Beginner Financial Investing.

[aarono]

I recommend Invalid Link Removed (I believe that's the site, try .net if not). It has stock games you can play with other people. In the games you're given certain amounts of money and can buy any stock available, but only during open hours of the market.

Better than using paper.

Oh and try to start investing in fields you like, not what others tell you to invest in. I used to follow video games heavily, so I'd "fake buy" it's stock when rumors of a new game that I'd guess would sell big. So when the game was eventually announced the stock would shoot up because of people who think like me, but did not buy earlier, and then the stock climbs even higher when the game was released to great sales. Sell that bitch right about there for big profit.

 

[SMASH]

Muchas gracias.

I started in July of 2002, always Vanguard.

I'm a huge fan of John Bogle, and will most probably stay with Vanguard for that reason alone (unless a real good reason to move comes along). I view the investment world much like you do; snakes and thieves. Bogle rose (far) above that, and offered an honest, high quality product at a fair price.

I was just reading an article on him saying that he is no longer invited to industry events because of his stance against high fees and predatory load charges. I'd love to buy him a beer (or 3!)...

Great timing, per the market trends the past few years.

Have you or others tried applying these methods to historical data to get a feel for how it'd work during down cycles and such, or is it accepted there'll be declines and that just makes for more of a consolidation / average down period? I know the style it's based on has been around for some time so I expect there are expectations for down cycles.


A couple of notes - above I've spoken quite against averaging down, but that's in context of individual securities rather than a target basket such as what you're playing via mutuals. Apples & oranges.

Also above I mentioned making monthly portfolios for the past 6 months. You know this, but for the info of others who may not, I have of course been at this far longer than that. I have some strategies which I had sat on the shelf for awhile to gather a few years of data to apply to my latest revisions of those strategies, and only circa late Summer 2005 felt the "green light" to proceed on those within actual holdings which I segregated into these new monthly separate portfolios I mentioned.

I used to instead spend days in the library with old newspapers to historically apply my schemes over various market cycles, but in this most recent case I wanted data representing the transition of post-"tech crash" data into whatever the next cycle turned out to be, apparently energy/resources.

To that end, nearly a week in and I feel a good vibe for this quarter so I have market orders in for the open on the following for my new April basket which I detail only as a matter of record for future reference :

B326276 WRS WILDROSE RES LTD Buy 500 500 04/07
B326275 APE APOGEE MINERALS LTD Buy 500 500 04/07
B326273 GEO POLARIS GEOTHERMAL CL A Buy 500 500 04/07
B326271 SEL SPITFIRE ENERGY LTD Buy 500 500 04/07
B326270 CPS CAPELLA RES CDA Buy 500 500 04/07
B326286 SOX SOLEX RES CORP Buy 500 500 04/07
B326283 FRP FRONTIER PACIFIC MINING CORP Buy 500 500 04/07

Of those, I feel all are appropriate for fresh entries, with GEO being by far the most wild card of the bunch. I'm shooting for 15-25% overall gains within a 3-6 month period.


To give people an idea of what goes into this, it took me about 16 hours this week to come up with these despite two already being holdings of mine per this thread's sample portfolio, which I mean to add to in the forthcoming post.

In that time, I automatically screen up to several hundred securities (via some subscription services and some programs I've written) which are already narrowed down out of thousands per certain formulae I apply. I then manually screen the charts and news/numbers of those that "feel" best to me, along with all of my current holdings which number in the several dozens. Then for this basket and for the purpose of adding to the sample portfolio here with its very limited capital, I went with those trading between 50c and $1.50 / share trading on CDN exchanges (gotta go with what's hot - these should be easily accesible from any standard US retail trading account).

All that work to possibly eke out greater gains than a simpler and more stable approach such as yours will enjoy. Some would say I'm nuts but I enjoy the discipline and so far it pays off reliably.

The crux of my theory is that these processes will net me excellent candidates for rapid appreciation in the hottest sector whether it is or is not readily evident (ie: front page news). It is a very key consideration, and I couldn't overstate how heavy that is. A solid decade or more into fine-tuning these approaches, I've gotten to the point where I believe it'll work through any market cycle too. I plan to one day publish the methods and findings to empower people to do it themselves. I'm hoping the examples made in this thread will be a small step towards those ends.

It'd be much appreciated if you or others would elaborate further on your plans and approaches. When reading about something like the Coffeehouse style, especially when it's so simple, it isn't long before I'm mixing it up with my own ideas and losing focus but seeing an example in action might allow it to better sink in for everyone.

 

[SMASH]

... As for this portfolio, I am not antsy about it though I wouldn't be surprised to be making a call for reduction of AFRPF should it hit close to the 100% gain mark, NCR if it continues to underperform, and/or UGS as it represents more of the overall holdings than I think it should since it's now up over 250% already.

Beyond that, I'll be making additions (one or two given that there isn't much cash available) soon I think. I still consider most of the holdings here "buys" despite their gains, but some only "holds" and thus IMO not as good candidates for fresh entries as future calls might be.
...

This morning for the sample portfolio tracked in this thread I'm selling 200 of the 600 AFRPF, with the proceeds adding 100 each to the holdings of FRP and SOX, and with remaining proceeds plus reserve cash adding 100 each of new selections APE.v and SEL.v


Originally we started with 200 AFRPF, and I later added 400 to those. That additional 400 is up about 100% now so I'm selling half. This is because, despite this being a platinum stock and gold (they move in tandem for the most part) currently rising over 25-year-highs of $600/oz and IMO going far higher, I feel this stock has risen to the point that it now represents too great a percentage of the holdings in this basket.

I'll redistribute those funds into an additional 100 each of FRP and SOX. These are already up roughly 85% and 64% respectively here, but I like how they're trading so wish to add to them to effectively add weight to some of the other current big winners among this basket of holdings.

There'll be a bit left over to add to the current cash holdings to fund 100 each of APE.v and SEL.v at which point we'll be essentially fully invested with just a few dollars left over.

As I have these orders in for the market open, the actual costs are unknown until then so during the day I'll post an update reflecting these trades.


This is for illustration only. By "standard wisdom" these are "high-risk" securities to hold and of course anyone trading based on what they read from anonymous posters online are fully responsible for their own actions and for doing their own due diligence and consulting with a trusted accredited professional before actually entering any real trades.

 

[SMASH]

Wow, that's a lot of typing!

Gives me something to do while watching overseas trading.

Here are my complete historical returns to date:

Q4 2002 5.1%
Q1 2003 -3.1%
Q2 2003 17.5%
Q3 2003 6.4%
Q4 2003 13.3%
Q1 2004 5.5%
Q2 2004 -0.5%
Q3 2004 0.0%
Q4 2004 10.5%
Q1 2005 -2.0%
Q2 2005 4.1%
Q3 2005 8.5%
Q4 2005 0.7%
Q1 2006 9.5%


Here are the annual returns from the Coffeehouse portfolio, which differs from mine only in a higher concentration in bonds (Vanguard funds as well):

1991 23.6%
1992 9.6%
1993 15.6%
1994 -0.6%
1995 22.9%
1996 14.5%
1997 18.0%
1998 6.9%
1999 8.3%
2000 7.3%
2001 1.9%
2002 -5.6%
2003 23.6%
2004 14.2%
2005 6.0%

Annualized 15 yr return of 10.73%.

Stupendous !!

Thanks for the kind offer of a loaner, but I'd prefer to purchase it. In books like these I like to make extensive notes and such too. I'm thinking next market downturn I might try this approach with some funds.

==============================

Sample portfolio revision after this morning's moves.

Holdings are now :

ticker.exchange  # of shares held  avg.price paid  current price  % gain (loss).

AFRPF.PK                   400              .46           .73            59
SGC.v                      100             2.08          2.95            42
JNN.v                      100              .92          1.27            38
NCR.v                      200              .51           .375          (26) 
HBE.v                      100              .36           .60            67
UGS.v                      100              .44          1.52           245
FRP.v                      200              .46           .57            24
SOX.v                      200              .62           .74            19
APE.v                      100             1.23         1.15             (6)
SEL.v                      100             1.10         1.00             (9)

Cash in reserve $0.00 / portfolio value $1521  /  Net Gain 52%  (in 2.5 months)

I don't expect any trades for some time now as I feel this is established about as well as can be given the limitations, and somewhat "diversified" with 10 holdings.

Cash actually ended up about -0.83 (negative 83 cents) but so it goes. These funds are now fully invested for good or ill.

 

[SMASH]

An update is in order, as it's been quite awhile and this "sample portfolio" is lagging.

First a review, then a couple changes to the sample portfolio.

In September '05 in this thread I said ""People are expecting a crash in October, so expect a dip which lemmings will sell into making for a big one or two day "crash" and then a big rally into year's end."

In late January of this year I wrote "Going ahead, I expect a bit of stagnation early on this year, which we're already in the midst of, then a Spring rally, Summer stagnation and drop, sucker trap rally into year's end, then a big crash all-'round economically in '07. With stuff like oil/uranium/gold though all should be well."

So far, that's been exactly the case. http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showpost.php?p=3461310&postcount=297 You can clearly see the small "crash" last October and rally into year end, as well as the Summer drop and rally into year's end '06 on that chart.

So what? Well, the model portfolios I mentioned early this year, a few posts above, had been going gangbusters but with the Spring fallout they pulled-back to more modest gains with those picks I entered into in March-May ending up comparative failures. Once the turn came, I stopped adding, waiting instead for the "signal" from the market that my predicted year-end rally would materialize and in August I felt that signal and started buying again.

That's gone extremely well. Per above, "overall Q3 '05 I was up 40%, Q4 '05 down 3%, Q1 '06 up around 40%." Q1 ended-up being a 35% gain, Q2 a 19% gain, Q3 an 8% loss, and so far Q4 is a 42% gain.

Mostly I've been deep into uranium stocks, which I've hyped on many times in the past couple years and that sector is now starting to become a somewhat mainstream investment idea along with other "clean energy" plays (note the cover story in this week's "The Economist") although only nuclear, via uranium, is nationally and globally viable. It's a long way from the top still, IMO, per ongoing trends in global warming, geopolitical turmoil, and oil prices, and recent gains as those seen here will be increasingly frequent I expect.

http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showpost.php?p=3461310&postcount=297

If perusing the chart links in the above linked post, and I strongly recommend doing so, keep in mind the dafault is for a 1-month chart. Be sure to checnge it to 2-months since that post is a month old and refers to a post I made a month before that. And check also the 2-year charts. I bought those between 1.5 to 2.5 years ago, and have only added to positions chiefly this Summer as I expect this trend to continue for the time being.

While the sample portfolio in this thread is by design severely handcuffed in what it can do by the limited scope of its capital, it's still a laggard and so I'm going to let loose a couple of dogs and replace those with another affordable uranium exploration play.

This is for illustration only. By "standard wisdom" these are "high-risk" securities to hold and of course anyone trading based on what they read from anonymous posters online are fully responsible for their own actions and for doing their own due diligence and consulting with a trusted accredited professional before actually entering any real trades.

The sample portfolio is currently +35% since inception in late February, but I think we can do better. To that end, I'm selling SEL and NCR at loss, but will keep the one other loser APE as it has been unfairly knocked down due to fears of Bolivia patritizing mines. In the place of those two, I add NUC.v and will have $22 left over in the kitty.

The result :

  ticker.exchange    # of shares held    price paid    current price   % gain (loss).

AFRPF.pk               400                .46            .59             28
SGC.v                   100               2.08          3.30             59
JNN.v                   100                 .92           1.92           109
UNI.v*                 100                 .36             .45            24
RH.v**                 100                .44              .90          105
FRP.v                   200                .32              .50             9
SOX.v                  200                .47              .66              7
APE.v                  100                1.23             .67              (46)
NUC.v                  100               1.08             1.08          n/a

Cash $23             Net Gain to date 36%  in 9 months.  


* UNI is the new symbol for the former HBE
** RH is the new symbol for the former UGS

 

[SMASH]

36% over the last 9 months is great. There are some fairly slender months in there!

It's good, but in the recent rally it had started to lag. Today at least, it's back in-line with the typical percentage gains I'm seeing across different portfolios - a little over 2% in today's case - although this one is nowhere near as diversified or a reflection of quality due to its inherent limits so at the end of the year I still expect it'll vary greatly one way or the other compared to what I'd consider more quality holdings.

Monster gains in uranium again this week.

 

[Indiana Mike]

Jeez , I have kept it simple.

I bought a house ,which will appreciate at an average rate of 3% or so.

I max out my 401 and have a strategy of how I allocate the funds / investments..

I participate in my union defined pension plan.


If we can make the illegal immigrants taxpayers that would put a but load of money into the program

I participate in a secondary insurance for unemployment / under employment, If I never use it I get all of my money back when I retire. I have no option on whether or not to invest in this , it is mandatory.

In short I participate in three plans , of which I cannot touch any of it until I hit 57.5 years old. 4 if you count the house , 5 if you count social security. Which I believe will still be here . Large corps want to scare you and do away with it as a way to save them money.


I have no interest in complicating my life any more than it is.

I think you may heed some of the advice here and invest in less risky options and play the market with monopoly money until you have got it.

I have my 401 split in about 30 or so options , as so should be money invested in stocks IMO.

Rule # 1 Never put all your eggs in one basket!

 

[MCBTunes]

It is nice to see this thread again. Unfourtunatly I have basically had to pull out of tryng to make money the easy way because of school debt. I got in an accident on my motorcycle in june and was unable to work to pay for this years university fees.

So, now I have a bass that doesn't work... i'm 5,000 bones in the red and my new job only pays 300 monthly. I've started putting away a little from every check(I have 200 built up now). But I have "bills" aka credit card payments to make every month now that chew up my whole salary basically.

It was cool though because I actually made a nice small chunck of change investing. I had ~1800 invested and made a little off of it...

Does anyone have any thoughts on what I should be doing with a couple hundred bucks? I cant really spread it out too much unless I stick to penny stocks. And I dont want to do anything too high risk eventhough it is such a small amount of money.

I have some money comming in from the insurance agency soon. I had to replace all my leathers etc. I was going to buy a bass with it. but perhaps there are better uses for my cash at this point.

 

[ALiP BoB]

This gets my vote for longest individual post thread award.

 

[SMASH]

Does anyone have any thoughts on what I should be doing with a couple hundred bucks? I cant really spread it out too much unless I stick to penny stocks. And I dont want to do anything too high risk eventhough it is such a small amount of money.

First pay down your dept. That will net you about 22% per annum as an "investment", as you then won't be paying those huge interest charges.

Investing should be done once debt is paid, IMO.

Once there, you can still learn even if only having enough to take and hold a position in a penny stock but in that case presume you're spending that money on tuition and you'll not get it back. Even a $1000 start, as illustrated in my example portfolio is a fairly skint amount to start with as it allows a little diversification.

Good luck getting things back in order, and I hope you weren't hurt in your accident.

 

[SMASH]

1-year review. Time flies.

The example "portfolio" I've illustrated is +70 % in that time.

Not all roses though, as of the two stocks I sold out in late November one stayed flat while the other almost tripled since then. The stock I put in their place has performed very poorly.

So it goes. Still, given the very limited funds and massive constraints, and very few trades, this has done very well. I've personally bought and sold all of these, so the figures are real not hypothetical. The returns in my "real" portfolios for the past year were avg. 64%, with far more work done on the research end and with more activity in the accounts. Kinda funny this one beat them out, but those are far more secure and I enjoy the "work" in maintaining them.


Currently it stands :

  ticker.exchange    # of shares held    price paid    current price   % gain (loss).

AFRPF.pk               400                .46            .83             80
SGC.v                  100               2.08           3.40             63
JNN.v                  100                .92           3.14            241
UNI.v*                 100                .36            .58             61
RH.v**                 100                .44            .73             66
FRP.v                  200                .32            .65             41
SOX.v                  200                .47           1.21             95
APE.v                  100               1.23            .65            (47)
NUC.v                  100               1.08            .73            (32)

Cash $23             Net Gain to date 70%  in 12 months.  


* UNI is the new symbol for the former HBE
** RH is the new symbol for the former UGS

I've got an eye on selling the dogs, but they're not fully broken down (yet?) and I prefer to keep activity in this one to a minimum.

Uranium at new highs of $75 / lb this week. Gold over $655.

 

[MakiSupaStar]

I highly, highly suggest making an "on paper" account and playing with that for a year first. Give yourself $10,000 on paper, pick stocks, note the buy price and the price you decide to unload them at. Track everything and see how you did after one year. If you lost money, and don't know why you lost it, keep your real money in a CD or mutual fund until you can spot the things you did wrong.

I'm speaking from bitter personal expirience here

This is good advice. There is no hurry. The money is not going anywhere... Invest conservatively first. CD's. Mutual Funds. IRA's or Roth IRA first. Get a good base built, then when you're a little older, start playing the market. If you've got your base working for you, you can afford to play a riskier game such as the stock market. But you're smart to start now. I wish I did Good luck

 

[SMASH]

In another thread loosely related to investing I was asked about my methods and such. I only value real-world examples rather than talk, so here's one I made in early March '06.

http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showpost.php?p=2874944&postcount=29

That post is more detailed for anyone ineterested, with the relevant bits below :

...
I have market orders in for the open on the following for my new April basket which I detail only as a matter of record for future reference :

B326276 WRS WILDROSE RES LTD Buy 500 500 04/07
B326275 APE APOGEE MINERALS LTD Buy 500 500 04/07
B326273 GEO POLARIS GEOTHERMAL CL A Buy 500 500 04/07
B326271 SEL SPITFIRE ENERGY LTD Buy 500 500 04/07
B326270 CPS CAPELLA RES CDA Buy 500 500 04/07
B326286 SOX SOLEX RES CORP Buy 500 500 04/07
B326283 FRP FRONTIER PACIFIC MINING CORP Buy 500 500 04/07

Of those, I feel all are appropriate for fresh entries, with GEO being by far the most wild card of the bunch. I'm shooting for 15-25% overall gains within a 3-6 month period.


To give people an idea of what goes into this, it took me about 16 hours this week to come up with these despite two already being holdings of mine per this thread's sample portfolio, which I mean to add to in the forthcoming post.

In that time, I automatically screen up to several hundred securities (via some subscription services and some programs I've written) which are already narrowed down out of thousands per certain formulae I apply. I then manually screen the charts and news/numbers of those that "feel" best to me, along with all of my current holdings which number in the several dozens. Then for this basket and for the purpose of adding to the sample portfolio here with its very limited capital, I went with those trading between 50c and $1.50 / share trading on CDN exchanges (gotta go with what's hot - these should be easily accesible from any standard US retail trading account).

All that work to possibly eke out greater gains than a simpler and more stable approach such as yours will enjoy. Some would say I'm nuts but I enjoy the discipline and so far it pays off reliably.

The crux of my theory is that these processes will net me excellent candidates for rapid appreciation in the hottest sector whether it is or is not readily evident (ie: front page news). It is a very key consideration, and I couldn't overstate how heavy that is. A solid decade or more into fine-tuning these approaches*, I've gotten to the point where I believe it'll work through any market cycle too. I plan to one day publish the methods and findings to empower people to do it themselves. I'm hoping the examples made in this thread will be a small step towards those ends.

*my experience is over 20 years now, but my attempts at my own trading programs are only just over 10 years into the experiments.

Keeping in mind I still have 3 weeks to go until the 1-year anniversary :

WRS subsequent high was just shy of 6 months later +67%, currently -13%

APE subsequent high was 2 months later +34%, currently -46%

GEO was +56% one month later, subsequent high was +95% two weeks ago, currently +65%

SEL subsequent high was +79% reached a month later and again two months later, currently +3%

CPS subsequent high was +125% which was hit 3 weeks alter as well as nearly 8 months later, currently +15%

SOX only rose about 10% immedaitely after the call and that's as high as it got during the first 6 months however its subsequent high was reached 1 month ago and again last week at +122% (it also hit +108% 2 months ago), currently +116% and rising IMO. Note that this stock was actually added earlier to this sample portfolio at a lower price so it was already +57% at the time of this call which means it's currently +232% from the initial call.

FRP was +91% not two months later, subsequent high +98% reached today and about 1 week ago. Currently +83%

So, my stated target was "I'm shooting for 15-25% overall gains within a 3-6 month period." Only one stock failed to greatly exceed that goal. Average gain if holding until today +32% Real gains I have on these stocks, having sold all but the last two is about +42% which is quite different from their subsequent highs. (I'm up much higher on my initial previous entries in the latter two, but I am counting only from these listed entries almost a year ago).

Still awake? See this thread for more of my thoughts on the topic and real-time calls : http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=298885

OK, that should give some recap for those that asked.

Currently the sample portfolio followed in this thread is +85% in just over 1 year, with very little trading activity and no fast flipping or trades required during market hours. As always please note the standard disclaimer that his is not investment advice, this is by no means common results or perhaps even replicable, I'm an anonymous poster on a bass message board making stock ticker symbols up via random stabbing at my keyboard, and blindly following these examples will almost certainly lead to your financial ruin.

 

[SMASH]

Sample portfolio changes :

Selling NUC, which has been a disaster of a call. By my program, it should have been sold under $1 and I did sell my own shares there. Since I try to avoid much trading in this account I let it slide thinking it'd pick up with the sector but the opposite has been true. It did at one point pop back over $1 and into the black, and I made the rookie mistake of not selling when it broke down subsequently, yet again. In the spirit of avoiding too much trading, that was a reasonable call but as an example of what to do it's awful.

Rule-of-thumb from the trenches : if you hold a stock that goes way against you then bounces back up to your entry - get out ! In the spirit of not repeating the above error in the future, I will announce a sell level with each new entry. Any new purchase requires an exit strategy.

Selling APE. It's well in the red and showing no real signs of that changing any time soon. With the markets as they've been the past several months, a good portfolio should only hold winners. Any stocks in the red should be recent entries not yet below tight stop points, or they should be sold IMO.

With the proceeds, buying SGN in Canada. No real reason. The chart look "right" to me, and it has got some uranium potential : Invalid Link Removed I see $0.30 as a long-term support level, but will sell on a close below $0.35

Leftover $7 goes into the kitty for a new total of $30 in reserve.

ticker.exchange    # of shares held    price paid    current price   % gain (loss).

AFRPF.pk               400                .46           1.00            117
SGC.v                  100               2.08           3.10             49
JNN.v                  100                .92           3.22            250
UNI.v                  100                .36            .53             47
RH.v                   100                .44            .74             68
FRP.v*                 200                .32            .84             83
SOX.v*                 200                .47           1.56            152 
SGN.v                  300                .39            .39            n/a

Cash $30             Net Gain to date 85% in just over a year.  

* these were mistakenly listed at 100 share holdings, but 
as the thread shows there are 200 of each in this example portfolio.  
I've edited the last two update to reflect that.

 

[SMASH]

The main holding in the sample portfolio is being bought by a bigger fish in the securities ocean. Impala Platinum bought Afplats (AFRPF) for 55 Pence in London, the equivalent of $1.08 USD.

Invalid Link Removed

In the case of a cash-for-securities deal like this you'll normally have a few months to sell in the open market, where it'll trade within a cent or so of the buying price. People who miss that window would have their shares turned over for the cash by their brokers.

So, 400 shares of AFRPF sold for $1.08 (+135%). I personally scored +170 on this one, and I'm not complaining but I was looking forward to holding it for some time to come. On the bright side, I'd accumulated a lot of shares so this came as a nice surprise with the buy price being a 35% premium from where it traded on Tuesday, 90% higher than it was 5 weeks ago, and 180% higher than it was in early October !

No new buy as of now. Maybe I'll find another decent platinum stock to replace it with, but this was a fairly unique situation with actual value in it in the form of proven reserves which I was especially bullish on.

The remaining holdings seem solid, though I'll be a seller of SGC if closing below $3.00

ticker.exchange    # of shares held    price paid    current price   % gain

SGC.v                  100               2.08           3.04             46
JNN.v                  100                .92           3.13            240
UNI.v                  100                .36            .54             50
RH.v                   100                .44            .77             75
FRP.v                  200                .32            .86             87
SOX.v                  200                .47           1.46            135 
SGN.v                  300                .39            .40              1

Cash $533            Net Gain to date 84% in just over a year.

 

[SMASH]

One more tweak to the sample portfolio, which after another big day in the markets Friday is now +91%.

I think the spec stocks are due to give up some of the recent big gains so I'd rather shift more of the funds into value.

In that spirit, I'm selling the 200 SOX for a 139% gain. We retain shares in FRP, which is essentially speculating on the same play anyway (what I view as the two companies' key asset is a joint venture on the same property).

I'll roll the proceeds plus most of the cash from the last sale of stocks to fund 100 shares of Hammond Power Solutions, HPS-a in Toronto. This is a real company - by which I mean a company with a product, revenues and earnings - with better earnings each quarterly report, and with a quarterly and annual report due shortly I expect it'll do as it normally does and pop up for significant quick gains.

The recent trading action also suggests so, given the high volume seen at bottom of the chart has not represented selling as evidenced by the lateral price movement which I believe represents consolidation at these current level before a new leg up. Invalid Link Removed

Looking back, it's very easy to see what happened at the end of each of these lateral movements which is a spike in price. Invalid Link Removed

Ergo :

ticker.exchange    # of shares held    price paid    current price   % gain

SGC.v                  100               2.08           3.11             50
JNN.v                  100                .92           3.51            282
UNI.v                  100                .36            .56             56
RH.v                   100                .44            .75             70
FRP.v                  200                .32            .86             87
SGN.v                  300                .39            .38             (3)
HPS-A.to               100               7.99           7.99            n/a

Cash $30            Net Gain to date is 91% in almost 13 months.

 

[SMASH]

...
The remaining holdings seem solid, though I'll be a seller of SGC if closing below $3.00

...
I think the spec stocks are due to give up some of the recent big gains so I'd rather shift more of the funds into value. ...

SGC closed below $3.00 yesterday, and on today's bounce I sell this one for a 37% gain. This one never did as well as I'd hoped, and as of Tuesday I'm out of my personal holdings of this one as well.

Though I expect the markets to have a bad month in March, and I feel my prediction in this thread from over a year ago that markets would slide in the spring of '07 is coming true, I'll let the other holdings stand for now with the exception of the most recent entry HPS-a. It's the one that has most value, from a revenue/earnings/growth standpoint, but it's too much to leave exposed since all ships drop in a falling tide. It rose $1 since added here at $8 last week, then dropped in Tuesday's very bad market action below $7.50 and closed today a penny over our entry level so we come out even on that one.

At the last posting early last week, this example was +91% and since then rose to +112% and is now down to +93% By selling SGC and HPS-a, that makes $1115 in cash (11% more than the original $1000 investment amount from 13 months ago) plus these holdings which are effectively "free" :

ticker.exchange    # of shares held    price paid    current price   % gain

JNN.v                  100                .92           3.58            289
UNI.v                  100                .36            .57             58
RH.v                   100                .44            .84             91
FRP.v                  200                .32            .90             96
SGN.v                  300                .39            .45             15

Cash $1115            Net Gain to date is 93% in 13 months.

 

[dangnewt]

Those are truly SMASHing returns. I admire your skill.

Joshua - that is some fine sector allocating to come in with 18% with the Coffeehouse approach.

On my self-directed IRA which is mostly stocks - I clocked in at 15.5% in '06 which is a hair less than the S + P.

 

[dangnewt]

Thanks

I go all over the place. The current allocation is roughly 50% US; 30% foreign; 15% bond and 5% cash. With my wife's IRA, I take a more coffeehouse approach and I have finally convinced my church to move from self-management (20% Exxon, 15% baby Bells, 0% foreign stocks ) and take advantage of the coffeehouse-style investment product offered by our denomination.

I have been overweight in real estate since 2000. I still am even though many people think it is played out but I've been hearing that for 5 years. I have trimmed it a bit though.

JOE - St Joe in Florida is doing a good job unlocking the value of former pulp forests (and some prime Gulf shoreline on the Panhandle).

FCEA - Forest City Enterprises is one of the few companies that can handle enormous real estate deals.

TRC - Tejon Ranch is an ungodly amount of land north of LA which is a similar play to Joe.

I get ideas from different places - Standard and Poors and Morningstar, MSN Money primarily. I own a fair amount of each of the Third Avenue Funds and have taken an idea or two from Marty Whitman including the three above. Also, I have a couple of shares of Berkshire Hathaway and I am happy when I own a few of the stocks in Buffett's portfolio.

I bought some Disney recently - the new CEO seems to have the ship headed in the right direction - overnight stays in Cinderella's Castle is a brilliant idea and even though that isn't going to impact the bottom line - I like the thinking that is behind it. Over the past 6 months or so I've been getting a little more staid: J+J; P + G, Colgate, Bank of America, Pepsi.

Ann Taylor is bound to make a comeback. Every once in a while I like buying women's clothes, err, I mean the stocks of women's retailers, after they have put out a season or two or crappy clothes - Wall Street says , so when they come out with a good collection (which they generally do), the women buy a bunch and the same store sales numbers leap and then Wall Street gets all . Then I sell and treat Mrs. Newt to a new outfit -

Based on my teen daughter's spending, if Juicy Couture were a public company, I'd load up. Although even though I love Peaveys, I don't see myself buying a Juicy Couture bass.

 

[dangnewt]

I used to have individual positions up to 5% - now it is more like 2-3% when I get excited about something. I am big believer in diversification across industries, sectors, countries, capitalization. I use Fidelity and Morningstar's tools to help keep me honest. If I have grossly over or underweighted a sector, I'll sometimes just buy a sector ETF to balance things out - for example I have a utilities and a telecom ETF in there somewhere. There is even a diversification in approaches - about 25% my stockpicking and about 75% coffeehouse style.

Regarding the church's portfolio (and I use the term loosely here)- those are just the most egregious errors. It was really a collection of stocks: a couple of utilities, a couple of drug stocks and a few industrials. It was an income-oriented "widows and orphans" style of investing that was thought to be safe and conservative, and it generally survived bear markets better than a more conventional portfolio but it left too much on the table in bull markets. And the concentration did not strike me as particularly safe nor conservative. Its '04 and '05 were subpar but its '06 was strong enough (the Exxon and telecoms especially) that its 3 year came out about even with the S + P 500. So we are shifting at a good time.


Berkshire A shares - we need a drool smiley
I think about A shares the way Homer thinks about donuts.