More Speculation

So, the market is abysmal at the moment. That of course means a huge buy signal to me, as I am not even using real money. I might as well pick some really beaten down speculative areas while I am at it: how about shipping companies?

Shipping first for starters:

GMR 28%!, PE 10.29 PB -- Beta 1.19 Market Cap: 447M
2 yrs at 50c/quarter - high payout ratio? ANALYSTS 2.57

KSP 20%! PE 13.07 PB 1.08 Beta .5! Market Cap: 222M ANALYSTS: 1.43 mod buy!
4 year dividend history with no major cuts

NAT 22%! PE 6.89 PB 1.13 Beta .95 Market Cap: 891M ANALYSTS:3.3 hold/underpref
History of reasonable but changing dividends

SFL 9.23% PE 13.15 PB 1.02 Beta 1.62! Market Cap:7.8B! ANALYSTS:2.5 outpref/hold
reasonable history of dividend payouts- ship financing company for FRO I believe

DAC 58%! PE 1.53 PB .37 Beta .6! Market Cap: 210M
ANALYSTS:2.5 outpref/hold debt/assets about 1:1

PRGN 65%! PE 1.38 PB .3 Beta .46! Market Cap: 93M ANALYSTS:2 outperform
1yr of constant dividend

DHT 23%! PE 4.03 PB 1.2 Beta .85 Market Cap: 163M ANALYSTS: 1.67 mod buy!
3yrs fluctuating dividend

ESEA 10.64% PE 5.34 PB .48 Beta: .02? impossible! Market Cap: 126M
ANALYSTS:1.67 mod buy! recent cut but still reasonable yield- no more cuts?

VLCCF 9.02% PE 4.29 PB .93 Beta:1.35 Market Cap: 206M ANALYSTS: 3 hold
recent cuts, still reasonable yield - worrysome dividend shrinkage


So, lots of very low PE and PB's. Either these are steal opportunity values, or the market doesn't see them making much growth in the future. Also, lots of absurdly high dividend yields that we can probably expect to be cut- at the same time however, I doubt the earnings per share have taken as large a hit as the share price has, so more dividend may be supportable than the percentage indicates. Initially, I am biased towards the lower yields and higher market caps. Also, I wonder about those stocks with betas less than one... that seems unlikely.

6month chart: NAT and KSP outpreform. DAC and PRGN get annihilated.
5yr: SLF,NAT,VLCCF outpreform GMR preforms well until recently.

KSP and NAT's low betas seem justified. SLF's high beta seems unjustified. DAC and PRGN's low betas seem preposterous.

So I'm thinking the shotgun approach is what we want in this turbulent market. How about we just grab GMR,NAT,SLF,VLCCF, and KSP. That should give us a good toehold. 10k of each? Sounds like a start. I'm feeling too lazy to look into financials tonight- if it was real money I would, but if it was real money I would research a heck of a lot harder on each.