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Strategies & Market Trends : January Effect 2001 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Q. who wrote (147)	12/31/2000 12:52:07 PM
From: RockyBalboa	Respond to of 289

N, thats a fair approach. The valuation with the last traded market price changed the P&L already a lot, and also the real portfolio held at an online broker is correctly valued at the bids, therefore not showing that 10% gain. The worst example is the ESTM position, it is valued at 1/8 in the real world, rather than 3/16 in the SI portfolio, hence this slight difference clips off about 2.4% of the total value. Its actual bid on the ECNs, however was 0.14, thanks to the decimal trading. The low priced stuff is even a bit more gambling than the other EOY buying. If the market really gets a boost than the small fliers go up by 50% or more... trading volume ist the key - most of the stocks have volume and acceptable spreads. XLA, though, is a special situation related to the record date of a possible cash dividend. But also this is expected to be announced in Feb 2001...

To: Q. who wrote (147)	12/31/2000 11:10:35 PM
From: RockyBalboa	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 289

The picks had a nasty performance from Nov to Dec 2000, none of the stocks has risen in Dec, CLRS had relatively small losses...VCLK is interesting. My stocks have fallen much more, on average. CLRS -8% CNQR -46% COVD -21% DATC -19% DSLN -50% ELNK -23% ESTM -33% FFIV -62% LCTO -64% MAXM -80% NSPK -68% OPUS -33% PLRX/D -78% ROWE -55% SMSI -46% TERN -70% _XLA -41% .............. APSG -7.3% CSPI -22.6% LVCI -25.7% MITY -10.1% MUEI -26.5% RAZF -36.6% TMAX -13.3% VCLK +27.4% (!!)

To: Q. who wrote (147)	1/2/2001 3:01:03 PM
From: RockyBalboa	Respond to of 289

N, portfolio is up a bit, but in the face of the nasdaq massacre I'm lured to sell. What do you think? And we were both lucky. Look at other heavy tax loss sellers, like CMGI, finally under 5 with a heavy bang.

To: Q. who wrote (147)	1/2/2001 3:01:03 PM
From: RockyBalboa	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 289

N, portfolio is up a bit, but in the face of the nasdaq massacre I'm lured to sell. What do you think?

To: Q. who wrote (147)	1/5/2001 6:30:25 PM
From: Q.	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 289

Interim results: I'm outperforming the RUT by 13%. IS's port is doing even better. That's after one week. Dec. 29 Jan. 5 change vs. index The Russell 2000 483.5 463.14 - 4.2% my port $8,405. $9,157 + 8.9% +13.1% IS port $18,726. $21,965 +17.3% +21.5%

To: Q. who wrote (147)	2/2/2001 4:49:36 PM
From: Q.	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 289

final results for January Effect 2001 portfolio: I'm closing the portfolio after today, the first Friday in February, as I indicated in the first post of this thread. Here are the results: 12/29/00 -- the final trading day of the year: The Russell 2000 closed at 483.5 my port closed with a value of $ 8,405. InfoStream's port closed with a value of $18,726. 2/2/01 -- the first Friday of February: The Russell 2000 closed at 500.99, a change of + 3.6% My port closed with a value of $10,902, a change of +29.7%, or +26.1% compared to the index. InfoStream's port closed with a value of $37,039, +97.8%, +94.2% compared to the index. These results do not reflect trading costs of commissions or spreads. I'm pleased with my results, and they were much better than my previous years, when I also outperformed the RUT. This time I outperformed the RUT by a wider margin. I attribute my better performance this year to choosing cheaper stocks, with prices as low as $1.50 this time, and to our good luck of having a bubble burst in 2000.* However, my results are almost embarrassingly poor compared to the superior results of Infostream. Probably the main differences were that * his stocks were even lower-priced than mine (including Nasdaq stocks trading well below a dollar) * he selected many stocks that that took a terrible beating in the final weeks of December. These stocks were among the best performing in January. In my stock picking, I chose only stocks priced > $1.25, with an average of $3.40. I was more concerned with value considerations, such as cash per share and cashburn than I was with the RS during the final ~2 weeks. My analysis of my picks this year was presented here: Message 15093906 After this experience, I think I will next year put less emphasis on the safety issues like cash per share, and more emphasis on low-RS in the final weeks of December. I think I'll retain the other aspects of my stock screening: low RS for the year and high ownership levels by individuals. Since I only keep the stocks for about 5 weeks anyway, safety isn't that important. This approach, modeled after Infostream's, will have the disadvantage of higher trading costs, but the superior performance seems to more than justify the costs. My actual trading profits were different from the paper portfolio especially because I actually bought before the last trading day of the year. In retrospect, the optimal time to buy was generally about halfway between Christmas and New Years Day. By buying one day before the last trading day of the year, my portfolio would have returned +36.3% on paper, as compared to +29.7% for buying on the last day. * The year 2000 was peculiar because it featured a tech-stock bubble that inflated until March and then burst, leaving huge numbers of stocks at a level 90% below their 52-week high. This doesn't happen very often. I suspect that a good part of our success this year is attributable to this bubble burst. All in all, it was a very satisfying and profitable January Effect for me, and I'd like to thank everybody here who participated and suggested stocks. In December 2001, I'll start a new thread, "January Effect 2002." I'll post a message here, so if you bookmark this thread now, you'll find out when I start next year's thread. Please join me then.