The correction from last month, along with a significant drop in the value of NTES, has led to some stress with these two, but resisting the urge to overplay and reading up on what’s happening over the past few weeks has calmed my nerves considerably. Some added transactions are listed below, and I’ve also posted spreadsheets detailing positions, gains, losses, etc. The news with NTES involves the Chinese government installing a policy where players of internet games are limited to a certain amount of hours per week. How this impacts the company’s earnings in the short/long term remain to be seen, but under $18 was where I felt the bottom was, having decided this weekend to buy another big chunk and lower my cost per share in hopes of dumping about 60% of it within the next week or so if it should go back above $19.
As for the rest of the $1 million portfolio, a number of my small cap plays have done very well, and a couple not so much. Thus far I’m right at break-even, but once the transaction costs and taxes (short sells) are factored in, I’ll still have some room to catch up. With $180K in hand at this point, I’m carefully considering a couple buys, but right now it depends on a few target price triggers that haven’t been close within the past 10 sessions. Even with the overall lack of productivity, I’m going to hold of on additions as I have the past couple months, as earnings data is out all this week along with consumer spending numbers that I think will either lead to a steady rise or something like the correction that took place in February. PBR (PetroBrazil) was my #1 play from the end of February/beginning of March, and it continues to kick ass in spite of the drop in oil prices since the UK sailors were released. Almost 10% of my entire portfolio is in this one stock, and while I’ll admit that my overzealous aproach to NTES was illadvised, at least I learned something from it…mainly that a country like China cannot be trusted to regulate in the market’s favor all the time…who knew?
A – SELL 150 CAT @ $66.60 = $9,900.00
A – BUY 600 NTES @ $17.10 = $10,260 ($78.25 cash balance)
B – BUY 4000 NTES @ $17.33 = $69,320
B – SELL 550 WAG @ $46.02 = $25,311
B – SELL 500 UNH @ $52.96 = $26,480
B – SELL 350 PRU @ $92.06 = $32,221
B – SELL 150 GOOG @ $468.68 = $70,302
B – SELL 4,500 EWJ @ 14.61 = $65,745
B – SELL 600 CHL @ 48.09 = $28,854 ($108,290.75 cash balance)
Previous Updates:
2/26/2007
2/22/2007
2/2/2007
Portfolio B as of 4/16/07 (started with $1,000,000)
Symbol Shrs PrPaid CurrPr Value Gain
ACI 500 33.58 37.75 $18,875.00 $2,085.00 12.42%
ACOR 800 22.55 23.9 $19,120.00 $1,080.00 5.99%
AVR 800 16.15 20.21 $16,168.00 $3,248.00 25.14%
AW 2000 13.22 12.54 $25,080.00 $1,360.00 -5.14%
BAM 1250 55.88 56.54 $70,675.00 $825.00 1.18%
BSC 175 168.12 153.05 $26,783.75 $2,637.25 -8.96%
CHL 650 51.59 48.25 $31,362.50 $2,171.00 -6.47%
CME 75 550 562.38 $42,178.50 $928.50 2.25%
CNQ 350 51.32 60.42 $21,147.00 $3,185.00 17.73%
COST 250 58.09 54.13 $13,532.50 $990.00 -6.82%
FDX 250 118.21 108.33 $27,082.50 $2,470.00 -8.36%
FITB 250 40.59 39.5 $9,875.00 $272.50 -2.69%
GS 150 220.15 214.01 $32,101.50 $921.00 -2.79%
IAU 375 68.13 68.17 $25,563.75 $15.00 0.06%
MLM 125 132.4 134.86 $16,857.50 $307.50 1.86%
NTES 10250 19.52 17.96 $184,090.00 $15,990.00 -7.99%
PBR 900 94.04 107.14 $96,426.00 $11,790.00 13.93%
PPP 350 49.46 51.61 $18,063.50 $752.50 4.35%
PRU 400 93.13 92.65 $37,060.00 $192.00 -0.52%
RIV 600 21.05 29.46 $17,676.00 $5,046.00 39.95%
SCMR 3000 3.95 3.73 $11,190.00 $660.00 -5.57%
TS 1000 46.79 48.5 $48,500.00 $1,710.00 3.65%
USG 200 54.13 47.46 $9,492.00 $1,334.00 -12.32%
Securities Total $818,900.00
CASH 180,290.75
Holdings 999,190.75 $809.25 -0.081%
Complete Transaction Log for Portfolio B:
Buy Pharma, their investment in senators seems to be paying off:
WASHINGTON (AP) – The Senate blocked legislation on Wednesday that would let the government negotiate Medicare drug prices. Democrats couldn’t muster the 60 votes needed to bring the bill up for a vote.
Under the Medicare drug benefit, private insurance plans negotiate with drug makers over the price of medicine for their customers. About 22 million seniors and the disabled are enrolled in such plans. Some lawmakers, mostly Democrats, contend the government could use its leverage to drive a better bargain than individual insurers, which would lower the cost of the program for taxpayers and seniors.
karl, you’re right about that! I’ve got a notebook with this and other examples of Republicans in this session completely selling out to business.
How can any one of them claim to be interested in fiscal discipline when this is how they apply their power in Congress?
The whole less regulation mantra of the republican party is based on the idea that if it hurts the bottom line of a corporation it hurts the workers and consumers as well.
One example of where this dogma was completely wrong is accounting standards. After Enron people were pushing for stricter regulation of the accounting industry, at the time I was an accounting major and almost every industry person and professor I spoke with said that if they implemented new standards audits would be to expensive and companies would not be able to afford auditors. Of course that would mean big firms would not be able to hire as many people and the ripple effect would plunge the world into chaos. Of course they made the standards higher and in order to meet those standards big firms had to hire more entry level accountants, pushing entry level salaries higher. The higher cost of audits don’t seem to be ruining corporate America, in fact one of the few bright spots in the economy are corporate profits.
Less regulation may be good for people at the very top of the pyrimid but more regulation was certainly good for investors and some entry level employees.
Couldn’t post these earlier, and it’s a day late, but on the up and up:
4/18 – SELL – RIV – 29.52 – 600 (40.24%)
4/18 – SELL – AVR – 18.83 – 800 (16.59%)
Getting off the ride w/ these two. AVR is a gut feeling, but RIV was one I bought based on an SEC filing for a hedge fund (DE Shaw & Co.) I track that they grabed up a big chunk. Wish I’d picked up more than 600 shares…good trial run of the strategy though. I’ll get deeper into this in subsequent posts concerning the porfolio. I’ve got buys for tomorrow…they’ll be for the closing price yesterday (Thursday):
4/18 – BUY – ACI – 500 – $35.15
4/18 – BUY – ADBE – 400 – $42.39
4/18 – BUY – IAU – 425 – $67.65
ACI – More upside
ADBE – High P/E, but software that costs a ton, for good reason, with more to come in terms of applications – – – that said, this is the riskier of my recent buys, hence the low share total.
IAU – Gold went down almost a buck today
4/20-BUY-BSC – 200 – $156.70 (2:20PMEST)
4/24 – 12:15PM:
BUY 40 CME 535.13
BUY 175 GS 221.06
4/27 – 12:15PM
SELL 5000 NTES 19.30
Been waiting to get back to break-even on this one stock that has equaled almost 20% of the entire portfolio for about a month now, and while I’m still below the price I paid for it, I’m going to chop my stake in half right now and get busy looking for bargains over the weekend.
As of today, the portfolio is up only .7% since I started, but now that the initial buying I engaged in at too fast a pace has turned into a more patient process, my decisions are proving to be positive overall.
A couple of stocks I’m growing squeamish over are USG, FDX and CHL…decisions will have to be made regarding all three before the end of May. Whether to buy low and create a lower average buy price like I did with NTES, simply hold or sell short…I really dislike the practice of buying more shares of a stock I’d incorrectly analyzed at first, but taking into consideration the fact that my initial slate of purchases was driven by an overeager impulse, unless there are a lot of bad signs that I hadn’t known of back then, the long term play can be assisted by this risky hedging strategy.
CHL is China Mobile, and perhaps my most logical choice to do this with, though at this point I’m really more interested in getting into some new stocks I’ve been looking at. Over the past month, the only new stock that I’ve added to the portfolio has been Adobe (ADBE) and IAU (Gold ETF).
Port A – CAT! The smaller portfolio is up 45.18% in 19 months, and my picks from a few months ago are doing alright. Caterpillar is up 20% since I got into it at 61.29, right now trading at 73.44 – – – This one was a classic chart play, at the time of purchase it was below every moving average I use (60, 90, 120, 1yr) to pick target prices. BUD, NTES, GOOG are all flat for the most part during this same period of time.
Staying where I am on Portfolio A though. The four stocks I already mentioned plus PRU and 3 mutual funds comprise the whole, and it’ll be a while yet before I decide to adjust.
5/2 BUY 1250 ADBE @ prev close 41.73
SELL CME 115 519.39
SELL CHL 650 46.26
SELL NTES 3250 18.02
5/4/07 – 12:02 PM