Posts from the ‘Argonaut Gold (AR)’ Category

Oct 26

A couple of Gold Stock Positions (AR.to, TMM.to)

I’ve made a number of moves in my portfolio over the last couple of weeks and in a few cases the stocks I’ve bought have already started to move so I thought I’d dedicate a few short posts this weekend to talking about the changes before things get any further.

A couple of Gold Stock Positions

I haven’t been in any gold stocks since the spring. When I sold out of my positions, I gave the following state of the union.

But the path gold takes to get there could be rocky. In particular, its clear that the market believes that quantitative easing has worked. And indeed, the US economy is getting better. Whether the economy, and the financial markets, can continue to improve without massive injections of money is an open question. But until that question is answered, which could be 6-12 months away, the working assumption appears to be that it will, and that is going to be bad for gold.

A number of reasons led me to foray back into gold stocks last week. First of all, the debt ceiling appeared to be and finally did get settled on what seems to be a pretty temporary basis. Second, Janet Yellen was announced as the Fed Chairman beginning next year. Third, the latest economic data for the US economy is looking pretty milk-toasty, and fourth, the gold stocks I look at were at or lower than the levels in June and thus were reflecting none of this. I tweeted the following on October 15th.

Jun 24

Gold Stocks and My Lack of Conviction

The times when I am able to make a lot of money in the stock market have been those for which I have a strong conviction in the underlying conditions. When I believe that I have either a cyclical or secular wind at my back, my inclination is to stick to an investment and hold it to significant gains.

Compare this to when I invest because something looks cheap or seems undervalued. In such cases I don’t really have conviction in the mechanism of value realization, I am often found to be the one with weak hands, and I end up selling after experiencing more pain than I can handle.

This was the case last week with gold stocks. I sold most of my positions after gold collapsed to under $1300. The stocks I sold; Argonaut Gold, Timmins Gold, and Brigus Gold, had all been much higher only days earlier. In the case of Argonaut I ended up selling for a small profit, while both Timmins and Brigus were sold for a small loss. Read more

Apr 28

8 Comments

Week 95: Setting the table (hopefully)

Portfolio Performance

See the end of the post for a full portfolio breakdown.

Update

Since my last update I exited Radian Group, Arkansas Best and MBIA. The sales reflect a desire to redeploy cash in other opportunities as well as some lingering concerns about each company.

With Arkansas Best, its my uncertainty about the outcome of union negotiations. The negotiations were extended this week for a second time. An escalation to a strike does not seem out of the question. If a strike occurs the stock price may or may not get hit; while a positive resolution could be quite good for the stock in the long-run (see my original post about how Arkansas Best would benefit from a contract structured in a similar manner to the one that YRC Worldwide operates with) the uncertainty may drive panic selling. I’ve decided to wait this one out for a few weeks and see how it plays out. Read more

Apr 1

1 Comment

Week 91: Consolidating

Portfolio Performance

Consolidation

Patience is a difficult virtue. I’ve had 3 weeks of pretty so-so performance, some stocks going up and some stocks going down and overall not much of anything happening. With the market going up seemingly every day its hard to not let that play on your mind.

But you have to have a balance of patience and impatience to do well in stocks. You need to have a healthy level of impatience so that you don’t hold onto positions for too long, but tempered with an equal dose of patience because, as I read some time ago from a cagey market veteran, you will make 80% of your gains for a year in 2-3 weeks, and figuring out which weeks those are is nearly impossible.

In the last few weeks I think I demonstrated a little bit both; witness impatience in my selling of gold stocks and of my position in Tricon Capital and patience as I held on to falling positions in MBIA, Impac Mortgage and watched YRC Worldwide and Yellow Media correct substantially from their highs. Read more