This surprised me because several other for-profit education companies went down sharply on the 29th. Apollo Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:APOL) was down 4.25% and Strayer Education, Inc. (NASDAQ:STRA) was down 4.95%. All the companies in my watch list were down except EDMC.
Several months back, on October 14th, 2010, I saw what I thought was a strange thing. Many of the for-profit education companies dropped steeply in price at the same time. I started a watch list that day. (I will show my watch list below)
On January 10, 2011 I saw the same thing again. I like to take a quick look at the Google Finance home page during the day to see how the market is doing. In the trends section you can see the top five gainers and losers for the day.
Here is a screen shot I took of the Google Trends section January 10, 2011. All of the top five Losers at that moment were for-profit education companies.
This time I went to my watch list and looked for the best performing stock since Oct. EDMC was my choice and I added it to my inMessment Game portfolio. After it went back up 36% I took my profits and sold the position.
I haven’t bought any other for-profit education companies but I am still watching them. They are a wild bunch of stocks and are not for the faint at heart.
Here is my for-profit education Watch List as of March 29, 2011:
| Name | Symbol | Last price | Mkt cap | Volume |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apollo Group, Inc. | APOL | 40.55 | 5804.53 | 9552248 |
| DeVry Inc. | DV | 54.41 | 3767.43 | 875616 |
| Education Management Corp | EDMC | 20.09 | 2722.58 | 371591 |
| ITT Educational Services, Inc. | ESI | 68.37 | 1938.43 | 873149 |
| Career Education Corp. | CECO | 21.86 | 1691.1 | 825255 |
| Strayer Education, Inc. | STRA | 127.06 | 1686.04 | 602314 |
| Bridgepoint Education, Inc. | BPI | 17.07 | 906.74 | 1048865 |
| Capella Education Company | CPLA | 48.78 | 780.27 | 330619 |
| Grand Canyon Education Inc | LOPE | 14.12 | 646.15 | 688422 |
| Corinthian Colleges, Inc. | COCO | 4.4 | 372.1 | 3285331 |
| Lincoln Educational Services Corp | LINC | 15.88 | 355.99 | 253706 |
(Please comment or email me if you know a WordPress Plugin that will show updated stock prices.)
