Millennium Comes to the Rescue

Genzyme’s (Ticker: GENZ) hostile take over attempt of AnorMED (Ticker: ANOR) became more interesting today. Millennium Pharmaceuticals (Ticker: MLNM) became the white knight and swooped in to save AnorMED from Genzyme. Millennium offered $12 per share ($515 million) versus Genzyme’s bid of $8.55 ($380 million) for AnorMED. I don’t think Genzyme will come in and place a higher bid. Millennium is really paying a big premium for this company and is going to eat up a big chunk of their cash. There’s no doubt that the company will have to go to the public market to raise more cash. This is a risky bet for Millennium. I hope Genzyme doesn’t enter a bidding war and just walk away from this deal. The market likes the fact that Genzyme may not complete this transaction. Take a look at the chart of Genzyme versus Millennium.

Now Reading: Hot ...

I've just started reading Hot Commodities by Jim Rogers. So far so good, it's very well written and easy reading. I'm not looking to trade commodities anytime soon, but I just wanted to learn about different investment classes. I've always admired Jim Rogers for his contrarian plays.

A Little Out Of Fashion

The market is telling us that the economy is slowing down. The most obvious signal is the inverted yield curve. Today we also got word that the Philadelphia Fed announced that its manufacturing activity fell to a negative reading. One data point does not tell the entire story, but when you add all the pieces together, it’s pointing to an economic slow down. I sold J. Crew (Ticker: JCG) today and pocketed a net gain of 11.20%. I used the proceeds from J. Crew to purchase some Goldman Sachs (Ticker: GS) @ $168.59.

Here's a look at the yield curve:



On a side note, what’s up with MasterCard International (Ticker: MA)!? This stock just keeps going up and up…. I’m hanging onto to this one tight. I have a strong conviction that this one is going to be a multi bagger.

Report Card Time

Well, it’s time for another update from my non retirement account. These are all my open positions:

Ticker	% of Portfolio	% Return
Amgen (AMGN)	5.14%	-9.05%
Biogen Idec (BIIB)	3.2%	-21.68%
Boston Scientific (BSX)	2.42%	-43.35%
Genentech (DNA)	1.44%	-2.56%
Genzyme (GENZ)	60.71%	+257.2%
Invitrogen (IVGN)	3.54%	+286.88%
J.Crew (JCG)	0.94%	+17.54%
Microsoft (MSFT)	1.11%	-31.77%
NASDAQ 100 (QQQQ)	1.47%	-5.53%
Qiagen (QGEN)	13.22%	+291.23%
Pfizer (PFE)	5.84%	-1.18%
Sepracor (SEPR)	0.84%	-21.54%
Cash	0.39%
TOTAL UNREALIZED GAINS = +109.30%

And here are my closed positions this year from my non retirement account. My goal is to shoot for a minimal 20% annual return. My overall strategy is buy and hold, but occasionally I will do short term trades when opportunities arise.

Ticker	% Return
Apple (AAPL)	+8.60%
Brookfield Asset Management (BAM)	+3.29%
Leucadia National (LUK)	+6.27%
NASDAQ 100 (QQQQ)	+46.06%
Tim Hortons (THI)	+38.07%
MasterCard International (MA)	+19.01%
TOTAL REALIZED GAINS = +20.13%

I Need Some Energy

With oil in a little correction, I decided to dabble in the oil patch. Yesterday, I picked up some Devon Energy (Ticker: DVN) @ $65.68. You probably heard of Devon Energy with their huge oil discovery in the Gulf of Mexico. I sold of Amgen (Ticker: AMGN) in my Roth IRA to fund this purchase. Shares of Amgen were purchased in 10/31/02 and generated a return of 32.77%. I still like Amgen and hold shares in my non-retirement account.

Bought MasterCard, Again!

It just didn't feel right selling MasterCard International (Ticker: MA). So the logical thing for me to do is to get back into MasterCard. So that's what I did today, I bought back MasterCard International @ $57.09. This time I'm going to be more patient. My gut tells me that this a multi bagger. I've been wrong before by relying on my gut feeling. Just take a look at my Invitrogen (Ticker: IVGN) earnings prediction; I was completely wrong.