Skip to content

Posts from the ‘Pacific Coast Ethanol (PEIX)’ Category

Jul 21

2 Comments

Week 159: Blog Days of Summer

Portfolio Performance

week-159-yoyperformance

week-159-Performance

See the end of the post for the current make up of my portfolio and the last four weeks of trades.

Recent Developments

I haven’t done a lot of writing since my last portfolio update four weeks ago. I have made only a couple changes to my portfolio, and added only one new position, Midway Gold, which I wrote about last week.

I remain reluctant to add positions.  As I stated previously (here and here) I remain wary of the market reaction to the post-QE era.  So far nobody seems to care, tapering has had no negative impact on stock prices, and we continue to march to higher highs.  Nevertheless I’m not convinced.  I don’t have a lot of insights into the specific mechanism by which quantitative easing leads to higher stock prices or how the end of it will cause them to go lower  but I know from experience that you can’t overstate the importance of liquidity, particularly where small and micro caps are concerned.  Now we’re in the process of draining a bunch of it and I just don’t think that is a great time to be too far out on the ledge.  Why take the chance when you don’t have to?

I’m also not having an easy time finding stocks that I want to buy.  I’ve spent the last four weeks rather diligently investigating new ideas.  I’ve probably gone through 100 names.  Nothing I have looked at has stood out as something I have to own.

In fact, I’ve come back to old names.  In particular, I’m currently betting the farm on Pacific Ethanol. Below is a list of my top ten positions.  Pacific Ethanol was a 20% position that has grown to 24% because of price appreciation.

07-21-14 topholdings Read more

Apr 6

What to do with Pacific Ethanol

Being invested in Pacific Ethanol (PEIX) is like riding a yo-yo.  Up and down, up and down.  It can get a bit nauseating.

As I tweeted earlier this week, I got tired of the motion sickness and reduced my position in Pacific Ethanol considerably.

 

Since that time I’ve sold a bit more and it’s now about 25% of my original position.  It’s still a reasonable size but its not going to hurt me (I will remind you that as of my last portfolio update, when Pacific Ethanol was at about $14, the stock was a 16% position for me.  That number jumped closed to 20% as the stock rose, but now sits at about 4% with my sales last week and the current price).

As the tweet explains, I didn’t like that the stock was going up because of rising ethanol prices while at the same time corn prices were creeping higher.  This wasn’t the dynamic I had invested upon.  I wanted sustainable ethanol prices and low corn prices.  Ethanol can’t trade at nearly a dollar above RBOB gasoline and you saw that on Wednesday when the weekly EIA statistics showed imports of ethanol.  The market was suitably spooked and the price of ethanol has since tanked.  More on the ethanol price dynamic in a minute, but first let’s talk about Pacific Ethanol. Read more