Up, Up and Away

Wow, what a relief rally!  It will be interesting to see if it has legs or whether it was just a single day of short covering.  My portfolio (in total) actually lagged the index a little bit.  Largely because TC-PT inexplicably did not trade a single share today, despite TC going up over 5%.  The two should move in tandem, just TC-PT is lightly traded.  If I assume TC-PT was also up 5%, then I would have been on par with the market.

So it seems I was "smart" (at least for a day) to buy the stocks I bought yesterday. Not so smart on my sale of SLCA, which continues to taunt me and is just shy of $31... that is $24,000 left on le table.

Anyhoo, it was (in dollar terms, even with the TC-PT whitewash) my 2nd best day of the year. Sweet.

I was looking at my taxes accrued so far this year.  It is really starting to amount to something.  With my multiplier,

• Dividends: $41,000
• Short Term Capital Gains: $56,000
• Long Term Capital Gains: $128,000

So I have done a decent job managing things to try and minimize tax burden.  It also illustrates why I am holding GTAT.  It is still a short term gain and with my multiplier is up $68,000 (with the multiplier).  NUS is my other out-sized ST gainer, up $26,000.  One strategy would be to sell some stocks with ST losses to offset the gains, but I just don't have anything with enough losses (good thing).  RIG is my biggest dollar loser, down a bit more than $9,000 (with multiplier).

Definitely good problems to have, but when you start making real money and you are not in an IRA-type account, you would be foolish not to try a little tax planning.  I would have to look (I am a bit lazy right now), but I may have some carry-forward ST losses from last year where I lost more dollars than I was allowed to claim in a couple Chinese reverse merger stocks... I know, I know, what was I thinking?