The New CEO at Sirius XM and Why It Matters

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Sirius XM (SIRI) stands at a crossroads full of uncertainty, but overloaded with opportunity. In the next few months, it can move -- in lockstep with Howard Stern -- to take over the world or it can refuse to stop and look around and let life pass it by.

I spoke to TheStreet's navigator of the Stocks Under $10 world, David Peltier, about SIRI on Thursday. David summed up logical sentiment on company and stock:

There's a news vacuum at Sirius XM, with Mel Karmazin on the way out and little visibility about the company's future. I'd wait for a 5% to 7% decline before buying the stock. It would look attractive below $2.60.

Bingo, as usual from David.

There's no question about it -- near-term I missed on SIRI. That goes hand-in-hand with a short-term miss on Pandora (P) . But here's just another example of the importance of separating company from stock and, even more, short term from long term.

Although my cost basis on P was $10.19, I did not lose money on the stock when I liquidated my position just prior to joining TheStreet as a full-time employee (TheStreet's corporate policy prohibits full-time employees from owning individual stocks), thanks to aggressive covered call writing.

Over the past six to 12 months, you could have generated considerable profits trading both SIRI and P on the long and/or short side. That takes a nimble trader. Outside of using options to hedge, that's not my bag. I prefer to consider names like SIRI and P within the context of long-term, dare I say, "buy-and-hold" -- grab more shares on the dips, implosions and noise investing.

That method, if well-timed, worked wonders on both stocks this year -- SIRI over longer time periods and P on quick, volatile, news- and rumor-driven gyrations.

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However, from the buy-as-an-investment perspective, I still like P long-term (one to three years out) and agree with Peltier that SIRI is a murky play.