Week 37: Reshuffling the desk

Portfolio Performance

Portfolio Composition

Weekly Trades

A barrel o’ trades

I had some busy lunch hours this week.  Lots of buying and lots of selling.

The theme of most of my trades for the last number of weeks has been to move out of commodity stocks and move into financial stocks.  This week I added, or added to, position in the following financial stocks.

• PHH Corporation
• Nationstar Mortgage Holdings
• Shore Bancshares
• Bank of Commerce Holdings
• Gramercy Capital Corp.

So as not to get too far on margin I reduced a number of my gold stock and oil stock holdings commensurately.  I am out of Second Wave entirely.  Likewise, after the takeover bid from Crescent Point I sold my entire position in Reliable Energy.  I reduced my position in three gold stocks: Esperenza Resources, Golden Minerals, and Lydian International.  With the economy continuing to move forward, and especially with the move in the bank stocks this week, I just think there are better places to put capital than gold stocks right now.  However, that remains with exceptions: Atna Resources for instance, which I expect to appreciate significantly from here.

I plan to continue this trend in the coming week.  I may lighten up on Coastal Energy, and if Equal Energy ever releases news about a Mississippian JV on that strength I would scale back that position some as well.  I plan to take a hard look this week at Home Loan Sercive Solutions, which is a mortgage servicing spinoff of Ocwen, and Fortress Invesment Group, which is a private equity firm that manages a number of investment funds but which holds particular interest to me because of the large mortgage servicing portfolio they have been amassing.