May 20
See the end of the post for the current make up of my portfolio and the last four weeks of trades.
For the last number of months I have been increasingly uncomfortable about being fully invested. Throughout the amazing rally that we’ve had since the beginning of 2012 I have been haunted by the idea that the rally is a liquidity induced euphoria . In particular, I am given humility by this chart. Read more
May 11
This isn’t a complete portfolio update. I won’t be posting my performance or trades; I will leave that for another week. I just want to give a short update on some of the earnings reports that have come out or are still to come out while the thoughts are still fresh in my mind. Here is a quick snapshot of the top positions in my portfolio as of Friday’s close.
MagicJack earnings come out Monday after the market close. I’m nervous about them, because the stocks action has been poor, it is a large position for me and because I’m not convinced the numbers will be great.
The company lowered advertising spend significantly in the quarter in anticipation of the release of the new version of the device and the app. That will help costs, but it will also probably hurt revenue. On the fourth quarter call the company said that they expected the first half of the year to be “soft”. Read more
Jun 14
I am more superstitious than I would like to admit. For example, when I was a kid I used to take the same number of steps to my bedroom, close my door before bed to the same angle, and never step on a crack on my way to school.
Nowadays I’ve toned things down a bit but I still have a few little rituals, many of which revolve around investing. I always check MSFT when I log in before checking any other symbol (even though I don’t own it), I never check the price of a Canadian stock on Yahoo! Finance, and from time to time I “sacrifice” some stock to the gods when a particular security isn’t going my way.
While superstition can be dangerous if its left to run awry over one’s decision making, if its kept in check it is not entirely a bad thing. While we all like to believe that we are rational and objective and that therefore our conclusions always stand on their own accord, I think this is mostly a delusion. Our convictions are more based on faith than we would like to admit.
From this observation comes the usefulness of coincidence. If a leap can be made, even somewhat half-heartedly, that coincidence is born of some sort of necessary intent, its conceivable to think that this might bond you to the event that you would otherwise disregard. The result can be constructive: a firmer stand of integrity, an oath more closely held. Under less desperate circumstances, it may simply lead us to pursue an opportunity that we may have otherwise ignored. Read more
May 27
To see the last four weeks of trades, click here.
Last month was an excellent month for my portfolio. I wrote about some of the significant moves that occurred over the first few weeks of May in this post, and I won’t repeat that discussion here. Apart from what was discussed there, I made only a few changes to my portfolio. I added Ambac (AMBC), which I wrote about here. I removed a number of the natural gas stocks, and I added a couple of new positions in the Health Care sector. I also subtracted and then added back some gold stock names, with the net sum of the moves being close to zero. Read more
Reminiscences of a Stockblogger 
