My portfolios have been a bit cold as well this week. Down about 1.3%. I suppose that is on par with the broader market, but for some reason it feels worse. GTAT is down 7.2%, I think we can safely say I added shares too early. TC is my other big loser, down 4.9%. I suppose that is why I am glum, the two stocks I bought recently are floundering a bit. But HIMX is up 3%, AGX is up 3.4%, so there are glimmers of hope. And big picture, I am still up over 36% on the year.
I did buy a post IPO stock yesterday. ATHM, at 28.80. So far I am up 1.6%, but it is a bit volatile so far. My intent is to either sell at a ten percent gain or else wait until early January and then sell irregardless. I did buy a pretty sizable position, it is my 8th largest holding, between KLIC and BBEP.
I do not really have any grand plans. While we are in a little downdraft right now, none of my bear flags are anywhere close to being triggered. So I will continue to stay about 75% invested. I will play at the margin when I see stocks that I think have some upside (such as TC and ATHM). I will try during 2014, to make MFI (either through the four tranches or via MFI/dividend stocks) a larger proportion of my holdings. And I will continue to try and be patient and look for opportunities, largely within the universe of stocks I follow closely. Not get pulled away by the siren's song.
Slipping A Bit?
I have commented before that MFI results are not exactly random. It seems to work for 12 to 20 months then not work for a stretch, then work again. On and off like a light switch. Not that I am advocating this, but it would be great to know if the switch is on or off. Here is my tracking table, with 50 MFI stocks tracked for a year in each portfolio. A "1" means that month/year beat the Russell 3000 and a "0" means it lost:
| Date | Flag |
| 1 | |
| 1 | |
| 1 | |
| 0 | |
| 1 | |
| 1 | |
| 1 | |
| 1 | |
| 0 | |
| 0 | |
| 0 | |
| 0 | |
| 0 | |
| 0 | |
| 0 | |
| 0 | |
| 0 | |
| 0 | |
| 0 | |
| 0 | |
| 0 | |
| 0 | |
| 0 | |
| 0 | |
| 1 | |
| 0 | |
| 0 | |
| 0 | |
| 1 | |
| 1 | |
| 1 | |
| 1 | |
| 1 | |
| 1 | |
| 1 | |
| 1 | |
| 1 | |
| 1 | |
| 1 | |
| 1 | |
| 1 | |
| 1 | |
| 0 | |
| 1 | |
| 0 | |
| 1 | |
| 1 | |
| 1 | |
| 12/31/2009 | 1 |
| 1/22/2010 | 0 |
| 2/26/2010 | 0 |
| 3/25/2010 | 0 |
| 4/23/2010 | 0 |
| 5/28/2010 | 0 |
| 6/29/2010 | 0 |
| 7/29/2010 | 0 |
| 9/2/2010 | 0 |
| 9/24/2010 | 0 |
| 10/29/2010 | 0 |
| 11/26/2010 | 0 |
| 1/3/2011 | 0 |
| 1/28/2011 | 0 |
| 2/25/2011 | 0 |
| 3/24/2011 | 0 |
| 4/21/2011 | 0 |
| 5/27/2011 | 0 |
| 6/24/2011 | 0 |
| 7/29/2011 | 0 |
| 8/26/2011 | 0 |
| 9/30/2011 | 0 |
| 10/28/2011 | 0 |
| 11/25/2011 | 0 |
| 12/29/2011 | 0 |
| 0 | |
| 0 | |
| 0 | |
| 0 | |
| 0 | |
| 1 | |
| 1 | |
| 1 | |
| 1 | |
| 1 | |
| 1 | |
| 1 | |
| 1 | |
| 1 | |
| 1 | |
| 1 | |
| 1 | |
| 1 | |
| 1 | |
| 0 | |
| 1 | |
| 0 | |
| 0 |
As you can see, from August 2006 to March 2008 was a bleak stretch. Then April 2008 to December 2009 was good. January 2010 to May 2012 is my longest tracked dry spell. Since then, pretty much all up, except 3 of the most recent 4 seem to be faltering a bit. Obviously portfolios started between August 2006 and March 2008 were impacted by the recession of late 2008 to some extent. It did seem that MFI tended to front run the recession, many of the stocks were under-performing (by a lot) the S&P 500 in advance.
During the recent successful stretch, we have clearly been in a nice bull market. So while 7 years of history can not be conclusive, we do see that MFI has generally done better than the index when the market is going up and worse when going down. That is one reason my bear flags focus on smaller cap stocks, they seem a bit of the canary in the coal mine to me.
Not sure where I am going with this, but hopefully some food for thought and I'd love to hear what other people think.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment