Nancy B King

Update: The snow got a bit carried away; like it buried us. We have about 10 to 12 inches in the drive. The car would high center before the front wheels were out of the garage. So, we are home-bound until the snow plow people come by tonight or tomorrow some time. Husband’s electric show blower takes care of the steps and a narrow trail at the bottom to the mailbox, but it can’t begin to handle 10 inches of snow on the driveway. I’ve had enough writing today; it’s time to move on to the washing, paying bills, etc. It’s interesting how my morning idea of a warm, showy, wintry Alaska day has changed to being house bound and a bit bored. Isn’t there a famous poem about being snowbound?

What a difference it makes for the temp to be twenty above rather than ten or twenty below. A sigh of relief and a letting go of bracing against the cold. On top of that the market has been up and I’ve been doing some buying—at least for the short-term. My rule is down 8% and out you go!!!!

I’m sitting here at my computer writing, listening to great classical music on my wireless radio (thanks, Daughter), and gazing out my window at the fluffy snow coming down.

I am writing  teacher background info for my stock analysis worksheet. Stock Market Game program teachers have been  asking the national office for a structured approach students can use to identify quality companies.

How are you getting ready for the Super Bowl Game? Are you preparing for the party you are giving? Are you getting ready to go to a friend’s house for their party? Are you going to a sports bar? Above all, are you set to watch the Super Bowl ads?

Here are some things to think about concerning Super Bowl ads and investing in the advertised companies. Thanks go to Allen Cox of the Maryland Council on Economic Education for creating this teacher background information for the Stock Market Game program high school student project.

National Public Radio reports the Nielson Co. estimates 111 million people watched the Green Bay Packers beat the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XLV. It’s expected that the audience this year will be even larger because for the first time in the history of the event, it will be streamed live to mobile devices and computers. Socialtimes.com predicts an additional 1.585 million people will watch the game via NBC’s live stream.

Each year companies advertise their products and services during the Super Bowl. Because the Super Bowl is one of the largest consumer audiences in the world, companies view it as an opportunity to premiere new advertising campaigns and debut new products and services. In 1984, Apple Computer introduced its Macintosh computer with a memorable, futuristic ad that suggested Apple would overtake the computer dominance of IBM. According to the Kellogg School of Management blog, the 2011 Super Bowl served as a launching pad for advertising campaigns that included companies like E*Trade, Snickers, Chrysler, Bud Light, Cars.com and Volkswagen.

USA Today reported that advertising slots for this year’s Super Bowl were sold out by Thanksgiving 2011. However, this opportunity does not come cheap. For this year’s Super Bowl – Super Bowl XLVI – NBC is charging between $3 to $4 million (most ads go for between $2.5 and $2.8 million) for each 30-second commercial. Perhaps a sign of an improving economy, several long time Super Bowl advertisers like Pepsi and General Motors who did not advertise last year will be returning this year.

Some believe that spending the resources to advertise during the Super Bowl is a good investment for a company. William Spain at Marketwatch writes:   “You can’t get the kind of viewership the Super Bowl offers anywhere else and in terms of the cost to reach each one of them, it is actually considerably cheaper than some other top programming, notably NBC’s Sunday Night Football.”

He quotes George Belch, chairman of the marketing department at San Diego State University,  “That probably partly explains why many companies are still there and why they still think it is a good investment. Plus, the aura of curiosity [about the ads] is still there and with the public relations value around it, the value extends well beyond the commercial.”

Others believe that the impact of advertising during the Super Bowl is only slight. According to a study conducted by the Business Department of the University of Colorado, “Companies announcing the purchase of advertising slots during the Super Bowl broadcast may get a slight boost in their stock prices… perennial Super Bowl advertisers like Budweiser do not see an impact on their stock prices… where the corporation was not a regular Super Bowl advertiser there was an uptick in stock price of about one percent… For regular advertisers, the stock prices reaction was statistically negligible and was slightly negative.”(Campbell & Hughson, 2007)

For The Stock Market Game™ investor, the Super Bowl presents an interesting investment research opportunity. In this project SMG teams will decide on the effectiveness of Super Bowl advertising and predict the immediate impact of that advertisement on the price of stock.

On a slight tangent, but none the less interesting is Mark Hulbert’s debunking of the Super Bowl indicator. The Super Bowl Indicator suggests stocks will rise during the year if the winning team is from the original National Football League and will fall if the team is from the old American Football League. You can read Mark’s column here.

Click  Super Bowl Investing and you, too, can determine the effectiveness of Super Bowl advertisements and their impact on companies’ stock prices.  

Today, January 31, the last day of what has been a very long, very cold month, is more notably  the birthday of Franz Schubert–January 31,1797. He gave the world the Unfinished Symphony, 8 other symphonies, chamber music, solo piano music, and liturgical music. Enjoy, as I did this morning, Pavarotti singing Schubert’s Ave Maria .

STRATFOR Global Intelligence has published a Somali Piracy: 2011 Annual Update. STRATFOR’s 2011 pirate report adds salient background to  my previous pirate blog.

It seems as though the Somali Piracy business has also suffered a recession. They have hijacked fewer ships (31 vs 49), their area for hijackings has decreased (around the edges), and countermeasures have increased (ship crews retreating to safe rooms until help arrives, ships carrying 4-man teams of armed guards, the Convoy Escort Programme, LTD).

As part of their class work for the fall 2011 Stock Market Game program, the winning team in the Middle School Division , Team  ZZ113, from Ms. O’Leary’s class at Gruening Middle School created a Power Point presentation about their portfolio. It recaps their portfolio and its performance, their strategy for choosing stocks, a short explanation of 3 of their 6 holdings, and their conclusion about their investment strategy. Take a minute to view their nine-slide  presentation.

I am proud of Ms. O’Leary’s teacher-student work during the Stock Market Game program time throughout the fall semester and these students’ learnings.

The national Stock Market Game program is an interactive, interdisciplinary educational program that enhances core curriculum—math, reading, writing, economics, social studies, personal finance, research and technology. More directly, it gives 5^th through 12^th grade students an opportunity to put into practice personal finance, economic and market concepts as they use the Internet to study how financial markets work, research stocks, bonds, and mutual funds, enter trades, manage their accounts, follow their portfolios, and check their state rankings. They create and manage a $100,000 portfolio for 15 weeks each semester. As part of the guidelines students must hold 5 different investments; any stock they purchase must be priced at more than $5.00 a share; they must buy at least 100 shares; the total purchase price of their bond, stock, or mutual fund may not exceed 30 percent of the value of their portfolio. The winning portfolio is determined by the portfolio’s performance compared with the S&P 500 Index.

The High School Division portfolio winning team for fall semester 2011 is Team ZZ36 in Ms. Melanie Sugita’s economics class at South Anchorage High School. The team’s portfolio out performed the S&P 500 Index by 10.92 percent. The team followed the buy & hold approach; their main holdings were Apple and Tesla Motors. Congratulations to Team ZZ36 on their portfolio management.

The Middle School Division portfolio winning team for fall semester 2011 is Team ZZ113 in Ms. Michelle O’Leary’s class at Gruening Middle School in Eagle River. Their portfolio underperformed the S&P 500 Index by only 1.48 percent. Their portfolio included Boeing, Apple, WalMart, VF Corp, Nike, and Starbucks. Their portfolio management philosophy was also a buy & hold approach. They cut their losses by selling Costco, Coca-Cola and Dollar General. Congratulations to Team ZZ36. Team ZZ36 prepared a Power Point presentation concerning their portfolio work. I will share it later; it deserves its own blog post.

The Elementary School Division portfolio winning team is Team ZZ70 in Ms. Likka McCauley’s class at Baxter Elementary School. Their portfolio out performed the S&P 500 Index by 3.71percent. Their portfolio consisted on 11 stocks; their most successful stocks were DemandTec (up 59 percent) and Google (up 21 percent). Their approach was also a buy & hold portfolio. Congratulations to Team ZZ70.

I am truly proud of these students and teachers. Many thanks to all Stock Market Game teachers in Alaska for teaching your students market, economic, and personal finance concepts. There is nothing like hands-on-learning to bring understanding to these ideas and concepts. The Alaska Council on Economic Education brings the Stock Market Game to teachers throughout Alaska.

The U.S. Navy rescued 13 Iranians held hostage by Somalia pirates.

The flip side of this rescue was that it decreased the revenue the pirates would have otherwise obtained for eventually returning the hostages. Therefore, those Somalis who might have invested in this pirate company probably listed on the Somalia Pirate Exchange lost money today as the price of this stock undoubtedly tumbled.

The Somalia pirate exchange, the Harardheere Stock Exchange (“HSE”), opened for business in 2009 in Harardheere, Somalia, about 250 miles northeast of Mogadishu. It operates 24 hours a day. Pirate groups of a certain size register to trade on the exchange. Currently the exchange lists 73 entities. Individual investors donate weapons or pay cash to buy shares of one or more of the registered groups. Thus, pirate groups can raise money and weapons for expeditions and local investors can share in the profit—receive dividends—if the expedition is successful. Just as in the usual corporate world, not all pirate groups are successful. Currently however, the pirate business is up; in the first quarter of 2011 there were 97 attacks off the coast of Somalia, which is a 177 percent increase over first quarter of 2010. Wired has a fascinating (excellent graphics), non-typical economic analysis of the Somali pirate business.

Yes, middle school and high school students can identify quality, high-performing stocks. The following was compiled by the New York office of the Stock Market Game program—the best performing stocks from student portfolios nationwide during fall semester 2011 (as of the end of Nov—the game ended Dec. 16th):

Company Ticker                                             9/6/2011   11/21/2011   Increase

5. Build-A-Bear Workshop               BBW          5.31          7.92              49%

4.  Aéropostale, Inc.               ARO           10.39        15.76            52%

3. Commercial Vehicle Group       CVGI             6.31         9.66              53%

2. American Dental Partners        ADPI          10.01        18.65            86%

1. Pharmasset, Inc.                          VRUS         70.53        134.14          91%

5. Build-A-Bear Workshop: At Build-A-Bear Workshop, their mission is to bring the teddy bear to life. Located mainly in malls, the company’s stores allow kids to design their own teddy bears and other stuffed animals complete with clothing, shoes, and a multitude of accessories. Customers can build bears online, too.

4. Aéropostale, Inc.: A mall-based, specialty retailer of casual apparel and accessories, principally targeting 14 to 17 year-old young women and men through its Aéropostale stores and 7 to 12 year-old kids through its P.S. from Aéropostale stores.

3. Commercial Vehicle Group: A leading supplier of fully integrated system solutions for the global commercial vehicle market, including the heavy-duty truck market, the construction and agriculture markets and the specialty and military transportation markets.

2. American Dental Partners: Helping dentists focus on drilling (and not billing) is the mission of the company. It provides management and support services for the growing group practice segment of the dental care industry. Through long-term service agreements, the company manages about 25 general and specialty dental practice groups operating some 275 dental facilities in more than 20 states, mainly in the eastern and midwestern part of the US.

1. Pharmasset, Inc.: A clinical-stage pharmaceutical company committed to discovering, developing and commercializing novel drugs to treat viral infections. Its primary focus is on the development of oral therapeutics for the treatment of hepatitis C virus (“HCV”). Congrats to the SMG students who uncovered its potential!