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Happy New Year 2014!

Year 2013 is ending on a very positive note and upbeat mood. Personally we just came from our relaxing vacation with two more families on Big Island. It was a great vacation.
US Stock markets had their best run since 1997 and all indexes except Nasdaq is ending at all time highs. The yearly gains are outstanding with DOW 28%, S&P 32% and Nasdaq 41%. Instead of individual stock picking or investing in exotic hedge funds or PE, one would have done extremely well by just buying regular index funds with lowest costs. So how did my 2013 recommendations did?
  • Best recommendations: BBY (250%) and MTG (225%)
  • Worst recommendations: VVUS (-31%), CRUS (-27%)
Others like MBI, BAC, KBH, ITB also did ok. Overall if one had invested about $10K per stock, the portfolio would have returned 41% which would have beat S&P by 9 points. Not bad!
During the course of year, I started tracking solar sector but since I had yearly recommendations, I could not change those (personally I did invest in solar and did ok)
So what's ahead in new year 2014?
Let's look at some macro view before jumping into 2014 recommendations:
  • All major world economies seem to be doing good and picking up speed
  • US, Japan, Europe are finally gaining some steam with less concerns on horizon
  • BRIC countries still have some headwinds but most likely they would be able to deal with them (possible election results in India could be one catalyst for Indian markets and economy - on that sometime later)
  • So in all except Debt limit discussions in late Jan, there are no major clouds on horizon
  • Predictions for stock indexes:
    • DOW: 18000
    • S&P: 2014
    • Nasdaq: 5000 (may break all time high)
With that in mind, here are my 2014 recommendations (buy price in brackets) - total 14 stocks.
ALU(4.4), BAC (15.5), GE (28), GRPN(11.7), MTG (8.4), NOK (8), SAN (9), SOCL (21), TAN (35), ARIA (6.8), SRPT (20), YHOO(40), NBG (5.60), RAD(5)
These are mostly my recommendations and I may or may not invest in these personally. You should do your own research before investing. 
Happy New Year to all of you and your families and friends!
/Shyam



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