Changing the Rules

For 2009, I'm planning to start my portfolio anew - take my lumps, transfer the remnants of my 2008 portfolio into my main account, and start afresh for the new year with $10,000 in cash and a lot of hope that this year will be better than the last one.

I'm also going to make a few changes in my investment strategy:

• I'm going to limit this portfolio to true penny stocks.  Even though any stock that trades under $5 a share is considered a penny stock, I'll stick to OTC and Pink Sheet securities here.
  
• I'm going to tighten my tolerance for loss, from 50% to 33.3%, and set stop-loss orders in advance to make sure I don't waver.  Once a stock has lost a third of its value, it's gone.

I'm also considering a few changes to the nature of the blog:

• Doing a weekly summary seems excessive - I will change to either bi-weekly or monthly, and look for a widget of some kind to show the status of my portfolio live.
  
• I'll post a bit more about stocks that I'm considering, even those I don't buy into, and do a bit less in the way of regurgitating press releases about the ones I own unless the news is relevant to a buy/sell decision.
  

Perhaps that will work out for the better, in the end?

A Very Bad Year

2008 is finally over, and it's been a very bad year for my investments.  At the closing bell today, my portfolio looks like this:

And over the course of the year ...

Not much to celebrate on this New Year's Eve, but reason enough for drinks aplenty.

While I'm disappointed, I'm not entirely morose: there are good years and bad years, and this has been one of the worst in recent memory.  

Weekly Summary

It's just two weeks until the end of a very bad year, and here's where things stand:


In the next couple of weeks, I'll be selling off some of these dogs to take capital losses - not that I don't have losses aplenty in my main portfolio, but when deciding which stocks to keep and which to sell, most of these have little prospect for improvement.

Weekly Summary

Virtually nothing has changed ...



.... not much to say.

Weekly Summary

I've not updated my blog in the past couple of weeks - partly because I was traveling during the Thanksgiving holiday, partly because it's been a horrific bloodbath that I'd rather not watch:


Things are still stinking, and there's not much hope that will change. Within the next few weeks, I'll start dumping the biggest losers to take a tax write-off - and I expect others will do the same, driving the market further down than it already is.

Weekly Summary

Another week has passed, and things continue to slip deeper into the red:


There's still no sign of a turn-around, and not much point in getting in deeper - so for now, I'll continue to ride it out.

Weekly Summary

At the end of this week, I'm back to where I was a couple weeks ago:


I'm still hopeful that the market has reached its bottom - but since there's not much time left in the year, I doubt I'll be recovering. Looking ahead, I'll probably ride out the year without adding to my portfolio, but just ride it out instead and hope for a better one in 2009.

Back in the Dumper Again

I had hoped that yesterday's elections would have helped the markets turn around a bit, but they've taken a turn for the worse instead.

Toward the end of last week, things seemed to be picking up in anticipation of the Presidential elections. I figured that, no matter who came out on top, the market would show some signs of improvement - but instead, the market took a serious dive - all the major indexes were down today, and I expect the trend to continue through the week.

Fortunately, I maintained a healthy skepticism, and didn't follow through on my notion of dumping more money into the markets in anticipation of a major rally. And at this point, I'm not expecting that to occur.

Weekly Summary

In the past week, I've experienced some degree of recovery, but my portfolio is still far lower than it has been earlier this year:


Today's headlines read that it's been the worst month in 21 years, and I'm feeling it - but I also have some optimism that the markets will bounce back in the months ahead, so I expect that it may be time to move some of the cash I've been sheltering back into equities to take advantage of the recovery.

I'll consider that over the weekend, but unless I change my mind, expect to see some movement of funds, and a spending spree in the next couple of weeks.

Bottom Feeding

It's not news that the markets are in terrible shape - that has been evident for far too long. Neither is it news that they will eventually find a bottom - various pundits have been proclaiming it for some time, even as the market has continued to plummet. Eventually, that's bound to happen. What is new, if not news, is that I'm beginning to think that now may be the right time to get back into the game - move some of the funds I've been sheltering in treasury securities and CDs to equities. Here's why:

The market indices have all been fluctuating wildly - up one day, down the next - but have been in a consistently upward trend for the last three days in a row, with less brutal swings in value, and the major economic indicators, while far from rosy, don't justify the level to which the markets have already fallen.

Next week's elections, however they turn out, will provide some sense of a certain direction for the economic future of the nation. It's really doesn't matter which candidate comes out on top: what matters is that the decision will be made, one way or the other.

And so, unless a major bomb is dropped in the next few days, I expect we're on the road to recovery. Granted, many voices have said as much for quite some time, and I've not been entirely convinced.

I'm still not entirely convinced, but I'm beginning to have my doubts about my doubts, and that's as close to optimism as one can get in this market.

Weekly Summary

It's been another brutal week on the markets, and my portfolio is in tatters:


At this point, I'm not laying any plans, just riding the storm out and, like many, waiting for the markets to hit bottom and start staggering upward again.

Headed South ...

When Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were taken into custody, I held out some hope that the government's goal was to shepherd them back to solvency ... but it turns out they're doing a better job of destroying the companies than the corporate executives that ran them into the ground to begin with.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency, which placed the two companies in conservatorship on Sept. 7, directed them last month to start increasing their purchases of loans and mortgage-backed securities as the Treasury seeks to absorb underperforming and illiquid assets from financial companies.

Federal regulators directed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to start purchasing $40 billion a month of underperforming mortgage bonds ... Each company needs to buy $20 billion a month in mostly subprime, Alt-A and non-performing prime mortgage securities, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans are confidential.

When patients, already sick, are being fed poison pills by the doctor they turn to for healing, there's virtually no hope of recovery. But then, considering what Bernake and Paulson are doing to the nation's economy at large, is there any safe harbor?

Weekly Summary

There's been some recovery in the markets this week, but not much, and my portfolio is still well in the red:


Just not much to say these days ... still in wait-and-see mode.

Another Reverse Split?

Rite-Aid has been put on notice: its stock has been trading below the $1 borderline on the NYSE for the past month now, and must drag itself back over the line in six months or face delisting.

Faced with the same problem, Revlon made the same move just over a month ago - and their shares have recovered slightly since - but I commented at the time that it was the first time I'd seen that happen.

Given that Rite-Aid is still struggling to recover from its acquisitions, and the entire market is struggling to regain ground, I think it's unlikely they'll pull out of their nosedive in the near future, and a reverse-split will eventually occur.

I may be wrong about that ... or they may be able to effect a similar recovery after the reverse-split takes effect ... but I'm doubtful on both counts.

Weekly Summary

This past week was murderous to my portfolio - though given the performance of the entire market, I don't think I'm alone in this predicament:


Given the way things are going in the overall market, I'm going to have to deviate from my general strategy of dumping a position when it falls below 50% of its original value. Otherwise, I'd be dumping about half of my portfolio: DEXI, FEEC, RAD, IVAN, and FRE.

The wise guys are saying that this is the time to buy, as you'll make a killing when the market recovers. While that sounds like good advice, they've been saying the same thing for the past month, and anyone who's done so is sorely regretting it.

I'm going to wait for a full week of positive movement before I get any deeper into the markets, and I'll hold onto what I've got in hopes of recovering some of what I have already lost.

Weekly Summary

It's the end of a turbulent week in the markets, and my portfolio has taken a $500 dive:


Nothing has done particularly badly: Krispy Kreme and Freddie Mac have dropped about $100 apiece, and the rest of the loss is forty dollars here, sixty there, twenty there - every single stock is down from where it was last week.

In brighter news, much of the turbulence has been over the federal bailout bill, which has finally been passed and signed. Like many investors, I have mixed feelings about it - whether it was the "right" or "wrong" thing to do from an ethical perspective, and whether it will make any difference at all to the markets, what with other economic indicators sagging ... but what's done is done, and we'll just have to wait and see.

Quarterly Report

It's the end of third quarter, and here's how things have gone so far this year ...


I could feel pretty bad about that, but here's a comparison between my portfolio and the S&P 500's performance this year ....




All things considered, I think I've done quite all right.

MIVA Dropped

This morning, I dumped my position in MIVA, which I bought into in February in hopes that they could either turn around the companies they'd consolidated or sell them off to bigger players, but neither has happened thus far and there's no sign that it ever will.

The result, a net loss of 52.4% ...



They've been flirting with disaster for a few months now, and have bounced below and back above my usual stop-loss of 50% for penny stocks - I finally decided to get off the dime, before the share-price fell to a dime - and divert the cash to better bets.

Weekly Summary

It's been a week of ups and downs on the market, and the net result has been largely a break-even from the week before:


Most of the Wall Street's mood-swings deal with uncertainty over the government's plan to bail out the financial sector, and the only stock directly affected is Freddy Mac, which has recovered nicely from its initial tumble.

It may be that buying in wasn't such a bad idea after all, and that it's taking some time for things to be set right ... though there's still a chance I'm dead wrong, and it will fall back to nothing. To some degree, that's true of each of my positions.

Weekly Summary

At ten end of a rollercoaster week on the markets, my portfolio has regained some ground:


Primarily, my gains come from Blockbuster Video, which rose nearly 40%, and Revlon, which gained 8% as investors regain confidence in these struggling firms. I'd hoped (and expected) that they would rebound sooner than they have - but I suppose it's better late than never.