Another Week In The Books

Another Week Zips By

Rainy Friday night here in Southern New England.  Good day to be inside listening to a little Van Morrison.  Speaking of which, I know some of you gave me suggestions for my "Cool Jazz" playlist.  I am now looking for "Great Driving Songs". Does not have to be about cars or highways, but needs to be uptempo.  Something you can sing along to as the weekend begins.

I did have two transactions this week (thus the cash in hand pix).

1. I sold SD.  This was an unsuccessful trade and I lost about 7%. It will go in the books as a short term loss.  I was going through my 16 largest stocks and making a case to myself on each one on why I should own it.  I got to SD and frankly did not have an answer. All-in-all, it was a poor purchase decision for what was a relatively large position.  But Oil & Gas prices are not getting any traction, they have a lot of debt and I am starting to question asset values to offset that debt in face of flat/declining Oil & Gas.  Maybe they will turnaround, but I will be watching from the sidelines.
2. I bought SLCA.  They dropped a bunch this week, and that was my signal to re-establish a position.  It appears I was early as my basis is $20.29 and they spent a lot of time this week around $19.70.  But they closed today at $21.54 and I am already up 6%.  I think I will be ok with entry price.
3. Actually, I did make a third transaction, but it was relatively small and really just a "for fun" move. I bought HILL, which was one of the wanna be Russell 3000 stocks I listed a week or two ago.  To my eye, they looked like the best of the bunch.  Again very small (it is lightly traded, I think I moved the needle) at just 1/4 of my normal buy.

I will give full stats later this weekend, but I am still beating the markets, though this was not a great week for my portfolios.

GTAT Article

I do believe one potential value trap is to buy a stock purely based upon some hype of a product down the road.  But I think it is okay to buy a stock that is reasonably valued based upon current earnings that has the potential added catalyst of a new product.  GTAT does that for me. This is a stock trading at 4.26 (I have done very well with them this year).  They expect to make 29 cents a share this year, 37 cents next year and they have a strong balance sheet. The story gets more interesting when you look at the market they are trying to break into with Sapphire (Can Gorilla Beat Sapphire?).

Finally, I wanted to look at how my stocks (along with some I have sold) have performed since May 2nd.  That was the last Friday/earnings and that was when the Fed started to whisper about tapering.

Stock	May 2nd price	Current	Change
O	51.09	44.83	-12.3%
ABR	7.55	6.95	-7.9%
BHK	14.95	13.79	-7.8%
CIM	3.29	3.10	-5.8%
KMF	35.15	33.29	-5.3%
OIBAX	6.62	6.30	-4.8%
STO	23.45	22.38	-4.6%
STRZA	23.91	22.87	-4.3%
ABC	54.85	52.94	-3.5%
PRE	91.84	88.65	-3.5%
SD	5.18	5.05	-2.5%
NSU	3.64	3.57	-1.9%
JQC	10.38	10.19	-1.8%
CSQ	10.64	10.45	-1.8%
AOD	4.17	4.10	-1.7%
RIG	51.49	50.68	-1.6%
PGR	25.12	24.79	-1.3%
AAPL	442.47	441.81	-0.1%
VIAB	67.52	67.81	0.4%
GA	7.21	7.33	1.7%
FCX	30.34	30.92	1.9%
INTC	24.11	24.59	2.0%
NEM	32.66	34.11	4.4%
NVDA	13.74	14.45	5.1%
GNW	10.33	10.92	5.7%
CF	183.58	194.42	5.9%
WU	15.53	16.65	7.2%
KLIC	11.08	11.94	7.8%
CA	26.98	29.14	8.0%
MSFT	32.93	35.67	8.3%
NUS	54.28	59.09	8.9%
RDA	9.62	10.49	9.0%
KFY	15.99	17.68	10.6%
DLB	31.61	34.96	10.6%
BAC-WTA	5.25	5.82	10.9%
UIS	18.60	20.74	11.5%
CYOU	28.00	31.69	13.2%
GTAT	3.67	4.26	16.1%
TC-PT	15.60	18.28	17.2%
CSCO	20.73	24.49	18.1%
LPS	27.28	33.24	21.8%

As you can see, real estate associated stocks (O, ABR and CIM) have fallen sharply. Also bonk-like securities (BHK, KMF and OIBAX) have also struggled.  I expect these trends to continue.  Not enough for me to turn my portfolio upside down (recall, I already sold KMF, BHK and JQC), but some investors who are really over-weight REITs, high yield bonds or MLPs may feel some pain.  It will be interesting to see whether there is a rotation and whether that will create some opportunities.