Major Milestone

Today I crossed a milestone. In the grand scheme, it isn't impressive but in fact it is a solid comeback. My MFI portfolio has actually finally passed the benchmark Russell 3000. In the grand scheme, that isn't that great, as I am still down about 35%. But looking at it another way, I was WAY behind the benchmark just 4 months ago. So I like the trend. In fact I am up over 50% since then while the benchmark is up about 6%. I'll let you do the math to figure out how far down I was at the time...

CHCG - I know this is a dark horse stock, but they reported earnings this morning and knocked the cover off the ball (China 3C Group Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2008 Financial Results). The stock was up 24% today (to a whopping 97 cents), but I think that is just the beginning. Think about it:

• They made 51 cents per share in 2008, a 16% increase over 2007
• They have $32m in cash, with a market cap of about $52m (no debt)
  
• They have a tangible BV of about $67m.
• They seen pretty bullish about 2009

If you apply an extremely modest 5x earning factor, you get $2.50 per share. I did buy more today as a disclosure.

CKSW was another very interesting stock for me today. They were up about 16% on extremely high volume, 465K shares vs 67k on average. That was their highest volume since July last year. They are up about 75% since I bought them.

TRA - I am kicking myself for selling before the full year. I had bought shares at $18 and $20, but I sold around $23-$24. They are now over $28. I should have known better as my reason for buying them had not gone away. But I hadn't had a profit in a long time and was a bit gun-shy.

CSKI - this is another of my Chinese stock that I have great hopes for. Like CHCG they have strong balance sheet and have already pre-announced a very good 4th quarter but the market seems to have forgotten it. We'll see... I am holding a pretty good chunk.

Tomorrow is another day, we'll see if my portfolio is still above the Russell 3000.