Symbol Stock Price change today
HDSN Hudson Technologies Inc. 2.38%
REGN Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. 2.32%
DPZ Domino’s Pizza Inc Common Stock 1.55%
HSKA Heska Corporation 1.55%
ALGN Align Technology Inc. 1.30%
STZ Constellation Brands Inc. Comm 1.24%
PCLN The Priceline Group Inc. 1.06%
MIDD The Middleby Corporation 1.05%
CBPO China Biologic Products Inc. 1.02%
LULU lululemon athletica inc. 0.75%
AMAT Applied Materials Inc. 0.70%
THRM Gentherm Inc 0.67%
ULTA Ulta Beauty Inc. 0.61%
MCK McKesson Corporation Common Sto 0.60%
HZO MarineMax Inc. (FL) Common St 0.56%
SBUX Starbucks Corporation 0.55%
EW Edwards Lifesciences Corporatio 0.41%
EXR Extra Space Storage Inc Common 0.39%
MRK Merck & Company Inc. Common St 0.35%
IDXX IDEXX Laboratories Inc. 0.27%
ALXN Alexion Pharmaceuticals Inc. 0.26%
CRUS Cirrus Logic Inc. 0.14%
AYI Acuity Brands Inc (Holding Comp 0.08%
AZPN Aspen Technology Inc. 0.08%
SWKS Skyworks Solutions Inc. 0.07%
MEI Methode Electronics Inc. Commo 0.00%
HOG Harley-Davidson Inc. Common St 0.00%
SUI Sun Communities Inc. Common St -0.03%
LNCE Snyder’s-Lance Inc. -0.03%
NFLX Netflix Inc. -0.09%
AMZN Amazon.com Inc. -0.21%
MET MetLife Inc. Common Stock -0.22%
TMO Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc Co -0.27%
MNST Monster Beverage Corporation -0.30%
NVDA NVIDIA Corporation -0.36%
TRN Trinity Industries Inc. Common -0.55%
AAPL Apple Inc. -0.59%
SAM Boston Beer Company Inc. (The) -0.59%
FB Facebook Inc. -0.60%
BWLD Buffalo Wild Wings Inc. -0.90%
GOOGL Alphabet Inc. -0.91%
UA Under Armour Inc. Class C Comm -1.00%
CVCO Cavco Industries Inc. -1.08%
BABA Alibaba Group Holding Limited A -1.17%
GWR Genesee & Wyoming Inc. Class A -1.40%
GTN Gray Communications Systems In -1.63%
ABMD ABIOMED Inc. -1.64%
COF Capital One Financial Corporati -1.74%

Symbol Stock Price change today
NVDA NVIDIA Corporation 2.14%
HOG Harley-Davidson Inc. Common St 1.32%
AZPN Aspen Technology Inc. 0.92%
ALGN Align Technology Inc. 0.87%
ABMD ABIOMED Inc. 0.82%
DPZ Domino’s Pizza Inc Common Stock 0.70%
MCK McKesson Corporation Common Sto 0.56%
NFLX Netflix Inc. 0.49%
CVCO Cavco Industries Inc. 0.45%
SWKS Skyworks Solutions Inc. 0.44%
EW Edwards Lifesciences Corporatio 0.31%
GOOGL Alphabet Inc. 0.29%
IDXX IDEXX Laboratories Inc. 0.22%
ULTA Ulta Beauty Inc. 0.20%
FB Facebook Inc. 0.16%
AMAT Applied Materials Inc. 0.13%
AMZN Amazon.com Inc. 0.09%
ALXN Alexion Pharmaceuticals Inc. 0.08%
AAPL Apple Inc. 0.04%
GWR Genesee & Wyoming Inc. Class A -0.06%
BABA Alibaba Group Holding Limited A -0.06%
SBUX Starbucks Corporation -0.06%
MRK Merck & Company Inc. Common St -0.06%
TMO Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc Co -0.10%
LNCE Snyder’s-Lance Inc. -0.16%
STZ Constellation Brands Inc. Comm -0.23%
MEI Methode Electronics Inc. Commo -0.25%
HSKA Heska Corporation -0.26%
UA Under Armour Inc. Class C Comm -0.33%
PCLN The Priceline Group Inc. -0.35%
SUI Sun Communities Inc. Common St -0.37%
MNST Monster Beverage Corporation -0.37%
HZO MarineMax Inc. (FL) Common St -0.55%
HDSN Hudson Technologies Inc. -0.62%
LULU lululemon athletica inc. -0.66%
MET MetLife Inc. Common Stock -0.69%
THRM Gentherm Inc -0.79%
CRUS Cirrus Logic Inc. -0.86%
SAM Boston Beer Company Inc. (The) -0.86%
TRN Trinity Industries Inc. Common -0.96%
MIDD The Middleby Corporation -1.05%
EXR Extra Space Storage Inc Common -1.06%
AYI Acuity Brands Inc (Holding Comp -1.27%
CBPO China Biologic Products Inc. -1.43%
REGN Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. -1.43%
COF Capital One Financial Corporati -1.89%
GTN Gray Communications Systems In -2.39%
BWLD Buffalo Wild Wings Inc. -3.97%

Symbol Stock Price change today
ULTA Ulta Beauty Inc. 3.19%
NVDA NVIDIA Corporation 2.59%
GTN Gray Communications Systems In 2.03%
ABMD ABIOMED Inc. 1.99%
THRM Gentherm Inc 1.75%
GWR Genesee & Wyoming Inc. Class A 1.39%
AMAT Applied Materials Inc. 1.07%
CRUS Cirrus Logic Inc. 0.90%
HOG Harley-Davidson Inc. 0.89%
SBUX Starbucks Corporation 0.64%
SAM Boston Beer Company Inc. (The) 0.63%
SUI Sun Communities Inc. 0.62%
HZO MarineMax Inc. (FL) 0.56%
ALGN Align Technology Inc. 0.50%
STZ Constellation Brands Inc. 0.44%
COF Capital One Financial Corporati 0.35%
UA Under Armour Inc. Class C 0.33%
TMO Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc 0.30%
BABA Alibaba Group Holding Limited A 0.29%
MNST Monster Beverage Corporation 0.28%
AMZN Amazon.com Inc. 0.24%
PCLN The Priceline Group Inc. 0.19%
GOOGL Alphabet Inc. 0.14%
CBPO China Biologic Products Inc. 0.14%
FB Facebook Inc. 0.11%
IDXX IDEXX Laboratories Inc. 0.10%
EW Edwards Lifesciences Corporatio 0.07%
AZPN Aspen Technology Inc. 0.05%
MIDD The Middleby Corporation -0.07%
REGN Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. -0.12%
SWKS Skyworks Solutions Inc. -0.14%
AAPL Apple Inc. -0.17%
MRK Merck & Company Inc. (new) -0.18%
MET MetLife Inc. -0.27%
NFLX Netflix Inc. -0.38%
DPZ Domino’s Pizza Inc -0.48%
TRN Trinity Industries Inc. -0.58%
HSKA Heska Corporation -0.58%
MCK McKesson Corporation -0.71%
HDSN Hudson Technologies Inc. -0.74%
MEI Methode Electronics Inc. -0.74%
ALXN Alexion Pharmaceuticals Inc. -0.81%
AYI Acuity Brands Inc (Holding Comp -0.87%
LULU lululemon athletica inc. -0.94%
LNCE Snyder’s-Lance Inc. -1.02%
EXR Extra Space Storage Inc -1.32%
BWLD Buffalo Wild Wings Inc. -1.47%
CVCO Cavco Industries Inc. -5.25%

My personal preference is that companies keep their stock price below $200 per share. My logic is simple: it makes it easier to evenly distribute your investment portfolio.

My balanced portfolio logic is quite simple. If you want to balance your portfolio quarterly between 10 great stocks, it is easier with lower-priced stocks. With a stock that is trading at $200, you can easily hold the correct number of shares to be within $100 (half the per share price) of the target value. With a stock that is trading at $1200 per share, the variance is now $600 which can easily throw off the balanced exposure for a small investor like most of my readers.

I discuss two types of portfolios on this site and in my book, The Confident Investor, which you can buy wherever books are sold. The more cautious portfolio suggests a target portfolio allocation for each purchase but is based on a fast-response momentum philosophy that moves that allocation to whichever stock is increasing in price at the moment. The stocks to invest in are chosen by the quality of the company and I list them on my Watch List. This portfolio regularly beats the market over time by at least 20% (if not 50%) regardless if the market is bull, bear, or flat.

The second type of portfolio is much more aggressive and often is 3X-4X the market increase in a bull market. However, it is not as safe in a flat or bear market. This strategy evenly divides a portfolio among 15 great companies that are growing their stock price faster than the others on my Watch List. I recalculate the top 15 and rebalance the portfolio quarterly.

In both portfolios, it is easier to balance the portfolio or allocate each portion of the portfolio if the stock price is under $200. When the stock is over $200, most investors that are working with a portfolio under $250,000 find themselves to heavy or too light in high-cost stocks.

You can see the performance of my version of both portfolios by reading my regular posts that are in the category Weekly Portfolio Gain. You do not need to have read my book to see these results although you may not understand how I create the list of companies.

Stock splits, once considered a way to keep shares affordable for mom-and-pop investors, are rare today as companies aspire to new heights.

Amazon [stckqut]AMZN[/stckqut], Google [stckqut]GOOGL[/stckqut], and Priceline [stckqut]PCLN[/stckqut] are recent examples of companies that have let their stock prices approach or exceed a four-figure price.

In the 1990s, when stock picking for one’s own account was in vogue, companies also considered splits a way to keep shares affordable for mom-and-pop investors. Even though nothing changes fundamentally about the company with a stock split—it’s like trading a dime for two nickels—splits used to generate excitement and, often, a short-term pop for the shares.

In recent years, though, individuals have gravitated toward index funds. And institutional investors don’t like stock splits, because increasing the number of shares increases their trading costs.

The godfather of the no-split camp is Berkshire Hathaway Inc. [stckqut]BRK.A[/stckqut] Chairman Warren Buffett. Berkshire’s Class A shares are the priciest U.S.-listed equities at the time of this writing. For years, Mr. Buffett said he didn’t want to split the shares because he didn’t want to attract people who found such a move to be a good reason for buying a stock. “People who buy for non-value reasons are likely to sell for non-value reasons,” he said in a 1984 letter to shareholders.

There are reasons behind the trend. Before the rise of discount brokerages and a decline in trading commissions in the 1990s, even small-time investors often had to buy shares in round lots of 100, which meant that a high price could make such a purchase prohibitively expensive. These days, though, retail investors can buy as little as one share, and often pay commissions of $10 or less.

Academics who have studied share splits have also posited that executives who split their company’s stock may be motivated by a desire to keep their share prices from looking expensive. Now, some companies and their investors seem to treat higher stock prices as a sign of accomplishment. Of course, this bragado is just as foolish as calling a $50 stock: cheap.

A fair concern is companies may have held off on splitting shares in recent years in response to the financial crisis, when stock prices dropped sharply and some big companies were humbled into performing reverse splits to raise their share price to avoid being delisted. Reverse stock splits are embarrassing and painful and of course being delisted is the equivalent of death in the stock market.

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos hasn’t ruled out the idea of a split, which the firm did three times as a young public company. A shareholder at Amazon’s annual meeting in Seattle on Tuesday asked Mr. Bezos if he would consider splitting the company’s shares to give members of the middle class and younger people the chance to afford the shares.

You can purchase my book wherever books are sold such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Books A Million. It is available in e-book formats for Nook, Kindle, and iPad.

Source: Amazon’s Brush With $1,000 Signals the Death of the Stock Split