Got Some Visa

I really had doubts of getting any shares of the Visa IPO, but to my surprise I was allocated a few shares. I want to start building a nice position in the stock. There might be good opportunities to pick up additional shares in this paranoid market. We'll see...

Getting Visa IPO

Unfortunately, my primary discount broker, TD Ameritrade, no longer participates in IPO’s. Here are my attempts at getting my hands on some shares of the Visa IPO:

(1) E*Trade – No Visa, but an IPO offering for Pogo Jet. What’s that….??? I’m staying away from that one.

(2) Fidelity Investments – They have the Visa IPO offering, but minimum account balance of $500,000 is required to participate. Nope, not there yet…

(3) Called a broker with one of the underwriting firms about opening an account and participating in the upcoming Visa IPO. I received the following response: the firm requires a minimum account balance of $5,000,000. Do you want to open an account? My response… Ummm… No Thanks…

(4) I finally might have success… I called another underwriting firm and they were helpful in opening an account to participate in the IPO. They walked me through the application process. Of course there are no guarantees in obtaining shares. If I’m able to obtain some IPO shares from this firm, I’ll start to do some business with them.

Clear Channel Communications - Out...

I decided not to get greedy and sold Clear Channel Communications (Ticker: CCU) this morning at $35.56 generating a net return of 10.85% over a three week period. The risk was simply too great in seeing this deal fall apart. I also wanted to reduce the use of margin in this environment.

A Little Navteq, CCU and China???

I’m back from a little vacation and the market volatility continues. Right before I left for vacation, I picked up my last batch of Navteq (Ticker: NVT) at $73.13. Nokia (Ticker: NOK) filed the EU regulatory documents on 2/19. If everything goes well, I anticipate this deal to close at the end of March. I also picked up a little Clear Channel Communications (Ticker: CCU) at $31.88 as a high risk merger play. Just have to close your eyes on that one!

For the first time, I’m actually looking at some China plays… I’m still doing some research, but may nibble at few soon. Stay tuned…

What else? Like everyone else out there; I’m trying to get my hands on some Visa IPO shares.