Purchases for September 2017: Virtual Stock Picks on Aug 25, 2017

This month’s analysis yielded 21 performing stocks that passed our screening.   From there we chose 10-11 to purchase in the portfolio for the month.  Three of the 11 were in the high performing software services industry.

We’ve started our portfolio fresh this month by creating a publicly visible paper trading account.  This allows our followers to watch the performance of our (fake) orders placed.  Follow along here:  http://www.marketwatch.com/game/investing-adventures-blog by viewing the “Investing Adventures” player’s portfolio.

Some points we noted about some of the picks were as follows:

  • SINA Corp (SINA) is in an industry that is slowly trending downward giving us concern of dragging the stock down. One expert recommendation was moved from buy to outperform as well. On a positive note, it has a recent ceiling breakthrough.
  • Align Technology (ALGN) was favored by experts and had good overall financials.
  • OraSure Technology’s (OSUR) pattern shows it might recover from a current slump.
  • Stamps.com (STMP) was the belle of the ball last month.  It’s still a solid company but is no longer a great buy compared to our calculated intrinsic value.
  • Royal Caribbean Cruises (RCL) looks strong in its consistent growth and margin of safety pricing, but there is a lot of insider trading that gave us some pause. The positives seemed to outweigh on this one though.
  • EXACT Sciences Co. (EXAS) is a difficult company to calculate an intrinsic value because it has erratic financials like many other biotechnology companies.  We were swayed to include it because of the expert recommendations and insider trading.
  • Baidu Inc (BIDU) seemed to be the best value of the bunch based on intrinsic value estimates.
  • ICLR, EL, and SUPN also met our criteria for buys this month.

 

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