My Recent Activity: SAM, HANS, ROST

Recently, I have made a few moves in the stock market.  First of all, I sold half of my shares of SAM at 99.92, which has grown immensely since I initially bought stock in the company at 49.03 in March of 2010.  A friend of mine has a flexible "rule" that she sells her stock once it doubles, which to me, kind of makes sense, to a certain extent.  I am skeptical about investors inflating momentum stocks, and about whether a company can grow that much in a short period of time.  However, the reason I sold only half my stock is that I still believe in SAM as a company, and their policy on delivering a fresh product.  Maybe it is sentimental value, but I just like what I've heard about this company and how they do business.

Another move that I'm looking at is whether to sell my stock in HANS, when the time is right.  I've bought that stock at 46.28 in Sept 2010, and now it has about doubled.  I'm a little torn as their return on assets and equity have been great, and their growth has been really strong, with expansion outside of the US.  However, much of their success is due to the Monster drinks, which is my least favorite in comparison with their healthier soda-alternatives.  I think energy drinks are unhealthy and feel that the stevia-sweetened and real-sugar sweetened drinks should be the way of the future.  But that's just my opinion, in a country obsessed with high-fructose corn syrup and aspartame (politics...sigh...).

Anyway, with the money from my SAM stock, I've purchased shares of ROST at 86.96.  The Ross stores have done really well through the recession, which is not surprising.  In fact, I feel pretty silly having waited this long to buy their stock and hope it isn't too late, and that the stock price isn't peaking.  Part of why I bought stock in ROST is because they have similar numbers to TJX, yet ROST has a positive Thomson Reuter's Rating and a policy that I believe provides for faster turnover of product.  Furthermore, ROST announced a stock split, which I understand is basically done to attract investors, but that did get my attention.  As a woman who likes to shop and likes bargains, I understand that it's hard to resist that shopping urge, but it helps to ease the mind when you find a good discount.  I think men like the no-frills one-stop shop aspect of Ross stores as well.

Yelp IPO

A few days ago, I saw that Yelp was going to have an IPO.  I am a big fan of Yelp and think it's a really great web service.  I also like its integration with Facebook.  But reading the announcements about it, I did wonder...just how does Yelp make money?  Advertising.  But how much money does it make, and what is the stock price going to start at?  I was excited, and planned to follow the news.  After all, the IPOs of similar tech/web based social networking companies have gained a lot of attention.  I'm amazed at how much interest these companies get, actually.  I wasn't interested in Linked In, which I don't use and don't care for, and I wasn't interested in Groupon either because it's one discount site among many.  I feel like traders are just desperate to buy into something like Facebook, which is not offered.
Then I saw this article on dailyfinance.com, written by Jonathan Berr of Motley Fool.  I really appreciate the articles on Motley Fool and I find their takes to consistently be intelligent and relatively easy to understand.  Anyway, I thought this put in perspective Yelp's IPO.