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Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE:CAT) stock news and links

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Caterpillar news: my RSS feeds

I cruise these RSS feeds for news on Caterpillar Inc. Each of these links is to the actual feed rather the Web site. (Still not up on RSS? Get the details and get in on the fun; it allows scanning dozens or even hundreds of sites for news bits in minutes so you don’t have to load the whole web site in your browser to find the newest stuff there.)

Corporate

  • All Cat.com Newsfeeds: Mostly press releases hawking new equipment, but major announcements of earnings, financial filings and employment like layoffs also show up here.

Search engines

  • Google Blog Search: Searches on “caterpillar” so you get a few hits about fuzzy wormy critters.
  • Google News Search. Since it’s news, the fuzzy-critter quotient is lower. Good place to find news about local employment-related reports.
  • Yahoo! Finance Blogs: Searches on SeekingAlpha.com; doesn’t generate all that much traffic.
  • Yahoo! Finance News. All the main news headlines will show up here, plus some links to investment-related sites.

Twitter

  • Twitter Search: Good place for links to news as it’s breaking.
  • StockTwits: Twittering stock traders discuss Cat; light traffic now but could grow with Twitter’s popularity.

Trade magazines

Blogs

Financial sites

  • Market Watch. Passable at best, but it might have occasional unexpectedly good links.
  • Motley Fool. If you can stomach the constant pitches for Foolish merchandise, you can find many good stock-related tips here.

etc.

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Tom Mangan posted at 12:12 pm February 14th, 2009 |

No closing wrapup today…

I’ve got other obligations this afternoon but you can always stop in on FinViz to get the latest Cat droppings.

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Tom Mangan posted at 12:41 pm January 30th, 2009 |

Cat Stock Blog now Seeking Alpha Certified

Seeking Alpha Certified
Over the weekend I was invited to join the cast of contributors at Seeking Alpha, the aggregator site for investment-related blog posts.

Basically it gives Seeking Alpha the right to republish anything I post here for free — they keep whatever ad revenue it generates and I get the prestige of being named among the financial blogger elite.

Here’s my profile page.

Of course this obliges me to write the occasional post that might prove meaningful for Real Live Stock Market Participants. I did that yesterday with Caterpillar’s earnings report.

Most of the time, though, I plan to keep serving up tasty links and news of interest to anybody interested in Caterpillar. “Stock” is only one-third of the blog’s title, after all. It’s also the one thing that binds everybody in the Cat universe together, so it’ll remain a big part of the show. But not the only thing.

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Tom Mangan posted at 11:32 am January 27th, 2009 |

Quick note about Cat’s conference call

I’m going to wait till the text transcript is posted before I post any thoughts on Caterpillar’s conference call. Most of the chatter was covered in the earnings release but there were a few interesting insights on mining, commodities and Cat’s finance arm.

One thing I’m still unclear on: Caterpillar’s “trough plan” — its playbook for earning a profit when the business goes bad — envisions a profit of $2.50 per share on revenues of $36 to $44 billion. Cat presumably based its trough model on previous downturns, but it also expects the worst economic environment of the post World War II era. My notes of the call have one of the Cat brass saying $2.50 would be double the EPS of the 2002 downturn, one of the mildest recessions of the past 50 years.

How can Cat plausibly expect twice the EPS from 2002 when things look more like 1982? Stay tuned, and I’ll see what I can find out.

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Tom Mangan posted at 10:08 am January 26th, 2009 |

Journalism organization profiles Cat Stock Blog

Poynter.org, Web site of the Poynter Institute, interviewed me about the doings here. Bill Mitchell, who runs the institute’s Web site, thinks this kind of site might be just the thing to keep out-of-work journalists from resorting to a life of crime.

Much of it is about the nitty-gritty of attracting an audience who will click on ads that generate enough revenue to keep a roof over one’s head. I would note that you might have a long row to hoe if you try this: I’m averaging 130 visits a day right now; that needs to be 13,000 for this blog to become a paying proposition. (Which means, for the 14,243rd time, if you like what you see here, the best “thanks” you can provide is to encourage all your friends to stop in as well. I won’t resort to begging for money unless things get really, really bleak.)

Incidentally, it turns out there are more blogs about companies than I previously estimated: A very cool one is Starbucks Gossip, created by the blogging pioneer Jim Romenesko.

One thing you’ll notice: lots of people commenting. Which means anybody can do it. My comment system requires an e-mail address, but the address doesn’t have to be valid. You don’t have to use your real name either.

For a blog to work, its audience has to fill in the blanks in the blogger’s knowledge. Mine are as wide and deep as Colorado’s Royal Gorge (you can bungee-jump into the chasm of my ignorance — how’s that for a metaphor?)

So, c’mon, it’s more fun if more people play along.

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Tom Mangan posted at 8:32 am January 23rd, 2009 |

Our Facebook fan page has some actual fans

Back in December when I started Cat Stock Blog, I created a Facebook page devoted to the blog. Then I promptly forgot all about it.

Till last week, that is, when I dropped in and noticed a dozen people had signed up and declared themselves “fans” of ye ol’ blog. Most work for Cat and you young, single guys might be interested to know a couple are young, female and single (and, essential to your second career as a rock guitarist, employed! You know the gag, what do you call a bass player without a girlfriend? Homeless.)

Anyway, if you have a Facebook account, join the fun if you feel so inclined.

(Personal note: my wife says she’d walk naked through the Antarctic before she’d open a Facebook account, so don’t feel oppressed/neglected/looked-down-upon if you, too, are not up for the whole social-networking thing. It’s just a place for people of somewhat similar outlooks to hang out and do stuff online. Not for everybody.)

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Tom Mangan posted at 12:46 pm January 19th, 2009 |

One-month traffic update

So far we’ve had almost 3,000 visitors and 9,000 page views since Cat Stock Blog went live in early December 2008.

Fully two-thirds of a blog’s traffic comes in once and never returns. Perhaps a tenth stops by for a second time. In the early going a tiny knot of pioneers will see what the blog’s good for and start checking it out every day.

Right now I’m guessing my regular audience could fit into the back corner of a Burger King. There’s me and about a dozen of you. Lewis and Clark took a far larger crew to the Pacific Northwest by foot, boat and horse.

Between us we represent an untapped possibility: blogs about companies using publicly available information like news headlines and stock quotes to create an online community of people with one common interest: a company’s fates in the marketplace. Not just Cat workers. It could be Cat suppliers, trade magazine reporters, stock analysts, equipment operators, contractors, miners. All told we’re talking several hundred thousand people.

Look around and see if you can find anyplace on the Web attempting to bring these people together in a central location. I haven’t found one for Cat. I wonder how many there are for any other companies. I’m guessing not many.

If we’re wrong about this blog being built on a promising premise, the worst we’ve done is look at some cool tractor videos and root for Cat’s stock to rise. If we’re right, however, we’re true pioneers, like Lewis and Clark minus the grizzly attacks.

Just for the sake of argument, let’s presume we’re right. We won’t be planting any flags on the lunar surface, but we will be doing something rare and possibly original. That makes it worth a try.

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Tom Mangan posted at 11:27 am January 17th, 2009 |

Please help me get the word out

If you’ve enjoyed Cat Stock Blog in the past couple weeks, please pass the word along to anybody you know who’s interested in Caterpillar doings. We’ve already had over 2,000 visitors and 5,000 page views with a holiday week in the middle, so the interest is there.

I have a logger that tracks visits from Caterpilar’s network (cat.com) and all the other networks that send people here … so far cat.com is sending a couple dozen visits a day, a mere sliver of the folks who’d be interested in checking the site out to see how the stock’s doing (I know, many don’t really want to know these days).

Last week the news of the new plant in Arkansas was reported here the minute I found out about it. More of that will come in the future.

Also, please feel free to send me an e-mail on likes and dislikes, and use the comments to set me straight when I’m off the beam. Feedback is the fuel that keeps a blogger going. Lack of feedback tells the blogger he’s wasting his keystrokes.

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Tom Mangan posted at 12:14 pm January 10th, 2009 |

New Year’s break

Be Back Friday, Jan. 2.

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Tom Mangan posted at 7:54 am December 31st, 2008 |