Sidecar Stuck in Neutral?

Many readers may be familar with my sidecar portfolio. It is a portfolio of MFI stocks that I track regularly which I feel are especially good values. I buy them outside my MFI portfolio and have no rules on when I can sell or how much I can buy. It is all done in my retirement account to minimize tax issues. Through November I had done great in the sidecar. But since then I seem to have "stalled". My current portfolio is 4 stocks: HW, TRLG,OVTI & ASPV. I still like these four stocks, just waiting for a catalyst. I almost sold the TRLG, had an order to sell at $18.50, but it never got there. I may expand the sidecar concept a bit in 2007 as I'll be depositing some $ in my IRA pretty soon.


Bad is Good

Last week I was a little disgusted when HW came out with guidance for the quarter that seemed good, yet the stock dropped 5%. Well this morning PTEN announced that they would miss the quarterly estimates... just 95 cents to $1.00 vs the $1.07 consensus (Patterson-UTI Energy sees fourth-quarter net 95c-$1 a share). In pre-dawn trading the stock was down 40 or 50 cents. I had decided that if it opened that low that I was going to "buy" PTEN for a 2nd year in my MFI portfolio starting today, in essence making the value equal to the value of stocks I plan to have for 2007. As you may guess from the title, it didn't quite work that way. Their "miss" was good news, even in this down day and PTEN wnt up. Just as well that I wasn't tempted to stretch the rules a bit. I can wait until Feb to fill up on my PTEN shares.

Catching Up By Falling Back Less

I made up some ground on the benchmark today. Hard to feel happy as it was by losing less money... down 0.48% vs 0.52% for Russell 3000. Woo-hoo!

VPHM Added to S&P Index

VPHM will be added this week to the S&P small cap 600 (Standard & Poor's Announces Changes to U.S. Indices). My rule of thumb is that this is usually worth about 5%, VPHM is up 4% is after dusk trading. Readers may recall I recently had MTEX added to an indice. It made a much larger move, about 8%. I think that was due to large short interest. VPHM OTOH seems to have a pretty normal short interest.

Earnings Season Kicks Off

I Think DLX will be my 1st stock to announce earnings this season/year on the 26th. It will get wild and wooly here in my blog as I try to keep up. Hopefully earnings will jumpstart a couple of my stocks.