Week 9 Portfolio Update: Par!

Well almost.

I am $300 from being back to even.  Considering that the portfolio was created at the beginning of July, and that since that time the market has been somewhat horrendous, I do not think this is too bad of a result.

But it would be nice to start making money again.

There was not much action in my portfolio this week.  I sold a bit of Arcan, a bit of Coastal, and a bit of Lydian International.  In all 3 cases my selling had nothing to do with the company performance and everything to do with Europe.  Its unfortunate that I have to make investment decisions based on Europe.  I would much rather just pick stocks.

It is an interesting to think of what my portfolio would look like if Europe wasn’t on the verge of implosion.  I think it would look quite different.  First, I would own much more of Coastal Energy, and some more of Arcan Resources.  I would also own a decent position in Second Wave Petroleum.  I would likely have held on to Leader Energy Services.  And I don’t expect gold would be going through the roof, so while I would probably still own Jaguar, OceanaGold and Lydian, and Argonaut, but I would have smaller positions in all 3.  These stocks would not be as enticing if gold was still at $1200/oz, which I expect it would be ex-Europe.

The real upside in the gold stocks is the upward revaluation to reflect something closer to spot, along with the ever present possibility (as long as Europe is still the EU that is) that spot will continue to go higher.  If Europe was just being Europe (dull 1% growth), I would likely prefer to own other commodities that were leveraged to emerging world growth.  But alas, Europe has taken on the mask Faust, choosing a devil’s bargain over boringly flat GDP, and the outcome looks to be much the same, with the EU being on its way to hell on earth.  So gold stocks it is.