Well, I have busy enough to be able to get on SI as much as I wanted to over the past year. As a matter of fact, since I am now on vacation, this is the first time in at least 4 months that I was able to get logged on, I think (date of your message).
Radarview has prospered in these tough times. We scaled back on the number of companies we invest in, while following the normal complement of companies. As a matter of fact, our focus was on less than a dozen companies. We made a killing in the market as opposed to getting killed. Money can be made in a bear market, by bullish investors, IF we do not chase any of the speculative stocks.
By speculative, I mean any company that does not have good visibility and institutional support. Heavy institutional support leads to heavy manipulation by the media and analysts, whic in turn gets the money, fund, or institutional managers acting like stampeding cattle into a slaughterhouse. Playing the market psychology and herd mentality to our benefit, I can safely state that the Radarview75 index we chart and track is still down a dramatic amount, like the major indices, but the active portfolio more than quintupled this year, something we cannot find anywhere else.
I would estimate that a vast majority of the gains were made in the volatility associated with just a dozen companies that consistently swung to dramatic enough swings that we made a killing.
However, to honestly answer your question, no I did not go back to a regular job, BUT, as of December 31st, I am scaling back on Radarview issues until the end of April.
We have successfully published Radarview every day, full time, except 9 days of vacation so far, but cut off our subscriptions about 6 months ago. We took on no new readers since we planned to take a well deserved semi-sabbatical from January through April to enjoy life and do a few other interesting things.
However, I will be publishing an abbreviated issue 2-3 times a week during that time, for the current subscribers as my way of rewarding prior support. Then in April I expect things to get back to normal.
After all, a great deal of time (heavy on the time) and effort (a great deal here) goes into doing this newsletter, and restricts me from pursuing some really interesting short term opportunities. This is what I will be doing the first few months of 2003, and then get back to what has been a passion for me over the past 4-5 years, presenting information to individuals and answering volumes of email. I should mention that during January through April, I will be going "cold turkey" and not responding (or even looking) at email regarding the market or Radarview.
By the way, as an example of our "beating the street" this past year, one of the best companies we focused on was Cymer Inc. (CYMI) whic has done phenomenally for us. You probably can guess some of the others. One of the companies, outside of the focused group, and subject of some lively discussions on other threads here was WFR, which was also phenomenal.
We kept to what we knew best and were richly rewarded when the recent rally catapulted our focused group to phenomenal gains. The portfolio actualy went from a -26% to a +36% within the span of just a few weeks (less than 7 I think).
And when we come back from hiatus, we are looking to make a few major changes, like lowering the price of the subscription and then limiting the number of subscribers so we can get more personal with the readers.
Of course, based on the dynamic market conditions, this plan is subject to change if things get moving in either direction, early next year.
I hope everything is going well for you and that you have a most enjoyable holiday season. This is the time of year to reflect our the positives and be grateful for what we have. Even though we will miss our granddaughter this season, we have so much to be grateful for over the past year, and plan to have a most exiciting vacation before New Year's.
Finally, the fact I have finally gotten onto SI (email withdrawal possibly), do not be surprised if I start posting things here for the next few weeks.
Andrew |
