Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Marathon vs Sprint

No it isn't an Oil Conglomerate versus a Wireless Phone Company. Rather I recognize I need to view MFI investing as a marathon. I certainly hope it is a marathon, as I have lost the 1st sprint. I got trounced again today thanks to IVAC (Intevac Shares Slide on Weak Forecast) down 18%! Then HW announced their earnings today, they seemed good to me (InPlay: Headwaters beats by $0.31; reaffirms for FY07) but they were down 2.8%. Then RAIL also had earnings (FreightCar 1Q Profit Increases 7 Percent) announced and promptly dropped 2.8%. HW and RAIL were strange as they were both up 5% in pre-dawn trading. Obviously naive traders!

SHOO was my good story for the day (Steve Madden 1Q Net Income Falls) and was up almost 6%. Pretty funny, they had the worst headline, yet the best day.

I did sell TGIS and PONR today (PONR only had 5 days to run and is in the red) and I bought NOOF and UNTD. So I now trail the Russell benchmark by over $13K. But it isn't a sprint. So take a deep breath. I already have some good news. IVAC bounced back a bit AH. Then UNTD had decent earnings after the bell... I think! PNCL will be my next stock to sell, May 4th is their anniversary. I will likely hold them, but pare back my holdings.

2 comments:

Kevin said...

I check out your blog daily and really find it helpful. Thanks much!

Anonymous said...

MG:

I feel your pain on HW, but I still think it's a good investment. For whatever reason, it seems the investment community wants to dwell on the negative -- continued weakness in the housing sector that, based on reports from other companies, should have already been priced in -- rather than seeing better-than-expected strength in synfuels as a good thing in terms of helping offset the housing weakness.

I guess HW is somewhat of a contrarian play, so patience is going to be required. That said, I'm disappointed it didn't move up on the earnings news and reiterated guidance, but it's only one of several recent disappointments with my MFI portfolio ... but it's the early stages of a long race, as you point out.