Changing of the Guard

Today was my 1^st day of massive MFI portfolio changes. Here is what happened:

1. I sold PTEN, MSTR, UST and MGLN.
2. I bought DGX, CREL and LRCX.
3. I retained PACR and added shares to bring to my standard balance.
4. I still have some cash from HW sale last week and haven’t decided what to do

Quest Diagnostics (DGX) – I felt this was a nice replacement for MGLN. Kept me in the healthcare sector. DGX is a large company that performs lab tests for hospitals and clinics. It is a nice business with few competitors and they do it well. Not a sexy stock, but should be a solid performer, not unlike MGLN. It has the added panache of being in Cramer’s Action Alerts Portfolio (that is just panache, not sure whether good or bad).

Corel Software (CREL) – again, this was a nice sector replacement for MSTR. I felt it would make sense to have at least one software stock in my portfolio. There is a certain irony in my buying CREL. They bought IVII last summer giving me a nice gain on that stock. So in essence I own IVII once again.

Lam Research (LRCX) – this was a bit of a play on my blue light special study. LRCX has been a “semi” (yuck, yuck) regular on the MFI lists for many quarters. They recently dropped sharply from mid-50s to mid-40s. I do think some semiconductor companies are making a bit of a comeback of late.

The PACR add-on was a little pre-mature (was due to come up in Mid March). But it was down today and seemed like a bargain. That’ll give PACR a common anniversary date next year.

I’ll miss UST. It ended up 59% for me. It is still on 50 over $1b MFI list. I will watch it and if it takes a tumble for some reason (unlikely as a steady performer) I may add it at later opportunity. Ditto for PTEN. I would have probably kept it, but for some reason it wasn’t on the list. If it re-appears, I may add it at later time. MSTR of course spiked up right after I sold it (not that I noticed). No complaints though as I made 36% for the year on this former dot-com darling.

I will probably sit on the HW cash for a week. ANF and TBL will likely be sold next week and with the HW cash I’ll have just about the right $ for two full stocks (remember, I have increased by 50% my investment per stock from February of last year).

FDG has really been marching up of late. This stock was pounded when the trust laws in Canada were changed effective in 2010. Then it got pounded more as anything to do with coal was out of favor. But they had their earnings when I was skiing and announced a $1.00 dividend. I think when you do the math, if you get $1.00 per quarter for 4 quarters that is pretty good for a $20 stock (20%), so the stock has bounced off its lows about 25%. Hmm, I think I mentioned that FDG could pay for itself in dividends in 5 years and that is was obscenely cheap in this blog a month or so ago.

Basically a flat day for my portfolio. In hindsight I sold MGLN & MSTR too early in the day, missing out on about $600. Oh well, who was to know? PGI built on its 8%+ gain on Friday with another 6% move today. That means that since January 23^rd, PGI is p almost 24%.

Final joke of the day: I have decided that when Frontier Oil comes up to be sold I need to replace it with NOOF as NOOF is “New Frontier”. It just seems so appropriate. Out with the Old Frontier, in with New Frontier.