The market went up and down a bit today, but ended almost exactly where it ended yesterday. My portfolio pretty much stood still today too although it was up and down various amounts throughout the day, it finished almost exactly where it started.
I haven't done a whole lot in my portfolio since my January update. I've done a few small trades with mixed results, and I have a few options open now since I'm dabbling with that, again with mixed results. The only real big thing in my portfolio to happen this week was I sold off my investment in HLF after it got a takeover bid spiking the stock 21% in a day. After they reported last quarter the stock took a huge dive, where I added to my position since I thought the dive was too much. I sold the part I had added after it climbed up another 8-9% on its own, and then sold off the rest on this news. Overall I think the total gain was only 10% on the position though since I was in the hole a decent amount from the report. Once the takeover big happened though and I got that spike I was happy to leave the position.
Aside from that, I'm mainly doing some catch up from being out of town and being busy with other things, so I haven't been able to really research any new names to add. I'm still a little behind with various things, so I probably won't be looking to add anything new until next week at the earliest, even to just the watch list, which right now only consists of AUY, DIS, and ETFC. I'd have to catch up on those 3 names and what they've done in the last week or so to see if they even still belong on the watch list before I pulled the trigger.
-Rizen
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
Saturday, February 3, 2007
January wrap up
I know I haven't been posting much here, and I'll try and get back up to date with that soon. In the mean time, I'm going to kind of do a wrap up for the month of January. First, the good stuff. My portfolio returned 4.93% for the month of January, which is a pretty good number considering the S&P returned 1.41% that month, the DJIA returned 1.27%, and the NASDAQ returned 2.51%. So I got a pretty healthy return over the averages.
I mainly was able to accomplish this because January was a pretty high volatility month in the market, so while it may have gained 1.5% or whatever on average, it did so in an up and down fashion, not a straight line. That way, by trimming my positions as the market went up, then buying them back as the market went down I was able to use the market's natural volatility to capture some additional returns. I always kept enough cash in my portfolio to add to positions as they went 'on sale' and was always prudent enough to trim them as things went up.
Another thing that helped is I rode the NASDAQ's technology spike early in the year, but around mid-month I dumped all my technology names save AAPL, GOOG, and HPQ because I feel those 3 will still perform even though this is a seasonally bad time for technology. In AAPL, the iPhone news boosted the stock big time (around 10 pts) and I took off half my position very near the high. I bought it all back as it's since dropped those 10 points because I'm bullish long term, but it seemed irrational for any stock to jump well over 10% in a week on a product that isn't even out yet, so I used the market's overreaction to book some gains.
I also started dabbling a little in both short selling and options this month, although it really is just dabbling. I feel both of those are much higher risk than my usual strategies, and as such won't use them very heavily at all until I feel I have a true grasp on how to make good money with them. Even then, I tend to be somewhat conservative with my positions as I don't have a 'real job' to fall back on so capital preservation is much more important to me than capital appreciation, although I still strive to beat the markets for sure, I don't take super high risks either IMO. When I do, I do so with small amounts of capital I can afford to easily lose, and I usually do them in baskets to mitigate risk.
At any rate, I'm going to try and get back to updating more regularly now, but that's a quick summary for January, and if I can come anywhere close to duplicating the first 31 days of the year over the rest of the 365 it will be a profitable year indeed.
-Rizen
I mainly was able to accomplish this because January was a pretty high volatility month in the market, so while it may have gained 1.5% or whatever on average, it did so in an up and down fashion, not a straight line. That way, by trimming my positions as the market went up, then buying them back as the market went down I was able to use the market's natural volatility to capture some additional returns. I always kept enough cash in my portfolio to add to positions as they went 'on sale' and was always prudent enough to trim them as things went up.
Another thing that helped is I rode the NASDAQ's technology spike early in the year, but around mid-month I dumped all my technology names save AAPL, GOOG, and HPQ because I feel those 3 will still perform even though this is a seasonally bad time for technology. In AAPL, the iPhone news boosted the stock big time (around 10 pts) and I took off half my position very near the high. I bought it all back as it's since dropped those 10 points because I'm bullish long term, but it seemed irrational for any stock to jump well over 10% in a week on a product that isn't even out yet, so I used the market's overreaction to book some gains.
I also started dabbling a little in both short selling and options this month, although it really is just dabbling. I feel both of those are much higher risk than my usual strategies, and as such won't use them very heavily at all until I feel I have a true grasp on how to make good money with them. Even then, I tend to be somewhat conservative with my positions as I don't have a 'real job' to fall back on so capital preservation is much more important to me than capital appreciation, although I still strive to beat the markets for sure, I don't take super high risks either IMO. When I do, I do so with small amounts of capital I can afford to easily lose, and I usually do them in baskets to mitigate risk.
At any rate, I'm going to try and get back to updating more regularly now, but that's a quick summary for January, and if I can come anywhere close to duplicating the first 31 days of the year over the rest of the 365 it will be a profitable year indeed.
-Rizen
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