whateverworks

Pushing the Falcon over the Crest

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Coming to the end of the StrategyLab contest, I've made a few changes to that fund.

Continuing with my belief that December will end generally up, I sold part of SRS, the Ultra-Short Real Estate ETF. I bought Unilever NV (UN), continuing to beef up holdings in the area of food and consumer staples.

To get more cash, I sold DSX, my lowest stock, but will probably buy back this shipping company sometime if the contest fund can continue.

Now I am buying Tradestation (TRAD) which is being discussed in Marketocracy forums as an especially good stock for a bear market. They have a product traders need when times get tough. This company probably would not show up tops on my stock screenings; however the financials look OK.

Probably, for the end of the contest, I should have sold everything that was down over the past month and sunk the resulting cash into those stocks which have done best over the past couple of months. However it is difficult to think in terms of everything coming to an end in about a week. And I do want to keep the fund long-term, if possible.

I've been very busy trying to keep up with developments in my non-contest MagicMicroCap Fund. When RICK grew to over 150% in December I took some profit. (I sell about half at 100%, 150%, 200%, etc.). FSTR topped 100% growth; so I sold part of that, too.

It was time to clean house again and sell any stocks that were not up during the past 12 months, even though some had grown previously and may again, someday. So I said goodby to SPAR, TRT, TGE, UCTT, EDGW and WPCS. To replace them I bought ITI, ODC and ABHH. ABHH was a short-term oddball choice. It is being acquired which should result in a small but hopefully quick profit. I also bought more ARSD because it will be moving to NASDAQ.

I nervously sold TAYD. Taylor Devices is proposing to merge with its closely linked affiliate, Tayco Developments, in a move that they announced would save the companies about $35,000 a year. This sounded good but the price immediately dropped. I decided to follow the market's sentiment and take this as bad news rather than good.

Then I bought yet more RGEN, CCF and USAP because these stocks have been doing OK lately in spite of the volatile market.

My StrategyLab-Type Fund is probably much more "sensible" and may ultimately do better than my fund from the erratic MicroCap world but with MicroCaps life is always fast-paced.