Posts from the ‘Portfolio’ Category

Aug 1

Week 4 Portfolio Update

I got smacked around along with everyone else last week, losing about 5%. Still I am up almost 3% since inception 4 weeks ago. I tried to use the volatility to reallocate money towards the stocks that are working the best, and away from what has not been working.

I sold out completely of OceanaGold and Klondex Mines. I’ve talked about the former in a post already; of the latter it is a mine not yet producing, and so prone to problems, and as I felt the debt ceiling problems would be resolved I did not want to be too overweight in gold stocks.

I sold out of Novus Energy, which had less to do with Novus and more to do with Second Wave and Coastal, which I wanted to money to add to. I also sold out of Newcastle Investments in favor of more Oneida Financial. I gave my thoughts on Oneida in the last post.

Jul 24

Week 3 Portfolio Update

Portfolio is up a little over 7% since its inception 3 weeks ago. My cash position is a bit lower than I would like it. That is something I will look at rectifying in the upcoming couple of days. I added a couple of new positions this week with Prophecy Coal and Novus Energy. I also increased my position in Mercer, in Coastal, and in OceanaGold. I also, of course, reduced my position in Jaguar Mining.

Jul 21

Reshuffling the Deck on the Jaguar Miss

The miss by Jaguar yesterday was disappointing. If you had wanted to look at the bright side you could have focused on the June production number and the performance of Turmalina and Paciencia. But I have learned enough to know that when a “dog” digs a deeper hole, the market will be more than willing to push him down it.

Therefore I really lightened up on Jaguar yesterday. I cut my positions in half in all accounts. One benefit of knowing a company well, and knowing just how good or bad the results are, is that you can sometimes act before the market fully prices in those results. Yesterday I sold a lot of Jaguar above $5 (Canadian) in the first few minutes before the market took the stock down into the $4.80s. Once you have decided to sell, I do not believe you should hold out hope for a better price. Just get out – and that’s what I did.

Here is what I sold and here is what I decided to jump into with some of the proceeds (note that as shown I did lighten up a little on Jaguar on a couple days before the release – call it a premonition but I wasn’t comfortable with the risk I had on the table given the track record of the company).

As the order list shows, I added to OceanaGold, Mercer International, and I started a position in Novus Energy. I wish that I had owned a little more of OceanaGold and a little less of Jaguar to begin with. There was a time when they had equal weightings but I liked the upside of a Jaguar turnaround story better. Unfortunately that story is still on hold, at least at Caete. Now, my positions in Jaguar, OceanaGold and Lydian are all comparable.

I will probably wait and see what Jaguar management has to say on the conference call in August before I make any more moves with the stock.

I plan to talk about both Mercer and Novus more in separate posts.

Jul 13

Breakouts!

With gold breaking out today to a new high, and with Bernanke comments being interpreted as constructive to commodity stocks, there are lots of breakouts in the stocks I own.

Jaguar hopefully has seen a $4 tag for the last time.
OceanaGold broke well away from the $2.70 level that has proven to be resistance in the past.
Arcan broke through the $6 level with conviction.
One of my smaller positions, Geologix, has jumped higher. As I said on my original missive on the company, I bought this stock as a trade on the hypothesis that if commodities go higher it will quickly go back to the 60s.

This is all good news. Let’s hope it is for real. There was an old subscriber service I used to belong to called stocksatbottom. One of their maxim’s was that you had to be in the market because when you looked at the gains made by a stock in a given year, they typically occured in about 2 weeks out of 52. How can you predict when those 2 weeks will occur? You can’t. Who would have guess 3 weeks ago that we would see these kind of moves in oil and gold.

As is my typical strategy, I have added to some stocks with the break out in gold. I added to both Lydian International and to Klondex today. They have not risen yet, but hopefully that is soon to come. I did not add a lot, just enough to gain more leverage if the move continues.

Lydian is now one of my largest holdings. I plan to come out with a post describing my reasons for buying so much of a junior gold explorer (usually a risky business) either later today or tomorrow. I’m not quite finished that post however, so for now I will give you one of the “gold gurus” I follow closely, Brent Cook, and some of his comments on the company.