Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Distributions

Sorry in advance if this post gets a little technical. I did a q&d analysis of the 167 stocks that have closed or almost closed in my monthly tracking portfolios. Before I get to it though, a couple quick comments.

I sold PGI today. Yes it is a week shy of my anniversary, but it was in my IRA so taxes were not a consideration. Also, I am on vacation all of next week. I ended up making about 45% on the trade, making it my 2nd best sold MFI stock after UST. My purchases of THO and TGB are now totally official. DLX has a week to go. I will hold for the week as it is in my brokerage account and I am up about 30%.

It was a down day in the market today. My portfolio held up pretty well. AVCI was up another 45 cents. I think it is now up about 45% for me. It has gone up so quickly that I expect it to drop quickly as well. Maybe I'll be wrong. It was "dividend day" for me. I collected on MTEX, TGIS, FDG, FTO & PDS. Over $500. I feel rich!

Now for the study.

I now basically have 4 monthly tracking portfolios that have a year under their belt. Between them I have one year results for 167 companies. I did a mini study on their results.

1. The average annual return (including dividends) was 15%.
2. The standard deviation was 34%. That seems large to me, but I have nothing to benchmark against.

Here is a distribution of gains/losses by band:

Lose 65% 1
Lose 55% 3
Lose 45% 2
Lose 35% 7
Lose 25% 11
Lose 15% 10
Lose 5% 22
Make 5% 23
Make 15% 22
Make 25% 19
Make 35% 12
Make 45% 11
Make 55% 5
Make 65% 6
Make 75% 2
Make 85% 7
Make 95% 2
Make 105% 1
Make over 110% 1

So that means (for example) that 3 of the 167 stocks lost between 50% and 60%. And seven stocks went up 80 to 90%. Stocks can appear more than once if in separate months.

I then ran what is called a monte carlo simulation against the 167 stocks, to see the distribution of expected results for a portfolio. I ran the distribution against 3 different sized portfolios: 10, 20 and 30 stocks. The table below shows my findings:


10 Stocks 20 Stocks 30 Stocks
Losing Money 7% 2% 0%
Less than 10% 31% 24% 18%
Less Than 15% 50% 51% 51%
More than 15% 50% 49% 49%
More than 20% 32% 24% 20%
More than 25% 18% 9% 5%
More than 30% 8% 2% 1%

This table shows the volatility based on size of portfolio. So if you had a 10 stock portfolio, you had a 31% chance of making under a 10% return. You also had an 18% chance of exceeding a 25% return. As you'd expect, the more stocks that you hold, the more the distribution clusters about the average of 15%. This is a big reason why I have pushed my portfolio actually a bit over 30 stocks. I don't want the volatility, but rather I'd be very happy with the average. The distributions seemed pretty "normal", meaning they are shaped like a bell curve. They were ever so slightly skewed to the left, meaning the most common result would be to do a little worse than the mean. I'll try to update in anothe 3 motnhs when I have another 150 or so stocks in the analysis.

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Keeping Track

Perhaps some readers don't like it, but I love to track things. I probably tend to see patterns where patterns don't exist, but it is who I am. I thought I'd devote today to some of my crazy tracking portfolios. First a couple quick words about today. I did buy one more stock, TGB. This is a mining company. I haven't had a non-coal mining company since selling PCU last fall. I have had buyer's remorse in not buying FCX when it dropped to $53 a few weeks ago. I consider my portfolio to be 32 stocks right now. I actually have 33, but I will sell PGI next week and not replace it.

I had a good day, thrashing the indices. It was all due to AVCI, which shot up for no discernable reason went up over 15%. I took a look and decided it must have been a short squeeze. Over 18% of AVCI is held short. I'll tell you, many MFI stocks are favorite targets of bears... not for the faint of heart (glad I didn't know when I bought them).

Then I actually had some positive stock news this evening. ANF is joining the S&P 500 (Abercrombie & Fitch to Join S&P 500)! That should boost them about 5%! Woo-hoo! Of course those gains rarely stick.

On to the tracking portfolios. First I'll introduce a new one. Lot of discussion on the optimal time to sell MFI stocks. Logically, if we believe that stocks on MFI lists are superior in total to stocks not on MFI lists, then it seems that when a stock goes off the list due to poor earnings or appreciation in price that would be a sell signal.

So my tracking portfolio is comprised of 50 stocks greater than $500m in market cap. Then once a week I will look at the 100 stocks greater than $400m. If a stock falls off that list and stays off the list for 6 straight weeks, I will sell it. At that time, the stock will be replaced with the first alphabetical stock on the 50/500 list that I don't own. After a year, we'll see how the "active" MFI portfolio (which I will call the "Hit the Road" Portfolio) will do versus a strict buy and hold portfolio. If it isn't too much work to upkeep, I'll start a new one once a quarter.

Now here are the two Blue Light Special Portfolios I have been tracking:



As you can see (I think) it is up a snappy 6.5% while the Russell 3000 is up a mere 0.5%. Then here is the March 14th Blue Light Portfolio after 2 weeks:



Not as big a gap here, up 4.6% compared to 3.4% for broader market. The MOT meltdown did hamstring this portfolio slightly.

Enough! Tomorrow I will try and close out my March 29th 2006 tracking portfolio whicxh has a comfortable lead over the indices (again). Wish I invested as well as the tracking portfolios. Not sure if I am just biased or unlucky. But I can't complain, I do have about a 3K lead.

Monday, March 26, 2007

Norse God

Those well-versed in Norse mythology will recognize the God of Thunder, Thor. Those well-versed in MFI, will know that Thor (THO) has been a regular on the charts for the past year. And now THO has found its way into my portfolio at $40.30. What is not to like? They are located in my home state (Indiana). They sell RVs, so don't have to worry about foreign competition and have demographics going for them. Sure there is the higher price of gas, but it doesn't seem to be hurting their sales.

I haven't decided whether THO is my 32nd stock, or simply an early replacement to PGI and DLX, which come up for sale next week. We'll see. But it is officially part of my portfolio. I also had a buy order for TGB, but it went unfulfilled. I'll keep it on my watch list.

I did sell the rest of my OVTI today (at $14.20) as it spiked again on buyout rumors. At first I thought I sold it too early, but at end of the day I was pleased. Check out their daily graph. Think there were some rumors flying? Perhaps it'll be bought tomorrow and I'll have regret over selling the shares (though I still hold in MFI portfolio).

Anyway, that leaves me with VRGY, FDG, VPHM, RAIL & TBL in my sidecar. Wait, that reminds me about TBL (timber!!!). I was doing research on stocks looking at S&P star ratings. They give TBL the lowly 1 star. That is a strong sell. I generally don't pay attention to analysts, but I hold S&P in a little higher light as they are more independent.

I have closed the books on my stock ratings back from December 18th. This is where I rated stocks a 1,2, or 3 based upon what I thought their outlook was for the this quarter. Let us say that I didn't fare that well, it would be fair to state that I fared fairly poorly (yuck, yuck).

Ones - up 0.4%. ANF was best at +13%. PACR and RAIL struggled.
Twos - up 5.2%. DLX was up a stunning 40% (who'd have thunk it?), PGI + 23% and ISNS up 34%. ASEI & TBL down 15% each.
Threes - Up a whopping 12%. Of course PNCL lead the way, up 59%. But KG also was very very good, up 21%. TGIS was off 25%.

The moral? Picking stocks that will perform well in a quarter is like (lets think of the right metaphor) running through a dynamite factory with a lit match! But it is entertaining, as it is just on paper. I did much better the previous quarter.

Given that, I have picked for the upcoming quarter.

Threes - DLX, EGY, PGI, FTOO and ISNS
Twos - PONR, CHKE, KG, BBSI, FDG, BLDR, AVCI & ANF
Ones - the rest. Yes I have a lot of ones this time. Largely because I have bought quite a few stocks of late, and I would not have bought them if I didn't think they were ones.

Wonder if there is an Odin stock???

Friday, March 23, 2007

Dawn of the Dead

I didn't think I'd "live" to see the day. OVTI shot up today. Wow! A double win as I had it in my sidecar as well. It seems that there was a rumor that EK is looking to buy OVTI (OmniVision's Kodak Moment). Who knows if it'll happen? But it was worth 10% today. I did use the pop to sell 1/2 my sidecar holdings... after seeing PALM drop earlier this week, I thought I'd take some $ and run.

It was a good day largely because of OVTI. It was a topsy-turvy week as these last two days saw my MFI portfolio draw even with the Russell benchmark. MF had a little article about MFI (Foolish Book Review: "The Little Book That Beats the Market"). They basically said that they kind of liked it, but would suggest tracking for a bit before putting down real $. Of course the option they didn't mention was to read the blogs.

I do have some decisions to make the next couple weeks. I have scratched together enough $ to buy a 32nd stock. Also, with the sale of PTEN the other day and OVTI today, I have some slots in my sidecar. So stay tuned! Graph and Chart to follow. Have a good weekend everyone, even if Indiana is out of the NCAA.


Current Portfolio

Stock

Purchase Date

Cost

Current

Gain

PNCL

5/4/2006

$6.68

$17.74

165.6%

PGI

4/7/2006

$7.71

$10.87

41.0%

ISNS

7/7/2006

$13.17

$17.63

33.8%

DLX

4/3/2006

$26.41

$33.70

32.0%

CHKE

5/16/2006

$37.55

$45.07

27.2%

BBSI

9/6/2006

$19.56

$23.97

23.3%

VPHM

9/11/2006

$11.79

$14.22

20.6%

ASEI

10/5/2006

$45.85

$53.24

16.1%

TGIS

5/1/2006

$10.34

$11.71

15.7%

FTO

5/15/2006

$28.76

$33.08

15.4%

AVCI

2/20/2007

$8.65

$9.95

15.1%

MTEX

5/22/2006

$13.11

$14.82

14.9%

KG

5/31/2006

$17.31

$19.59

13.2%

BLDR

9/18/2006

$15.91

$17.66

11.0%

IVAC

3/6/2007

$26.12

$27.10

3.8%

ANF

3/5/2007

$74.81

$77.46

3.5%

PDS

3/1/2007

$22.58

$23.08

2.2%

CREL

2/26/2007

$12.50

$12.77

2.2%

LRCX

2/26/2007

$46.66

$47.32

1.4%

PACR

2/26/2007

$28.26

$28.32

0.7%

DGX

2/26/2007

$52.11

$48.98

-6.0%

SHOO

1/17/2007

$32.36

$30.38

-6.1%

PONR

5/9/2006

$30.48

$28.41

-6.8%

HW

2/27/2007

$24.00

$22.21

-7.5%

ORCT

6/2/2006

$11.83

$10.92

-7.7%

TRLG

6/13/2006

$17.02

$15.69

-7.8%

RAIL

5/26/2006

$58.18

$49.96

-13.9%

EGY

2/5/2007

$6.42

$5.16

-19.6%

FDG

5/31/2006

$34.03

$22.80

-25.9%

EZEN.OB

6/19/2006

$2.84

$1.80

-36.5%

OVTI

5/31/2006

$27.79

$13.35

-52.0%

Gain/Loss Open Positions ($):

$26,720

Gain/Loss Open Positions (%):

6.7%

Gain/Loss Closed Positions ($):

$14,457

Gain/Loss Closed Positions (%):

9.8%

Total Gain/Loss ($):

$41,177

Benchmark Gain/Loss ($):

$40,740

Annual IRR:

14.5%

Total Gain/Loss (%):

10.8%