Fastenal Update

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“Davidson” submits:

Q1 hedge fund letters, conference, scoops etc

Fastenal
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Fastenal (FAST) remains a good investment at current levels and a good general market price indicator. The long term growth of FAST has been 14% with the current dividend of 2.5%. Management’s comments with today’s earnings report indicate they see strong and steady growth across a wide spectrum of the US and Europe. E&P(Oil/Gas Exploration&Production) have been slower, but improving.

FAST reflects the current environment of investor recession fears. It continues to track grudgingly along its Monthly Lows trend line as a result. At some point with US economic data indicating continued economic expansion, it is likely FAST’s share price to rise towards the Monthly Highs trend line as market psychology improves. Such a shift would produce a share price more than $100shr the next few years.

FAST remains a good investment opportunity in my opinion and also serves as an investment indicator for many issues.

Market psychology plays a considerable role in society and plays an exaggerated and visible role when it comes to investing. As a measure of general market psychology, FAST offers good insight to the consensus perception and expectations of US Industrial Production. Consensus investors are ‘theme investors’ or Momentum Investors as they invest with price-trends and the media-chatter of the moment. The Chemical Activity Barometer(CAB), a fundamental indicator, is good at indicating when market psychology diverges from fundamentals. The CAB remains in a strong uptrend while FAST shares continue to reflect low levels of investor enthusiasm. In our current environment, many growing companies are similarly priced at discounts to their respective management’s long-term performances.

With market psychology anticipating recession, there remains substantial upside for well managed trending near their respective Monthly Lows trend lines.

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Todd Sullivan is a Massachusetts-based value investor and a General Partner in Rand Strategic Partners. He looks for investments he believes are selling for a discount to their intrinsic value given their current situation and future prospects. He holds them until that value is realized or the fundamentals change in a way that no longer support his thesis. His blog features his various ideas and commentary and he updates readers on their progress in a timely fashion. His commentary has been seen in the online versions of the Wall St. Journal, New York Times, CNN Money, Business Week, Crain’s NY, Kiplingers and other publications. He has also appeared on Fox Business News & Fox News and is a RealMoney.com contributor. His commentary on Starbucks during 2008 was recently quoted by its Founder Howard Schultz in his recent book “Onward”. In 2011 he was asked to present an investment idea at Bill Ackman’s “Harbor Investment Conference”.