Posts from the ‘Esperenza Resources (EPZ)’ Category

Apr 28

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

Mar 10

4 Comments

Week 88: Take-off (MTG, RDN, MBI, PKI, NTI, IMH, WD)

Portfolio Performance

See the end of the post for Portfolio Composition and weekly trades.

A week of Significant Gains from RDN, MTG, MBIA

The last seven days have been extremely good ones for my portfolio. This has been primarily due to the price appreciation of MGIC, Radian Group and MBIA. As regards MGIC and Radian, I have written so much about these two names, done so much work trying to understand the business (and trying to understand how other people were trying to understand the business), that it is quite rewarding to see it play out the way that it has.

It is amazing to me that MGIC has more than doubled (from a $2.40 low to a $6.10 high) during 5 days when the only notable disclosure was that the company had the ability to raise capital. Someone with an interest in market psychology should really write a piece on MGIC – you could call it the Existential Security.

I reduced my position in both Radian and MGIC by a little more than half during the early part of this week. My sales of MGIC occurred around $5.20 while those with Radian were at a little over $10. I don’t have plans on selling any more of either.

I sold the positions down because they were getting very large (particularly in the case of MGIC) and because my thesis, that these companies would be able to survive, has now played out. What is going to drive the stocks going forward is the long-term potential of the mortgage insurance business and how well each company can capitalize on it. Read more

Nov 4

2 Comments

Week 70: A stock pickers Market

Portfolio Performance

(Note that I am now posting my portfolio composition and list of trades at the end of the post)

Update

I didn’t get around to writing an update last week because I was busy with other research that could not wait. So its been 3 weeks since I updated my portfolio and transactions and quite a bit has happened over that time.

Over time my portfolio has slowly morphed into a vehicle for playing the housing recovery. I had large moves to the upside in a number of my housing related positions, with the most pronounced being of course Impac Mortgage (IMH), but also from Radian Group (RDN), MGIC (MTG) and a number of my regional banks with strong mortgage banking operations. Its been a good 3 weeks.

In this post I want to talk about some of the changes I’ve made over the last 3 weeks. To summarize:

I sold out of all my gold stocks other then Atna Resources (ATN)
I made a brief foray into, and then out of, US E&P’s
I am out of JC Penney (JCP)… for now
I am into Avenex Energy (AVF) and a homebuilder (HOV)

I will address each of these in order, followed by a brief discussion of what to expect from Nam Tai, which reports earning on Monday and of which I want to be clear of my expectations and actions. But first I want to talk generally for a moment.

Twitter

I’m finding that I am using twitter quite a bit to post what I am doing on a more regular basis. Whenever I find a relevant article, or if I start to buy a new stock, I try to put a post up on twitter. I have also found a number of folks on there that have been useful to follow. Its a useful tool, and has the advantage over the traditional message board format in that you follow a person rather than a subject. So you aren’t wading through garbage to find nuggets. You can follow me @LSigurd. Read more