5/6/2015 Tranche

Another Tranche About to Finish

Well, my May 2015 tranche has less than a month to go.  It has been a massive wreck.  It started poorly, with KORS getting slammed early on.  Ironically, KORS battled back while everything else pretty much fell off the table.

It is down an ugly 25%.  It will be my 12th tranche to  close.  And it is easily my worst. -14% from the February 2015 tranche is my only other absolute loser on the MFI select side.

Tough Time To Start

Part of it was just bad timing. May 2015 was a bad time to be starting an MFI portfolio.  My tracking portfolios of 50 MFI stocks that bracket this tranche are each down about 17%.  The ten stocks I rejected, are down about 14% (only two in the green, with ANIK being the big winner, up 41%). And the five stocks I sold are down 18% in aggregate.  So again, a tough environment.  But the eagle eyed reader will note I managed to do WORSE than all these comparables.  Not good.

5/6/2015	Start	Current	Dividend	Pct Gain	R3K Gain
CBI	$50.38	$35.66	$0.14	-28.9%	0.2%
PSDV	$4.12	$2.96	$0.00	-28.2%	0.2%
TSRA	$38.94	$29.82	$0.80	-21.4%	0.2%
KORS	$62.24	$52.29	$0.00	-16.0%	0.2%
DEPO	$23.50	$16.06	$0.00	-31.7%	0.2%
Totals				-25.2%	0.2%

It definitely hurt having two pharma/bio pharma type stocks (DEPO and PSDV) at a point in time that in retrospect was near a top.  Looking back,  PSDV actually traded at $4.80 to start 2016.  So it only recently crashed and burned.  DEPO climbed into the low 30s in July and August with HZNP bid.  I was feeling like a stock market genius.

I still like CBI and will likely rebalance and hold.  I believe they can get back to $50 with some sort of normalization of oil  prices.    I also like TSRA at this price.  KORS will likely be sold.

So I will  need at least 3 stocks.  Still too early to decide on specific names. But in micro cap names, I like BLBD and EFOI.  I also like  IQNT and BRCD.  UTHR is a very intriguing name if it stays cheap. AMAG also.

Whatever five stocks I pick, I am hopefully not to have the 25 point variance with the benchmark noted in the table. That is beyond horrific.

I travel tomorrow to Europe.  I will try to squeeze in a weekly update.  Have a great weekend everyone,  New England is in full beautiful  Spring mode!