is based on homework and current conditions.  Logic and common sense tells us that both investing and hunting can land us big bucks (pun intended) if we do our homework and build a solid foundation.  Lucky for us we have availible the tools to help us acheive our goals and dreams of big bucks. 

Long before we head off and into the great outdoors after those trophy bucks, we invest many hours of our lives into our hunting tradtion.  Investing, much like trophy deer hunting is based on a strong, rock solid foundation. Today we have many ways to build our investing foundation. The biggest part of an education today involves computers and the internet.  As the Treestand Investor, I like to read books in the stand when activities in the woods are slow. The other day I found these books that are listed below, that are the top ten books every investor should read.  While I have not read any of them as of yet, they have been added to my must have list.  If you have read any of them, let us know what you think and if they helped you or not, with your investing education.  And also if you have read any other books on investing, please let us know what they are, who they are by, and why we should or should not read them.

I found this list in an Investors Business Daily paper back in July . 

 

The top Ten Books Every Investor Should Read

1. The Intelligent Investor (1949) by Benjamin Gram
2. Common Stocks & Uncommon Profits (1958) by Philip Fisher
3. Stocks for the Long Run (1994)  Jerry Siegle
4. Learn to Earn (1995) One Up on Wall Street (1989) Beating the Street (1994) all by Peter Lynch
5. A Random Walk Down Wall Street (1973) by Burton G Makiel
6. The Essays of Warren Buffet: Lessons for Corporate America (2001) by Warren Buffet and Lawrence Cunningham
7. How to Make Money In Stocks (2003 3^rd Edt.) by William J Oneil
8. Rich Dad Poor Dad (1997) by Robert T Kiyosaki
9. Common Sense on Mutal Funds (1999) by John Bogle
10.  Irrational Exuberance (2000) by Robert J Shiller

Laying the foundation one block at a time

 

 

 

Well if you are reading this blog, you already have access to everything that the pros on Wall St. have.  The internet provides everyone including you and me, up to date and real time information on every aspect of the investing market.  A good education in the stock market is only the beginning to a greater return on investments. Investing opportunities happen which ever way the market moves.   And you should get this in your head right now, the market always moves.  We don’t always know whither its going to go up or down or stay flat, but rest assure it is going to do something.  The advantage of being an educated investor is that it doesn’t matter which way it moves.  The reason is because while stocks go up, somewhere stocks are also going down at the same time.  I think I saw where about 80% of all the money is controlled by mutual or hedge funds.  But unlike the big boys, we can move our money in and out quickly and beat the market with the same information.  Sounds easy but with an educated foundation in how the market works, anybody can do it in a relatively short time.

The question for us is where do we start?  Well like everything else we build, we start with a solid and strong foundation because you can’t build a mansion on an outhouse foundation. But with one block at a time, you can lay the ground work so that over time you can build up a foundation fit for a king and his mansion.  Did you go to college after high school? And if you did, why did you continue going to school?  Well duh, to get an education and a better paying job, same as everybody else! If you think about it, an education is by its self an investment. What you get in return on that investment is up to you. The goal of getting a return on investment is how a market investor makes money.  So if you educate your self on investing, you have the potential to reap the greatest returns on your best investment ever, your education.  Basically, you can make money while learning how to make more money……

Over the next few weeks, The Treestand Investor’s goal will be to help form an educational foundation for hunters (and anyone else) so that we can begin our journey into becoming a business owner. Topics will include information on where to start and the best sources on the internet to get started.  Please know that I’m a beginning investor myself. And I welcome any information that maybe useful for others as well as myself.  Don’t be afraid to contact me to share your thoughts, ideas and questions. We are all here to learn and to build a strong solid foundation, one block at a time. 

 

IBD’s 20 Rules for Investment Success

While on vaccation over the summer I was reading an Investor’s Buisness Daily paper and came across this list of IBD’s 20 Rules for Investment Success.  This is food for thought for anyone trying to educate themselves in the investing world.

 

 

Investors.com

 

These rules aren’t based on our personal opinion or those of Wall Street’s experts. IBD built detailed models of all the most successful stocks every year from 1980 to 2005. We analyzed their common characteristics, what factors existed before these very best companies had huge advances and how these factors changed when the stocks topped. So these rules represent how the market actually works.

 

If all 20 fact based rules are carefully followed (not just the ones you like), your investment results can materially improve.

 

1. Consider buying stocks with each of the last three years’ earnings up 25%+, return on equity of 17%+ and recent earnings and sales accelerating.
2. Recent quarterly earnings and sales should be up 25% or more.
3. Avoid cheap stocks. Buy stocks selling for $15 to $100 or more.
4. Learn how to use charts to see sound bases and exact buy points. Confine buys to these points as stocks break out on big volume increases.
5. Cut every loss when it’s 8% below your cost. Make no exceptions so you’ll avoid any possible huge, damaging losses. Never average down in price.
6. Follow selling rules on when to sell and take profits on the way up. Review “When to Sell and Take a Profit” in “How to Make Money in Stocks.”
7. Buy when market indexes are in an uptrend. Reduce investments and raise cash when general market indexes show five days of increased volume distribution.
8. Read IBD’s Investor’s Corner and Big Picture columns to learn how to recognize important tops and bottoms in the market indexes.
9. Buy stocks with a Composite Rating of 90 or more and a Relative Price Strength Rating of 85 or higher in the IBD SmartSelect Corporate Ratings.
10. Pick companies with management ownership of stock.
11.  Buy mostly in the top six broad industry sectors in IBD’s New High List.
12. Select stocks with increasing institutional sponsorship in recent quarters.
13. Current quarterly after-tax profit margins should be improving near their peak and among the best in the stock’s industry.
14. Don’t buy because of dividends or P-E ratios. Read a story on the company. Buy the No.1 Company in an industry in earnings and sales growth, ROE, profit margins and product quality.
15. Pick companies with a superior new product or service.
16. Invest mainly in entrepreneurial New America companies. Pay close attention to those with an IPO in the past eight years.
17. Check into companies buying back 5% to 10% of their stock and those with new management (what is management’s background?).
18. Don’t try to bottom guess or buy on the way down. Never argue with the market. Forget your pride and ego.
19. Find out if the market currently favors big-cap or small-cap stocks.
20.  Do a post-analysis of all your buys and sells. Post on charts where you bought and sold. Evaluate and develop rules to correct your major mistakes. It’s what you learn after you know what you’re doing that’s vital. That’s how to improve you results.

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