Saturday Morning Thoughts

Jubak Picks for 2012

As my readers know, I read Jim Jubak regularly as he is a pretty smart guy. He updated his stock picks yesterday (10 stocks for the next ten years 2012 edition–my annual update of my long-term Jubak Picks 50 portfolio). What was interesting to me was his five new picks for the next ten years: LYSCF, HMIN, PXD, WY and AUY. The clear trend in these picks is that four of them are related to basic materials.

To me, this is a clear signal that JJ is concerned about inflation as he looks over a ten year horizon. I have put AUY and WY on my close watch list and I have actually put in buy orders for both of them should they decline about 5%.

Smart Money Magazine

I subscribe to Smart Money and the issue I got yesterday had a stock screen dedicated to closed end funds. They commented how closed end funds often trade at a discount to NAV, which can improve your yield. As my faithful readers know, I own 4 CEFs: BHK, JQC, CSQ and KMF. Interestingly, SM did comment positively about KMF.

As you can see from below, my CEFs have generally performed well:

Stock	Shares	Avg Cost	Current Price	Dividends Received	Pct Change	R3K Change	Diff
BHK	2,908	12.54	13.80	1,283	13.5%	-3.7%	17.2%
CSQ	5,065	8.16	8.73	1,205	9.9%	11.7%	-1.7%
JQC	4,483	8.85	8.36	1,598	-1.5%	-1.1%	-0.3%
KMF	1,760	21.68	25.41	1,330	20.7%	7.9%	12.7%