Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Please provide the following information.
See the bottom of this page for Helpful Information about Application Ideas.

(We recommend drafting and saving your idea in a word processing
program such as Microsoft Word and pasting it into the description section)

Company Name:		Price:
Ticker Symbol		Shares Out (in mils):
Idea Date: mm/dd/yy		Last 12 mths EPS:
Long Term Debt (in mils.):		Last 12 mths Revs (in mils):
52 Wk High:		52 Wk Low:

Description:

Catalyst:

Some helpful hints in filling out an application:

Check out the recent Highest Rated ideas on the guest page
We are looking for an idea that is compares favorably to our best ideas. A few of our historical favorites are as follows:
Check to see if your idea has already been posted to the site, by going to ideas listed A-Z under �Member Functions� We will accept ideas that have been previously written up on VIC by our members; however, we will be looking for new insight or more detailed and thorough analysis than was presented in the idea and message string.
Liquidations and companies trading at a discount to their cash are frequently attractive investment opportunities. However, we are trying to understand each applicant�s business analysis skills in addition to their stock picking abilities. Frequently, a simplistic liquidation does not provide ample opportunity to display such skills. More complex liquidations, which require valuation work, may show such skills.
Small market capitalization ideas are fine, but as a general guideline, at least $250,000 worth of securities should trade on an average week. We understand that it is much more difficult to identify a compelling idea with $1billion of market capitalization, than one with $10mn of market capitalization and we take that into consideration when reviewing applications.
Foreign ideas will be reviewed, however, their acceptance rate is much lower. There are many great international investing opportunities and a few have been presented on VIC. But, our circle of competence in evaluating ideas is with US listed companies, with US GAAP and US shareholder protections. If you have great foreign ideas, please save them for after acceptance.
Risk Arbitrage situations often provide attractive risk adjusted rewards. However, the analysis skills used to determine whether a transaction is completed is often much different than the skills necessary to determine the underlying attraction of the business. Deals that provide little absolute return, but better annualized return are also less interesting. Earning 5 cents on a $2 stock in a month may provide an attractive annualized return of 30% (so long as it can be repeated each month), but we would prefer the 30% return in a single idea.
There are many attractive investment opportunities in biotech and mining/commodity driven stocks, however, they often rely on specialized knowledge that makes them difficult to evaluate as application ideas. Many members enjoy reading such ideas and members are welcome to submit them, but it is generally very difficult to gain admission to VIC with an application idea of that nature.