Posts from the ‘Portfolio’ Category

Apr 23

Week 146: Some thoughts on agility

Portfolio Performance

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

Recent Developments

Four weeks ago I wrote:

I think an important pillar of my strategy to take advantage of the concentration that I can have. I don’t have anyone pressuring me to be diversified or questioning my risk level or anyone to answer to if something goes wrong. So I don’t hesitate to have a large percentage of my portfolio tied to the names I think will perform the best.

With that said, the names that I am currently of the heaviest weight are, of course, Pacific Ethanol, which remains my largest position by far

Today Pacific Ethanol represents a 2% position for me. Read more

Feb 2

9 Comments

Week 135: Retail Changes

Portfolio Performance

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

Recent Developments

During the Christmas break I began to focus my attention on the Canadian market, searching out stocks that had not yet participated in the bull market or that had further room to run. I started to call these stocks my “Venture” ventures but that is not really accurate; I’ve actually only invested in a couple of companies that trade on the Venture exchange. But they do tend to be small and micro and even nano cap companies, so many of them are Venture in spirit if not name.

My thesis was based upon a few pillars. First, the Canadian markets severely underperformed the US markets in 2013 and given the tie between the trade of the two countries I didn’t think this disconnect could continue forever. Second, The Canadian markets were dragged down by a rout in commodity stocks, particularly gold, and I wondered how much of the general downdraft had resulted in non-commodity businesses being dragged down unfairly. Third, the Canadian dollar had fallen 10% and I had to think that this made any kind of export based business much more attractive.

The fall of the Canadian dollar also provided me with another reason to return to my home-country market. I have done really well in the past year owning stocks in American dollars. Its been a 10% gain across the board, even if a individual stock did nothing. But this force can work two ways and I am wary of a 5% correction to the upside that causes my portfolio to take a hit. Read more

Jan 5

Week 131: Flat on my Back

Portfolio Performance

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

Recent Developments

Its been a very quiet month and you can count the number of trades that I made on both hands. I was away for some time, there were holidays, and I was laid up with back problems for over a week.

Being laid up and not able to do much of anything reminded me of the importance of giving myself time to think. There are so many ideas to chase down, so many angles to look at, its easy to spend all one’s time doing and no time thinking about what else you might be doing.

It was that thinking that brought me to the idea about Pacific Ethanol, which I wrote about here. Pacific Ethanol was a story that I had been reading posts on the Investorshub message boards for a while, but because I hadn’t really stopped to think about the idea, it remained just a stock that I didn’t understand that kept going up. Read more

Oct 26

4 Comments

Lessons from the Debt Ceiling

In my post from earlier today I mentioned that I had made some portfolio changes over the past fews weeks and would be sharing them in a series of short posts. In this one I want to talk about what I did and then undid because of the debt ceiling.

In my last monthly update, posted on the 12th, I wrote about how I was reducing exposure to stocks in response to the uncertainty about the debt ceiling.

In my accounts I go into the weekend with more than 25% cash (I’m a little under that in the practice account I show here, at around 23% including my remaining Novus position, as I didn’t quite keep up with the selling I was doing elsewhere). I should perhaps be at an even higher level, but many of the stocks I own are so obscure and out of the mainstream that I feel some confidence that they will be spared some of the carnage that will occur if the debt ceiling is not raised out of indifference alone. The stocks I trimmed the most were the one’s that have proven most volatile to market swings.

By Tuesday of the next week, October 15th, I had moved to a little over 35% cash in my accounts. I received a few comments that this was a silly move, that the US government wouldn’t be stupid enough to let its interest payments lapse. They turned out to be right. Nevertheless, I stand by my decision; I work hard to grow my portfolio and putting that hard work at risk on the assumption that the people in positions of power will do the sensible thing is, in my mind, an unnecessary risk. Remember Dick Fuld? Read more