Quite the Day

Well I certainly picked an interesting day (two days I guess on the Canadian market) to start my new portfolio.  A lot of big moves around the commodity sector, including for some of the stocks I own.

Now that’s great, but it did also pose a problem of its own.  I hadn’t bought any of the stocks yet for my tracking portfolio.  Monday morning on the Canadian market (Tuesday for the US) it was my plan to buy a full position in every stock I own in my real world account so that I had a portfolio that essentially mimicked my actual account as of the start of trading July 4th.

But what do you do when the stock is up big at the open?  For example, Coastal Energy opened 4-5% higher on Monday morning.  Canfor opened up 30 cents higher.  Today on the US market Mercer opened significantly higher.  And then there was Klondex, that closed up 10% on Friday.  How do you buy that?

Its tough to swallow to buy stocks up a lot, even when it is just a mock portfolio, and especially so when the results are going to be put up here for all posterity.  You don’t want to start at the peak of a short term blip.  Its especially tough when many of the stocks are one’s I bought at significantly lower prices in my actual margin account.  I bought Coastal at $4 and now I have to buy it at $8.30?  I bought Mercr at $9.80 just a few days ago, and now I buy it more than a dollar higher.  And I have to buy Klondex at $3.10 when it was $2.40 just a couple weeks ago.  The horror!

Well, in the end I caved.  In a couple of cases I didn’t buy right away, hoping for a lower price, and I got burned for doing so.  I put in a bid for Coastal at $8.15 and ended up buying it at $8.50.  With Klondex I tried to get it at $2.90 but eventually threw up my hands and paid $3.10.  And there was one stock that I didn’t yet buy.  I didn’t get Home Federal.  Its just so illiquid, and the way that these RBC practice accounts work is that the shares have to be there for you to fake buy them. The bid/ask spread yesterday was 50 cents, $13 versus $13.50 and I’d probably be fake buying up to $14 to get enough shares on the ask.  So instead I have a limit order in for it, and they get filled as the stock actually trades at or below that order.  I’m not worried; there is no catalyst for HFBL in the immediate term so I think I’ll get my shares.

But what a couple of days this has been!  Best in a few months.  Arcan was up a lot, Mercer and Canfor both up a lot, Coastal up a lot.  Its tempting to sell some of the trading positions down soon (Mercer and Canfor come to mind), but not too quickly; this leg down has gone on a long time, so I would expect a few more weeks of revival before I begin to cut back.