I like and admire your strategy and tactics. Your convictions and courage too.
Especially so, given what I see on my screens. And that is that the volatility is magnified by the oil/gas sectors themselves. In other words, it mostly appears to me that the stocks all move in tandem (not by the same amounts of course). I've got a bunch or bunches of these stocks - oil sands, integrated, nat. gas, drillers, etc. and there are days (like today)when the screen is all (well 95%) green for these, and there are days (many) when the screen is all red. Which to me, suggests up days for VLO are up days for COSWF and up days for your portfolio. Magnified similarly on the downside.
I'm a little hedged, but only a little. Have a few transportation stocks - sometimes they seem to go up when the oils go down. Not a real pattern that I observe though.
If I didn't experience it for myself, I wouldn't be so sensitive to this volatility, and be so admiring of the people who are really concentrated in a few stocks like VLO and/or COSWF. That is, I could say, for someone who's in VLO for a couple of years, let's see - entry point is about maybe $15 and now the stock's $100, or maybe $105 the next day, or maybe $95 or $90, what's the big deal? But having bought VLO and having frequently added to the position,I find that even for me - a smaller player than you (I presume) & with a diversified portfolio - the ups and downs represent a lot of monies gained or lost every day. A little scary.
Good to have a focus on the long term. |
