Burst of Speed

My portfolio made its best move of the year. Actually dollar-wise, I think it was my best one day move ever. Overall I was up about 1.8%.

UNTD - had a great 1st full day in my portfolio. Up like the rocket (10%) that Stockpickr predicted (Stockpickr: 10 Rocket Stocks for the Long Haul). I had been following UNTD since Septmeber when I bought ASEI.

VPHM - had a very positive earnings report (ViroPharma 1Q Profit Beats Analyst View) and was up 7.8%.

PNCL and ORCT were both up around 7% on no news.

Finally HW and IVAC bounced back a bit from their dreadful day yesterday.

When I sell PNCL on Friday, I will have sold 19 stocks for an average gain of 24%. The next two on deck to be sold in mid-May are CHKE and FTO, they are both up 25 to 30% as well. So it is safe to say that my first 21 MFI sold stocks are a rousing success. Then I will get into the mistakes of the end of May early June 2006 when I picked about five straight duds (FDG, OVTI, EZEN and RAIL to name names... PTSC was the 5th but is already sold, thankfully). Perhaps these laggards will rally a bit during the next month.

I continue to search for the holy grail to improve on MFI. No luck. Even my Blue Light Special is starting to look not so special. I looked at about 250 stocks from my monthly portfolios from last year that are a year old. Overall they were up 16%. If you waited and only bought stocks that dropped 15%, you'd be up 16%. Not too encouraging. I also took a random day from JWs 100 stock list from last summer. I then assumed you waited a month and bought the stocks. I split the 100 stocks into 3 groups, the 33 up the most in the first month, those down the most and the 34 in the middle. From that point on, the performance of the three groups was essentially the same. The more I look, the more convinced I am that the holy grail doesn't exist, that lead can not be turned into gold... you get the picture. But I shall continue to look. I started a 100 stock portfolio today and listed a bunch of attributes (PEG, short ratio, price to sales, dividend yield), we'll see in a year if any of those were decent predictors.

I haven't given up on my backtest study, but my friend who knows Perl hasn't gotten to it yet! You can't find good help for free nowadays!

I will be keeping PNCL at the end of this week, but paring back my holdings as I am up like 160%. I will have enough $ left over to buy one more stock. Not sure what I'll pick. All my recent stocks have been small caps. I may buy a larger stock (perhaps AEO or NUE?) to keep some balance.