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June 2008 Archives

A trader's market leaves me clueless

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Oil whipsaws the market up and down like a teeter totter. This is a market for traders, not investors.

Which leaves me pretty much down and out. We have to hold too many stocks for my liking in this contest, in a volatile market where day to day changes favor those who move quickly.

I'm just not experienced enough to see beyond 2 or 3 opportunites currently, while the top players have the foresight.

Persoanlly, I'd rather only have about 4-5 stocks in my portfolio right now (GRMN, ISRG, KWK, DKS, KSS), if I had to start from scratch today. All are undervalued, and have promise if their growth falls within analyst expectations.

Stocks I'd keep on my radar for attractive entry points: GS (Below $165), CSCO (Below $24), INTC (below $21), V (when it falls below $80 again), USB (When I figure out why a so-called conservative bank is getting knocked down).

I've pretty much proven that I don't understand certain stocks as well as I thought. TSO, MSFT, NVDA, GE, PFE, NTRI, and NYX all fit that bill. Of course this is all relatively short-term reuslts (4 months is hardly conclusive), and I may turn out to be correct with a longer time-frame. However, within the confines of this game, I did not perform well enough. I have no one but myself to blame.

What I find intriguing is that my longer term portfolio I'm also running on Marketocracy, is positive. For that one, I sold half of my AAPL position when it broke $185 back on May 12th. I then got out of AAPL all-together at $188 the next day. I also sold part of my EMC and CSCO positions on May 13th. I made large bets on all three stocks, and did well on them.

Now I'm mulling whether to dump my CVX position when it goes above $100 again, and whether to dump JEC. Both positions are up 23%+ since I bought them.

Just goes to show I have a lot more to learn.

Monday June 16, 2008 : 09:39 PM

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