Friday, May 11, 2007

Swimming Upstream

Close of May 12th 2006 Tracking Portfolio

The May 12th 2006 Portfolio was another decent performer. Overall it was up 20.4% vs. the benchmark Russell 3000, which was up 17%. It is funny, my tracking portfolios seem to typically be about 3 or 4 points better than the benchmark. There is no shame in that, I only wish I were at +3 right now, but I do find it odd that virtually everyone posting on the Yahoo! Board is doing much better. Are they great stock pickers or do they have selective record keeping? Only their hair-dresser knows for sure. Here are the stocks in alpha order (prices are actually at noon rather than close of day):

AEO $21.61 $28.99 34.2%

ANPI $14.88 $6.87 -53.8%

BVF $26.22 $24.67 -5.9%

CECO $31.62 $34.40 8.8%

CHKP $19.39 $23.92 23.4%

CLE $28.12 $32.67 16.2%

CMTL $27.57 $42.84 55.4%

COG $24.92 $37.06 48.7%

CONN $29.76 $25.50 -14.3%

DEBS $29.24 $27.46 -6.1%

DECK $37.76 $80.18 112.3%

DELL $24.02 $25.75 7.2%

DLX $21.75 $40.15 84.6%

EGY $7.06 $5.28 -25.2%

ELOS $22.97 $25.29 10.1%

FCX $62.11 $72.60 16.9%

FDG $29.96 $25.33 -15.5%

FTO $30.0 $35.48 18.3%

GIB $6.98 $9.86 41.3%

GMR $20.09 $31.15 55.1%

GNK $15.57 $39.25 152.1%

HAS $19.59 $32.91 68.0%

HNR $14.04 $9.91 -29.4%

HOC $39.72 $66.79 68.2%

HSII $32.99 $48.13 45.9%

JAKK $21.53 $24.89 15.6%

KFY $20.12 $24.86 23.6%

KG $18.15 $20.30 11.8%

KMG $50.0 $70.47 40.9%

KOSP $47.46 $78.0 64.3%

KSWS $27.68 $28.95 4.6%

LINC $16.45 $14.45 -12.2%

LNCR $38.18 $38.74 1.5%

MEDQ.PK $14.0 $9.25 -33.9%

MOT $21.43 $18.19 -15.1%

MTEX $15.60 $14.49 -7.1%

MVL $20.05 $27.33 36.3%

NUS $15.69 $17.98 14.6%

ODSY $16.64 $13.07 -21.5%

PPD $33.26 $63.55 91.1%

PTEN $31.39 $25.40 -19.1%

RAIL $71.60 $45.65 -36.2%

TBL $28.62 $26.53 -7.3%

USNA $38.01 $40.43 6.4%

UST $40.75 $55.50 36.2%

VALU $41.32 $51.13 23.7%

VPHM $9.54 $15.85 66.1%

VTRU $41.86 $48.0 14.7%

WON $8.72 $7.15 -18.0%

As you can see, the big winners included DLX, PPD, GNK(!) and DECK. Odd that PNCL wasn’t in the list that month. Wonder why? It is fitting that many of the worst performers were amongst my stocks, RAIL, PTEN, FDG and EGY. I obviously don’t know how to pick ‘em! After I have about a year of these tracking portfolios summarized, I’ll do an analysis on distributions, large cap vs. small cap along with the concept of buying only when a stock has dropped.

My Performance

Depressing as it is, I continue to trail the benchmark by about 3%. I know it can change quickly, one only has to look at my week-by-week graph to see that. I did make some major changes this week. In the interest of full disclosure, here they are:

  1. I decided to stop the Side Car Portfolios. Not that it wasn’t working, but it is too time-consuming and I don’t want to trade so often.
  2. So I have incorporated some of my Side Car picks as new MFI stocks. New stocks included KSW and TGIS.
  3. I marked FTO, RAIL and FDG as complete for their 1st year (all within a couple weeks of a year). At the same time I renewed all of them for a new year. So they enter the closed position of my tracking and show up with a new date in top part of chart. Concurrent with that, I added shares to all the positions to raise them to my new investment level.

So I now have more invested in MFI as the sidecar has been folded in. At the same time, I bought hypothetically more benchmark to match the new dollars in my MFI portfolio. I still have some $ from my sidecar, I will likely use that to round out positions of other stocks coming up such as MTEX, KG and TRLG. Not sure whether I’ll take another year from OVTI, but perhaps for the very reason that I think I should not take another year of OVTI, I should take another year of OVTI, if you follow my convoluted logic.

Here is my current list of holdings and under-performance vs. the benchmark. Note that my closed positions are up 16.2%. So it hasn’t been a disaster by any stretch, just a disappointment thus far.

Stocks of Note

BBSI had a nice day. At one point it spiked up over 10%. Not sure why. They did announce () yesterday that they were buying a firm in Salt Lake City and that it would dilute their earnings a bit in 2007. I can’t imagine they went up on that news. I think it must have been an analyst rating them Outperform.

KG was down another 2%. Been a bit of a drop since they announced earnings 2 days ago. Again, MS lowered their rating on KG. I was actually unaware that someone had a “Buy” on KG. Oh well.

AEO was upgraded as well. So I suppose I was 2 for 3 with the analysts today, but I don’t feel happy. Oh wait, one more!

GVHR was rated Market Perform by JMP Securities. They were the same ones who rated BBSI, must be a busy analyst! So make it two for four and I am still not happy.

Current Portfolio

Stock

Purchase Date

Cost

Current

Gain

VPHM

9/11/2006

$11.79

$15.87

34.6%

CHKE

5/16/2006

$37.55

$45.20

27.6%

BBSI

9/6/2006

$19.56

$24.75

27.2%

ISNS

7/7/2006

$13.17

$16.04

21.7%

PDS

3/1/2007

$22.58

$26.64

19.5%

TGB

3/27/2007

$2.64

$3.13

18.6%

KG

5/31/2006

$17.31

$20.39

17.8%

LRCX

2/26/2007

$46.66

$53.93

15.6%

MTEX

5/22/2006

$13.11

$14.56

13.6%

UNTD

5/1/2007

$14.46

$16.02

10.8%

ASEI

10/5/2006

$45.85

$49.54

8.0%

WSTG

4/16/2007

$14.83

$15.74

7.1%

ANF

3/5/2007

$74.81

$80.08

7.0%

CREL

2/26/2007

$12.50

$13.08

4.6%

AEO

5/4/2007

$28.40

$29.13

2.6%

NOOF

4/27/2007

$8.59

$8.74

1.7%

BLDR

9/18/2006

$15.91

$16.17

1.7%

GVHR

4/3/2007

$19.17

$19.30

1.1%

KSW

5/10/2007

$6.80

$6.86

0.9%

THO

3/26/2007

$40.30

$40.64

0.8%

FTO

5/9/2007

$35.16

$35.45

0.8%

RAIL

5/10/2007

$45.14

$45.48

0.8%

FDG

5/10/2007

$25.45

$25.55

0.4%

TGIS

5/10/2007

$9.18

$9.21

0.3%

PNCL

5/2/2007

$17.07

$16.76

-1.8%

JTX

4/9/2007

$28.70

$28.00

-2.4%

TRLG

6/13/2006

$17.02

$16.43

-3.5%

SHOO

1/17/2007

$32.36

$30.83

-4.7%

DGX

2/26/2007

$52.11

$49.19

-5.4%

PACR

2/26/2007

$28.26

$25.42

-9.5%

IVAC

3/6/2007

$23.52

$20.31

-13.6%

HW

2/27/2007

$24.00

$20.46

-14.8%

EGY

2/5/2007

$6.42

$5.33

-17.0%

EZEN.OB

6/19/2006

$2.84

$1.70

-40.0%

OVTI

5/31/2006

$27.79

$14.59

-47.5%

Gain/Loss Open Positions ($):

$10,044

Gain/Loss Open Positions (%):

2.0%

Gain/Loss Closed Positions ($):

$42,568

Gain/Loss Closed Positions (%):

16.2%

Total Gain/Loss ($):

$52,612

Benchmark Gain/Loss ($):

$66,237

Annual IRR:

15.5%

Total Gain/Loss (%):

11.2%


1 comment:

Unknown said...

Is your IRR time weighted (Manager Return)? Or is it money weighted? Thanks.