Discretion Is Marevelous

Discretion Is The Better Part Of Valor

As my readers know, I do not really "track" my discretionary purchases.  Not sure why, but I guess I have just never gotten around to it.  So, I suppose there is no time like the present.  I will attempt to measure my open discretionary holdings against the R3K.

Ok, I have created a table showing the R3K gain by stock (if bought on same day) through today.  It is a telling table.

Stock	Gain	Cost	Price	R3K Gain
GTAT	63.7%	5.23	8.57	9.0%
GNW	118.3%	7.10	15.51	37.4%
HIMX	50.4%	8.94	13.45	4.6%
ATHM	21.2%	28.80	34.91	3.2%
CS	7.8%	28.75	30.98	3.5%
KLIC	18.6%	11.15	13.22	16.4%
HIG-WT	29.9%	21.24	27.60	12.4%
BAC-WTA	20.2%	5.35	6.43	16.9%
GA	3.0%	11.16	11.27	2.1%
Grand Total	44.0%	9.18	13.21	11.1%

Hmm, all the open discretionary buys have worked out extremely well thus far.  You can see that the old faves, GTAT and GNW are blowing off the doors of the competition.  But HIMX is up 50.4% versus a paltry 4.6%. ATHM is now up 21.2% (had another decent day today) versus 3.2%.  Even sleepy CS is now up 7.8% pour moi.

Of course, there is a little selection bias here.  I have sold some of the lesser performing discretionary stocks. Still the overall 44% to 11.1% is quite telling.  I think we can safely say I have had a satisfactory performance with my discretionary picks.