Are you tempted to trade BRK in anticipation of a blowout quarter?
I am not thinking of doing any trading on Berkshire @ the moment, but this can change pretty quickly if there is a nice pull back. I am not sure it will be a blow out, insurance is in the crapper and housing is still really bad and the USA consumer is tapped out. There stock portfolio returns should be nothing to brag about either. The railroad they bought should have good numbers, but that might not be enough to push up the share price. Beside the top 10-20% earners in the USA nobody else is spending much money so this will be a drag on most of there businesses. The majority of consumers in the USA are spent they have NO money and they are not going to have any anytime soon IMO. Most have just enough to pay the billz and put food on the table. Let’s not even think about the federal government and states problems. Looking @ the global news as a whole the fundamentals for owning stocks is not bullish it is highly bearish. The trillion dollar question for everyone is where the hell do you put your money if you do not want to play the game T-Billz are NO good and banks don’t pay out anything in the USA. Like Gross said you are lucky if you get a quarter of a percent. Who the hell is buying 10, 20, 30 year t-bills @ a few percent beside maybe the federal gov lol? What the hell are people thinking who the hell is going to buy that bond from you in a few years from now? This is madness and one of the best ways not to keep up with inflation besides putting it under a mattress. People are forced to buy stocks and hope Big Ben can keep bailing them out or for the consumer to leverage up further. We really need a change of course in the USA which is not remotely happening we cant just keep consuming and not producing anything. I have been slowly getting my money out of the dollar and hoping for a rally on the dollar so I can get a significant chunk in more sound currencies with better yields. I will be really aggressive in selling my dollars if there is any talk of another stimulus plan or a strong bounce in the usa dollar.
I prefer other names close to lows like JNJ, SYY & CSCO instead of BERK. My portfolio has changed a great deal since I last reported because of profit taking. I am 50% cash now and about 10% of that is in foreign debt. My largest holdings are in high quality names that are reasonably priced like JNJ, SYY, CSCO, DELL (reduced by 80% on the 11% pop on wed), PEP, KFT, WMT etc… you get the picture. Holding a few speculative cheap stocks on top of this like NOK (low 8.85), SVU (low price bought 7.17), CALM (mid 27s) and WINN (low price 6.04). What was my top sector agriculture has been reduced dramatically to only 2 names VFF.TO (return well over 100% do to trading) and MBC.TO (reduced 80% had over 100% gain). Sold out of HEM.TO (guessing around 100% return short period of time), ST.TO (guessing sold for around 100% return short period of time, TI-UN.to (sold for a 50-60% return) VT.TO exited with about a 50% overall return. There where many other agriculture names sold but I did not sell them in the past few months. Then in energy I sold both NE and DO a little below current prices both were bought near the lows. Financials I got 15-20% returns on many names and took profits about a month ago don’t own any now, but looking to get back in. Pharma sector had a basket of names but they were all sold for profits only hold MRK (slight loss). I did not expect this year to be a good year but I have been hitting the ball out of the park on everything and I already have more than half of my total return of last year. If I was all in like most folks I would have had last years return the first month and half of this year. . I know everyone is having a great year not just me but how long will this last?
I have been thinking about buying some more Perpetual Energy (the old Parmount) as an almost pure nat gas play.
I forgot about that name I keep on saying to myself looking @ my watch list where the hell did that name come from and now I know it was Paramount lol. I want to be in natural gas think it is cheap compared to oil but I am going to pass right now. I do not like commodities @ the moment everyone is buying them so I am going to hopefully wait when most people are little less bullish. I am still a commoditys BULL, but I am taking a rest. |
