On May 11th this year I gave targets that I expected would be exceeded on the down side before the end of the year. By late July (see #msg-434114), all but 7 of the venerable 30 Dow stocks exceeded those targets, the week before lastthree more gave up leaving the only survivors were AXP, EK, IBM and MSFT. Last week IBM finally fell below the $55 target. I am listing here the four with the target declines in ( ), the price on May 11, the low since then [ ] and the current price:
AXP (-19); $41.5; [$26.55]; $30.87 EK (-10) $35 ; [$25.59]; $28.46 IBM (-25) $80 ; [$54.01]; $63.92 HIT MSFT(-10) $50 ; [$41.41]: $48.87
Of the three survivors, AXP's forecast was the worst, it got only to within $4 of the target. EK got within half a buck and MSFT got within less than $1.50, and we have almost three more months to go.
Since I am discussing the venerable Dow stocks, I might as well update the status of the most recent Dow long gambit (#msg-508921) from 9/23 and the summary of the stops in #msg-511231:
IBM at $61.08, stopped at $60 loss of 1.8%. Reentered (6% more shares) at $56.5 on 10/4/02. S.L. $53.5. Current price $63.92. AA at $19.35 (SL $17.55), sell above $25. Current price: $20.34 EK at $26.80 (SL $24.90), sell above $31. Current price: $28.46 MMM at $116 (SL $108.25), sell at $138. Current price: $120.60 XOM at $32.50 (SL $29.90), sell above $40. Current price:$34.54 MSFT at $44.75 (SL $41.20), sell above $51. Current price: $48.87
The timing of that gambit was a little off but by now, all stocks are above the entry. iota).
Some may want to add BA entry at $32.35, which I have added to the core last week (now at $32.00).
If these do just half as well on the average as the 7/23 gambit did (see #msg-434114 for the actual entries and following sell message on 8/22 a month after opening the gambit), we should be happy, but I fully expect at least an average of 20% return on that gambit.