Inching Up

It was my best week in a while. The Tuesday after Thanksgiving my portfolio hit rock bottom, about $43,000 below break-even. Today I closed about $3,000 below break-even. Still in the red, but inching up.

I actually created a portfolio of ten stocks at $10 or lower to start tracking. They were up 1.8% today in a totally flat day. So the pendulum may be beginning to swing back a bit. I'll print my graphs and charts a bit later.

I renewed TGIS in my portfolio for another year. It has been a big disappointment, ending up down about 27%. By my approach, I move that into my "closed" bucket and treat it as a new purchase in my tracking (though I obviously did not actually sell and buy it). TGIS is not officially on the list, but that seems to me to be a data glich as they have one iitem marked "n/a" on their financials. I went in and got the actual number and plugged it in.

My next stock to "mature" will be PACR, which has been an absolute disaster (down 41%). It is still on most lists and I may keep it... we'll see, I might go for a tax loss. One stock I am considering is IAR (strange made-up name of Idearac). This is a new company that went public a bit more than a year ago. They have dropped since July from over $35 to about $18. They now pay a 7.7% dividend and Barron's profiled them as a stock worth considering (A Risky But Rewarding Dividend Play).

They are a boring company, publishing yellow pages. Though they also have an online presence with superpages.com. Since they just went public, I expect they are one of these companies taken private by pivate equity, given a make-over (lots of lipstick and eye shadow) and then sold back to the public.

The big issue (that I see) with IAR is that they have a ton of debt. Over $9b for a company with a market cap under $3b. That being said, debt for a company is not entirely bad. It is a cheaper way to raise funds than issuing stock and if you have a steady cash flow you'll be ok. They have had very steady financials for the 5 quarters I looked at. I suppose the yellow page business could go south witha recession or people will spend a greater and greater proportion of advertising $ on Google etc. But I remember DLX last year at about $15 (certainly old time company printing paper checks) and it has doubled since. So there is still $ to be made in the old economy. I don't know. It'll be on my watch list. They do seem cheap, though they spiked about 10% today.

Current Portfolio
Stock	Purchase Date	Cost	Current	Gain
TGB	3/27/2007	$2.64	$4.73	79.2%
MSTR	9/14/2007	$69.55	$102.75	47.7%
VSNT	7/27/2007	$19.54	$26.99	38.1%
KFY	9/28/2007	$16.74	$19.78	18.2%
TRID	11/28/2007	$6.24	$6.95	11.4%
JTX	4/9/2007	$28.70	$31.46	10.9%
TCK	8/16/2007	$36.50	$38.93	6.7%
KG	11/19/2007	$10.10	$10.68	5.7%
HGG	8/3/2007	$13.48	$14.16	5.0%
DGX	3/17/2007	$52.11	$54.40	5.0%
ACN	11/28/2007	$34.28	$35.44	3.4%
LCAV	11/9/2007	$17.59	$18.00	3.4%
KSW	5/10/2007	$6.54	$6.73	3.0%
THO	12/6/2007	$38.61	$38.02	2.2%
HOC	11/29/2007	$47.64	$48.21	1.2%
TGIS	12/7/2007	$6.42	$6.47	0.8%
LRCX	7/3/2007	$47.51	$47.20	-0.7%
PNCL	2/9/2007	$17.07	$16.29	-4.6%
VALU	5/29/2007	$44.01	$40.99	-5.5%
HSII	10/5/2007	$39.92	$35.87	-9.8%
CHKE	7/17/2007	$36.70	$31.22	-10.8%
UG	6/13/2007	$12.09	$10.64	-12.0%
RAIL	2/16/2007	$45.54	$37.05	-18.2%
AEO	7/10/2007	$28.42	$22.21	-21.2%
CHCG.OB	6/5/2007	$5.93	$4.27	-27.9%
BBSI	9/7/2007	$24.13	$17.06	-29.0%
WSTG	5/15/2007	$14.98	$10.02	-30.4%
NOOF	4/27/2007	$8.59	$4.98	-39.1%
WNR	7/27/2007	$46.22	$27.84	-39.7%
PACR	1/3/2007	$25.46	$14.77	-40.7%
USHS	6/25/2007	$11.22	$5.90	-47.4%
GVHR	10/12/2007	$15.91	$5.15	-66.4%
Gain/Loss Open Positions ($):				($42,517)
Gain/Loss Open Positions (%):				-6.8%
Gain/Loss Closed Positions ($):				$39,416
Gain/Loss Closed Positions (%):				5.6%
Total Gain/Loss ($):				($3,101)
Benchmark Gain/Loss ($):				$69,648
Annual IRR:				-0.5%
Total Gain/Loss (%):				-0.5%