SSkills, I've been investing for a long time. Got killed in the tech crash and like others was searching for a better way. I started looking at microcap turnarounds about 4 years ago and then seriously at value stocks some time after the VM board was started on RB.
My philosophy is to buy stocks when they are quiet and I rarely chase anything unless it really appears undervalued. This strategy leads to being into some stocks way early. I usually sell when I get the sense that expectations are getting too high. When 10 VM'S say a particular stock is their biggest holding and predict it will be the best gainer in the next year, I'm likely to sell. I keep my trading portfolio at a fixed amount and pull out profits each month.
I keep a watch list of about 250 stocks that I'm interested in and try to learn enough about each company so I can make some sense of an earnings announcement fairly quickly and take action if thngs suddenly turn better. I sometimes buy more when guidance is raised but usually sell all when 1) I think the price is way too high 2) There is a material unfavorable change in the company 3) I have a buying opportunity and sell my weakest stock. I seldom sell a stock because it's not going up if the fundamentals keep improving -- it seems like the big gains often happen unexpectedly in a very short period of time. I keep a financial spread sheet on each company to help learn the patterns (minimum data on the 200 or so companies that are not yet profitable). On about 20 companies I have a trigger to buy if a certain event, sales,GM number happens. I do a quick estimate of next q earnings on the profitable companies and if I'm off by much, I try to figure out why and get better.
Since I started keeping monthly data 15 months ago I've averaged 3.4% gain per month based on cash taken out.
0.034 (3/05) 0.052 0.056 0.130 0.101 0.000 0.050 -0.037 -0.045 0.020 -0.015 0.039 0.070 0.042 0.092 (1/04)
I don't have any energy, financial, or biomed stocks becasue I don't have much understanding of these industries. Here is my current portfolio with a gererally equal weighting and the oldest holding listed first: SPDV.OB (4/04) BUKS.OB (9/04) GACF.OB (10/04) EMRI.OB PDGE.OB RIMS.OB PIHC.OB SOTK.OB MFIC.OB UGSI.PK CTIG.OB AITX.OB TGIS.OB CGCP.OB HSPR.OB JMIH.OB RAE ITI FSPX.OB ZENX.OB
I spend about 5 hours a day working on my investments but less in April-October when I'm running my organic vegetable farm.
I've learned a lot from the posters on this board and benefitted from their comments -- I hope I can make some contribution for the other folks. Tim
AI
