Oil tankers

A couple of tanker fleets you might consider shorting are Teekay Corp and Overseas Shipholding Group.

Some stoc ks to short

International Shipping Mews has a list of shipping stocks that you should think about shorting.

Price/Earnings

The last time I looked at the average price/earnings ratio it was about 16 or so.

I was in the library yesterday and took a quick look at Value Line to see what it's running these days. About 10. That's a pretty big drop, but I don't think it's really out of line with what a rational price/earnings ratio should be.

The current average dividend rate for stocks that are paying dividends is 3.6%, which is probably a little high and in my mind reflects a market anticipation that a lot of companies will be cutting (or dropping) their dividends.

Alpha and Beta

Well, I think I'll just be talking about Beta this post, but they do go together.

If you look at a typical financial summary of a traded company you'll often see a number labled Beta. For example, on this google finance page for XOM (Exxon Mobil) you'll see a Beta of .61.

What does that number mean?

When evaluating a Beta you should first look at whether it's positive or negative. Beta is a measure of how much the stock moves with respect to some index, or with respect to the market. A positive Beta means the stock tends to move in the same direction as the market, a negative Beta means the stock tends to move in the opposite direction as the market. So a Beta of .61 means that when the market goes up(down) XOM tends to go up(down).

A negative Beta means that when the market goes up(down) the stock tends to go down(up).

A zero Beta means the stock doesn't move much.

The next thing to consider when evaluating a Beta is whether it's above or below one (or negative one). A Beta greater than 1 means that when the market goes up that stock goes up even more dramatically. Less than 1 (but greater than 0) means that when the market goes up so does the stock but not as dramatically.

The bigger the Beta the more the volatility.

XOM, with a Beta of .61 would appear to be a rather stable stock that tends to follow the market but lag behind slightly.

Bank of America

Bank of America's stock (BAC) is taking a little dip. But, I don't think it's a buying opportunity, I think they're in trouble.

You might even think about shorting them.

USBancorp

USBancorp (USB) is a buy.

They escaped any real damage from the Wall Street collapse. But they're still getting bailout money, as capital to use in buying smaller banks who crippled themselves by speculation in the subprime mortgage market.

They have a reall good dividend yield also.