RD's Picks

After the market's lifeguards kicked me back to the kiddie pool today, I wanted to see if I could come up with anything constructive out of the drubbing.

The financial press attributed much of today's sell off to the Fed minutes indicating they were more worried about inflation than the stock market and, therefore, a rate cut might not be in the cards. If that's the case, stocks should have performed in the opposite direction from what they would have done in response to a rate cut, i.e. the stocks that would benefit most from a cut should have been hit the hardest in today's market. It seemed like a good opportunity to grade myself on my portfolio ranking for the question of the week.

The table below shows the stocks in my portfolio, their percentage change today, where my assessment over the weekend placed them and how they actually ranked. It's disappointing not to see a single positive return in the crowd.

I missed Northgate Minerals (NXG), Unilever plc (UL) and AT&T (T) pretty badly and didn't see any significant news on any of them. Overall, I thought my predictions tracked the actual response pretty well.

I'm not sure this tells me much, there were a lot more variables than just the Fed's minutes acting in the markets today and one-day results would have quite a bit of random noise in them. But, it was more interesting than watching TV.

Thanks for reading.

Disclosure: I own shares of CVX, WFC, GSF, T, CSCO, and PSEC.

Comments: View Comments |  Tuesday August 28, 2007