Gains and Losses

Blogging is more difficult than I thought! It really is a habit that I need to get myself into. It's been difficult in the last three weeks but I will try to be a bit more consistent.

Earnings week got started with a thud! Alcoa reported lower than expected earnings and the stock sold off heavily. I will wait for a further pullback before getting some shares.

My portfolio has churned a lot more than I anticipated. I already have made more trades in the last four weeks than I intended to. My biggest position is ZQK, 10,000shares. This is a specialty retailer selling for less than half its working capital of $400 million. It has equity of $400 million and total assets about $1.5B. I already made about 2.4K on the position but I bought it back and I am currently down 1K. I think that this stock can easily go to 7/share in the next year, so this is going to be a core long term holding for me. Another position that I acquired is AONE. It is a battery company based in China and its IPO came out this year. So far I have a 500 share position and I think I can also make this a longer term position as well.

Today I sold BIOD at $5/share. I planned to hold it but I was afraid that it might tumble down to the $4.40 range. So far I had only held a 1K share position in the company because it is a biotech company. I will buy it back if if breaks below 4.5 or if it closes above 5.2

At this point I want to limit the size of my position because I think there is a crisis coming. What will it consist of? Higher rates, falling home prices, higher unemployment, bigger deficits, and yes - missed corporate profits.

I have not been tracking my day to day performance like I did before but I will start doing that next week once I settle into my new office.

So far I think I am up about 3% for the year, having lost 2K yesterday alone! My goals are very modest. No home runs required but no active trading either. Study the company, the price motion, make a call and watch the results within a day or two. My target holding period will be about 3 days after a major news event. It seems that is how long it takes for the market to fully price in the news before a major reversal.