Thomas De Maesschalck’s blog

Carmen and I made a trip to the beach today, we went to Oostende. The weather has been really good in Flanders this week, with temperatures of up to 25°C, and today was no exception. It was really warm but there was a nice cool sea breeze so things didn’t get too hot. Lots of people were sunbathing but few folks were swimming in the sea as the water was still freezing cold.

There was a kite festival in Oostende so there were lots of kites on the beach. We saw hundreds of kites, some small ones, some huge cartoon figures and even a couple of massive round kites.

The past week or so the weather here in Flanders has been exceptionally well. Lots of sunshine, no rain and temperatures in the range of 22-25°C! Maybe Carmen and I will make a trip to the beach this weekend as the weather forecast looks pretty good for the next couple of days .

Later today NVIDIA will report its fiscal Q1 2009 earnings, the conference call is at 2:00 PM pacific time and I hope they’ll beat expectations so my stock will be in the green.

UPDATE: Crap… they missed. Profits are up 34% year-over-year but 2 cents per share lower than analysts expected. The stock first took a big hit in the afterhours but since the conference call began it’s been going up again.

I wouldn’t like to walk on the Caminito del Rey lol:

In 1901 it was obvious that the workers of the Chorro Falls and Gaitanejo Falls needed a walkway to cross between the falls, to provide transport of materials, vigilance and maintenance of the channel. Construction of the walkway took four years; it was finished in 1905.

In 1921 the king Alfonso XIII crossed the walkway for the inauguration of the dam Conde del Guadalhorce and it became known by its present name.

The walkway has now gone many years without maintenance, and is in a highly deteriorated and dangerous state. It is one meter (3 ft) in width, and is over 700 feet (200 m) above the river. Nearly all of the path has no handrail. Some parts of the walkway have completely collapsed and have been replaced by a beam and a metallic wire on the wall. Many people have lost their lives on the walkway in recent years. After four people died in two accidents in 1999 and 2000, the local government closed the entrances. However, adventurous tourists still find their way into the walkway.

The guys who build this walkway more than hundred years ago must have had steel balls.

NVIDIA (NVDA)
Yesterday I wrote NVIDIA gained another 2.81% and today the rally continued. NVDA has gained $1.02 (+4.74%) today and went up 11.76% in the last five days - a pretty nice rally on a high volume. More than 28.28 million shares were traded today, that’s 50% more than usual and a good sign. The stock has dropped a lot since its peak in October 2007 but things are starting to look bullish again. NVDA seems to have hit a double bottom and has broken through the resistance around $21 this week.

I don’t have a glass ball but I wouldn’t be surprised to see NVDA much higher next week as I expect the Q1 earnings will be pretty good. Last time NVDA announced its earnings the stock went up a lot in the afterhours but dropped like a rock the day after the conference call as analyst feared costs margins were under pressure. IMO this stock has been punished too much on ungrounded fears and unless the earning results or guidance are bad and/or if a lot of bad economic data follows I think it will soon be in the high $20s again.

The dollar
Another positive thing is that the US dollar gained some strength this week. Last week the exchange rate went over $1.60 per euro for a brief moment but now it has fallen back to $1.54 per euro on better than expected economic data and belief that the Fed will stop cutting the interest rate. Later this year the difference in interest between the US and Europe will likely drop as the ECB is expected to cut the interest rate and that should further fuel the recovery of the USD.

CMB (EBR:CMB)
Another stock I’ve invested some money in is CMB, a Belgian ship-owner. This firm’s core business is the transport of dry bulk goods, especially coal. I read a report about this firm in a magazine a couple of months ago and was attracted because of its very high dividend yield. After following the stock for a couple of weeks I bought some shares and looking back it seems I fished it up very close to the bottom .

The Baltic Dry Index (BDI) shipping rates and the dollar are going up again and CMB rose 4.98% today! Since I’ve bought this stock about five weeks ago I’ve gained almost 12.5% and within two weeks CMB pays out its yearly dividend. At the price I bought the shares I’ve got a net dividend of 7.2%! Just the dividend alone from this company earns me a lot more than a high interest savings account but there’s a lot more risk involved with stocks of course.

Trading and investing in stocks is sometimes frustrating (when they go down lol) but it’s a pretty interesting hobby.

The stock market has already recovered quite a bit since the crash earlier this year. The Dow Jones closed at 13,010 (+1.48%) today, the highest level since early January. Especially tech stocks did really well today, Nasdaq gained 2.81% and is now at the highest level since mid-January. The markets seem to be happy as the Fed is expected to stop fiddling with the interest rate for a while.

I made some profit on trading Intel (INTC) shares last month and I have also been accumulating a lot of NVIDIA (NVDA) shares since February. Unfortunately I started buying a bit too early but the stock is starting to recover and I’m almost in the green.

NVDA gained 4.62% today and is now priced at $21.50 - It’s already up 24% from the low of $17.31 a couple of weeks ago but still very far from its 52 week high of $39.67. Some analysts have been pretty bearish on this stock but IMO the fundamentals are really good. If the firm’s first quarter results, which will be announced on May 8, are decent the stock may jump a lot higher. I’m going to hold on to my NVDA shares for at least 2 years and I hope I’ll at least be able to double my money.

Looks like Steve Ballmer may have used a Mac to give a presentation on Business Leadership and Digital Innovation for Future Graduated at the university of Louvain in Belgium last week.

I can’t say for sure whether the Mac was really used by Ballmer as I wasn’t there but some folks claim it was just a leftover from a previous presentation..