Idol Bets

The market took a pretty strong shift towards David Cook with big selloffs coming from all the idols not named David. As things stand right now, Brooke and Syesha are dead. They stand little chance of cracking the top 3 and zero chance of the top two. The only major bets left at this point in the season are with David Cook and figuring out who will be number three and how much they’ll be worth when they are number three. With that said, here are the current market values:

DAVID ARCHULETA: 53-58
DAVID COOK: 33-38
JASON CASTRO: 2-4
CARLY SMITHSON: 1-3
SYESHA MERCADO: 1-3
BROOKE WHITE: 0-2

As you can see, Brooke has no resale value at all. Even if she survives this week, I doubt she’ll be able to push herself up past a $2 sell point. Same goes for Syesha, but she needs to move past a $3 sell point. Carly and Jason could both push their sell points beyond their current buys but will need to have two strong weeks coming up.

For my SimPicks this week, I’m tossing another $200 into the fray and doing it like this:

David Cook: 4 shares @ $38 = $152
Jason Castro: 5 shares @ $4 = $20
Carly Smithson: 9 shares @ $3 = $27

Cook is still the smartest choice. He still has room to grow in the top 2 and still has winning potential, which nets a $100 payout per share. Castro and Smithson are only worth investing in to see some growth if they can make the top three and net around a $5-6 sell value. Even that might be pushing it but it’s still worth the speculation.

So Tuesday’s round of seven is over as is Wednesday’s elimination show. No real surprises except that Jason Castro didn’t make the bottom three. As predicted on Monday, Castro wasn’t very good but lucky for him neither was Brooke. Syesha and Kristy rounded out the bottom three. Despite decent performances from them (at least by their standards), nobody likes them. At this point, your entire body of work starts being accounted for more and neither of them have ever been truly impressive.

David vs. David

The markets didn’t take kindly to anyone’s performance except David Cook. His spread shifted up seven points while all other idols moved down. DialIdol estimated David Cook to be at the top of Tuesday’s voting, overpowering David Archuleta. I had Cook at a minimum of $35 if he makes the top 2 but I think that’s going to edge up towards at least $45 - so he’s still a strong buy candidate at $35 right now. Archuleta’s one-trick show has been annoying me since day one. However, he’s still extremely popular and only seems to slip into second when Cook has a monster week. We’ll see how the finals go. One major issue with the Idol finals is that they have to perform some God-awful inspirational shitfest. Last year, they opened up the songwriting for the Idol finals/first-single to all songwriters as a contest. The winning entry managed to pen something as equally trite as the pros’ of years before. This year will likely be the same. For Cook, that could mean a solid #2 as Archuleta’s entire style is hand-picked for hot, sappy garbage.

Which brings us to an interesting point with the markets. At this point, it’s a two man race. The only Idol even capable of keeping up with the David’s is Carly and she is completely incapable of performing or gaining an audience. The smartest moves are to continue to buy Cook and try and figure out who’s going to be number three…and at number three you need to figure out what they’re going to be worth with little realistic chance of winning.

Blue Chips:
David Archuleta, David Cook

Mid-Caps
Jason Castro, Carly Smithson

Penny Stocks
Syesha Mercado, Brooke White

No action is really needed right now. I’ll make my SimPicks on Monday or Tuesday.