Selling RNO, (rio narcea gold mines ltd). A small cap, small price, small volume stock. Got the 5% arb spread that i'd bought it for a month ago. It's been hovering recently slightly above the deal price of 5.50; i was only able to sell about half on a market order in the last half hour before close here since i entered the trade, executing at about avg 5.54. Guess it's above its deal price because gold prices have been going up, but its basically dead weight now that its reached the deal price.

Bought 100k worth of wendys with my remaining cash here at the close of friday. Rumors it may get bought for 37-40. Currently at about 35. Merger monday news perhaps? Anyways, i'm a wendys fan, love their dollar menu. Where else can you go for a cup of chilli, a salad, and a baked potato for a buck a piece? Or a baconburger, or frosty, or chicken sandwich, etc..? Hmm? You tell me. LOL.

Got rid of my 1 remaining share of Gateway GTW that i'd been holding just for show. It'd be nice, incidentally, if we could see how everyone in the game has faired on their previous buys and sells. Those with good showings but current holdings without gain leave many to wonder how they'd made their gains. Something to think about.
Gateway btw is way close to its b.o. price at 1.87/1.90. No spread. Wonder why its so high compared to others. Maybe there's a thought out there that the buyer got a steal for name-brand and perhaps they'd (GTW'd) take a penalty hit in lieu of another suitor? don't know, don't care - it's behind me.

More or less sick and tired of my play portfolio here. Holding on to my random picks from the start. Want to sell but most of them are losers. MEOH jumping big time here and i didnt buy it for either play or real-life. Ughh. Force Protection, FRPT, another stock i like but havent mentioned, in the defense arena, going up good now. Bought some WEN in real life today. Monday i'll at least finish selling RNO. Will probably hold onto STN casinos until Oct5 or just after their xdiv, then sell. Not content with arb play money anymore, now that we're further into this game with more clarity about the field.
Monday ill pick a random stock to test daytrading, to see if its allowed. Also, will pick a random penny stock for just a k or 2 to see if the 5c/share or 5% max commission takes precedence, just out of curiousity.

Comments: View Comments |  Friday September 28, 2007

hi. i'm bored.
havent really known what to say the last 2 weeks.
Got jacked by 2 girls at the gay-bar after the iowa-syracuse game.
Can't stop thinkin' about them.
Didnt really have a good feel for the fed. have never even tried to predict the fed before.

Anyhows, i think i was kinda thinking that all things considered if i were fed-chairman i probably would'nt of (or at the least - would not have wanted to...) lower rates.
It was my own personal hope that they wouldn't lower rates. Sometimes i guess i don't mind seeing people suffer for there mistakes, though there is value in mercy - n'est ce pas?
So the current scenario would mean some short-term enthusiam, followed by reality, followed by some christmas love/joy/hope.
I thought it might have been better if we'd had some sort of a washout, not that i particularly care what the overall market does, since in my personal portfolio i try to focus on just a handful or less of companies. My SLO port is just floatin' along with modest growth, just like a normal mutual fund, with about 1-3% average gain/mo. Haven't been too inspired to change things, though i know i should.
No new trades here tonight. Now that this fed-watch is over think i'm no longer tempted to gamble on a move one way or the other, so i think it's about time i trim the portfolio down from about 20 to about 9 or 10 positions. For those of you who don't know by now, the ideal high-volatility/high-gain portfolio while remaining in compliance with SLO rules is 7 positions, while having 8 or 9 or 10 positions gives you a little bit more maneuver room. ('dustylove' seems to be doing quite well for a 'many position' portfolio - but perhaps he made his $ early - http://www.investorplaceblogs.com/users/dustylove/portfolio.php -this is not the norm ).

Also, as a perfectionist, i havent wanted to sell any for losses, hoping too much for a perfect sell record to benefit my marketocracy attributes/statistics. One of my cardinal rules of investing is to only buy stocks that will go up over time, no matter how long, so that i never have to take a loss (If I Dont Want To). That's the beauty of time and patience, knowing that eventually every pick you make will eventually be higher. I think the ultimate form of investing for me will ultimately turn out to be Leaps, if i can reach a point where i feel i have the remainder/liquidity to do so. So anyways i've pretty much decided to remind myself to put the SLO first and Marketocracy second, so i am going to be rebalancing at some point here, irregardless of price.

Back to inflation, lets not forget that a vast amount of all consumer discretionary income is ever-increasingly going towards filling up the tank and paying big-ticket monthly communications bills. These huge amounts of discretionary income vastly inflated from years ago and going out the window are not essentially being compounded to gross-domestic-inflation as the telcos and oil co's have essentially been holding onto everything they get and not reinvesting and/nor adding to the economy. So where comes the the discretionary income to pay for increased sales mo/mo, yr/r for regular consumer companies (the WMT's and MCD's of the world)? I think there has been somewhat of a minor paradigm shift from the stagflation picture of the 70's that everyone is so on guard about. If we were to say that in a more balanced (and manufacturing based) society of the 60's and 70's that 90% of houselhold spending went towards 'normal' puchases (durables, consumables, etc...) that that figure has proportionately dropped in today's more service and mobility based economy to say e.g. something like 50-70%. With much more consumer income now being spent on mobility (money for cable bills that allows us to sit on the couch - gettin' nowhere fast, money for the internet - to travel the world, money for telecommunications to call from anywhere to anywhere, and money for gastanks to drive anywhere) and with many of those repspective industries not reinvesting, essentialy gouging americans thanks to goverment granted exclusivity to national geology, radiospectrum, utility, etc... , the portion of consumer income, discretionary or otherwise, that one might of used to expect would contribute to inflationary models has proportionately gone down, or so it seems. Whereforth doth the $ come from to balance out the gouging?.... from modern liquidity, from aggregate corporate participation, from equity, etc... On a related point, i wouldnt be suprised to see many small-margin consumer discretionary stores trying to incrementally boost prices to increase sales, despite slowing demand; essentilly going against the grain of the traditional S/D curve we all learned about in econ 101, (or high-school econ-AP - in my case).
What does this mean?? i don't know. Just blogging. The big picture for me is to just continue to focus on individual stocks, and there are a great many that look cheap. I guess sometimes optimism reigns supreme.

Comments: View Comments |  Thursday September 20, 2007

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Comments: View Comments |  Friday September 14, 2007

just traded out of JAVA, aka SUNW, at limit5.55. figured market'd go up today, the first day after labor day; i guess java's got some beta in line with the market. Appx 15%gain on this for the port.

Previous Post on JAVA/SUNW >> from Aug.13th ("First Trades..."): "SUNW (i dunno why - i just see it slightly under 5 and figure maybe it's got some support there, maybe sell out 5.30ish +/- .15, off highs, vista symbiosis numbers by christmas?) "

I see it also just happens to be up to its 200d m.a. at 5.57 according to the Mrktcy quote.
Its tuesday and i just felt like doing something. Perhaps coulda 'let it run'.

Making this post short here, gotta run off to class soon.

Java's 3-5 year chart is rising. Good push through 5 and upto 6 1/2 earlier in the year. The fallback to under 5 made it almost inevidable this would rise again. Sittin right on the cusp of the mid 5 to mid 6 psych range, which also incidentally happens/ed to be where the "200d m.a" is (i personally dont pay attn to 'moving averages' - but just mentioning it for those of you who do since i noticed it when i entered my trade). The midterm charts on it show its at its most recent peak level around the 5 1/2 level. I could see this going either way, back down to 5ish or up to 6 ish.

Wouldnt hesitate to get back in it for fall/winter upswing if it pulled back. One day shoot-up on intraday chart, but 5d/10d shows a nice upswing not fully exponential yet, so could go either way. not too keen on the uncertainty and content to take the profit.

would be an interesting stock to do a 'trailing buy' or whatever you'd call it, - limit order i guess. Nevermind - what i mean is, although i subscribe to the simplest, most elemental theory of 'buy low sell high', this is a stock i'd consider buying again close to 6, for an upshoot play on margin swellers. i.o.w. some brokers only allow full margin on 6$+ stocks, does yours'n? p.r.s.v.p.

Looks like there's continual decent news on the stock. fairly healthy - some debt but not too much, coupla bucks in bv, vascillating ea's last few years' quarters but another dime up quarter might solidify the/an upmove?

while im not confident which way the stock will trade now, i am confident in taking profits. one might be tempted to call this a trade, i.e exploiting a technical analysis, however there is a certain degree of 'investment' behind it. I am actually a very patient investor, moreso than a trader. You will tend to notice that almost all my positions are sold out at a profit. I'd guess that over the long haul one would likely see 70/80/90/+ percent of my sells done for atleast some gain.

as a conservative investor, i realize that traditionally a 15%gain is going to beat cash, 'interest rates" i.e 4/5/6/7/8 % etc..., + inflation, and sometimes 'the market' as well. while a stock, in this case java, could run (not extraordinarily likely given market volatility), i realize i should be content to take a 15% gain in one month, let alone one year. i can always sell out and buy something elsenext to patiently wait 6 months for it to go up. i'd say about 6 months is close to my limit for waiting on a stock to take a loss.

kinda wish i had my ops accnt funded. the premos on both the Ps and Cs on this for the near term mo's are pretty small. 4cents for a 5 put i think, almost even money for a 6 put, calls i forget... au revoir......

Comments: View Comments |  Tuesday September 4, 2007  |  Stocks: JAVA,