Trading Spinnaker (SKE) - Bought SKE following CNBC "Word on the Street" mention

Tuesday, February 15^th, 2005

My trade for the day was Spinnaker Exploration (SKE). Bought 100 shares on at $34.31. The sole reason I bought SKE was some analyist coming on CNBC in the morning before the market opened and picking SKE and PXP as two energy stocks that were hot. Pretty dumb reason to buy stock, but I wanted to get my feet wet in the game of chasing story stocks. SKE actually opened at around $34.40 then shot right over $34.65 in the first few minutes of trading. In other words, it really looked like your basic buzz bounce. I waited until it came back down under the open, held my nose and bought 100 shares. I suspect I'll be unloading them later today or tommorow, and I'll be thrilled if I break even.

The real question is how much news does it take to make a story stock. The basic online investing sites didn't show anything going on with SKE, no news, no upgrades or downgrades, no earnings reports. The whole story, as near as I can tell, was some guy talking about it for a minute on TV. Are we really all such lemmings?

On the bright side, at least Spinnaker looks like a decent company. PE is a little under 25, $1.36 earnings per share and over 75% institutional ownership. The all time high was a little over $45 a few years back, with a range of around $20 to $45 over the last five years, so at least we aren't too far from the average. So, SKE is my first TV pick, and we'll see what happens.

Symbol/Index # Shares Purchase Price Open Close High Low Today Total Change

SKE 100 $34.31 $34.40 $34.68 $34.75 $34.25 2.60% $37

MU 500 $11.54 $11.87 $11.92 $12.15 $11.70 0.93% $190

Dow Jones - 10791.13 10837.32 0.43%

S&P 500 - 1206.14 1210.12 0.33%

Nasdaq - 2082.21 2089.21 0.30%

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