Hello Friends!  Thanks so much for stopping by and visiting my blog, Stock Picks Bob's Advice!  As always, please remember that I am an amateur investor, so please remember to consult with your professional investment advisers prior to making any investment decisions based on information on this website.

As I discussed yesterday, Hologic (HOLX), one of my holdings, announced it was purchasing Cytyc (CYTC) another of my holdings in my Trading Account.  With the sharp rise in Cytyc stock after the announcement, I was able to sell 1/7th of my holding after it hit a 180% appreciation target.  I purchased Gildan (GIL) yesterday to fill out my trading account portfolio at 20 positions.

This morning, after reviewing the list of top % gainers on the NYSE, I saw that Baldor (BEZ), a stock that I have reviewed recently was on the list, and I went ahead and sold my 162 remaining shares of Cytyc at $43.49 (these shares were purchased 1/29/04 with a cost basis of $14.86/share) and purchased 140 shares of Baldor (BEZ) at $47.1095.  Wish me luck!

I made this swap as it was my own assessment that Cytyc, unless another offer came in, would likely sit at the current price until the acquisition was completed.  I was not interested in additional shares of Hologic which would be received and with the market fairly richly valued, it made sense to lock-in the gain on Cytyc that I had experienced. At least that has been my thinking.  This sale on an acquisition is an event that I haven't really planned on in this portfolio.  However, with an impending acquisition, I shall be reserving the right to unload my shares and replace the entire position at my own timing.  We shall see how this works out.

It is useful to have what I call a large 'vocabulary' of investable stocks.  When I saw Baldor moving higher today it was pretty simple to recheck some of the basic data including the latest quarter and Morningstar page to confirm that things were still intact.  Having reviewed the stock previously, I was comfortable replacing my Cytyc with something completely different!

Thanks so much for stopping by and visiting!  If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to leave them on the blog or email me at bobsadviceforstocks@lycos.com.  If you get a chance, be sure and visit my Stock Picks Podcast Website where you can download podcasts and listen to me discussing many of the same stocks I write about here on the blog!

Regards to all of my friends!

Bob