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Strategies & Market Trends : Value Investing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: E_K_S who wrote (22393)	11/1/2005 11:12:01 PM
From: Paul Senior	Respond to of 78594

E_K_S: I don't like that my portfolios have become a lot more volatile lately; I'm either going to have to adjust my positions, stay away from my screen, or learn to live with relatively large ups and downs. I'm one of those investors who, once they sell, want to reinvest proceeds as quickly as I get ideas, and I get a lot of ideas. You are right though (from my experience) that sometimes, just holding on to cash is the better alternative. I've decided to risk more money on MCGC. I'll take the dividend yield and likely mediocre stock appreciation: I expect from here that the stock will be pretty quiet, which is maybe what I need or just want in my portfolios. (OTOH, it's possible that this stock could crater further or have its own volatile performance.) To that end, I've freed up some capital to buy MCGC which I purchased several times during the day today. I don't normally describe sales - I assume not too many here are interested in sales from purchases made years ago. Anyway, for most of these sales today and yesterday, my reasoning is that I'd rather have more MCGC than continue holding these stocks (all of which are in an IRA): EPIQ: seems fairly valued at current and forward p/e. But co. has in past sold at higher multiples of book and sales. Sold half my small position (purchased 3/05). WRLD: Forward p/e is 11, but p/sales is over 3 - a historically high number for this company. I have a small long term position in a taxable account. In my IRA I've now closed out the shares there. (Resulting in a slight loss on a few tiny purchases made in '04 and '05.) CPT: A play on Houston apartments benefitting from Katrina move-ins. I now guess the stock isn't going to move much, and if MCGC isn't going to move much either, I'd rather have the much larger MCGC dividend. Closed my exploratory CPT position. FRO: Getting tired holding this tanker stock. It fluctuates quite a bit and I've got a bunch of shares. I'd rather have a slightly trimmed position and some freed-up cash for other, different bets. (I have several tanker stocks, none of which is doing well these days.) ORI: Nice insurance company with a good dividend history. Stock doesn't seem to be going anywhere last couple years. I am guessing if I want to get back in later, I can do so near current price. Sold my position (3/'03 purchase). I experience some boredom here exacerbated by only holding a few shares. VSEA: Tech stock holdover. Poor earnings recently announced. Sold 3/4 of a very small position (3/'00 purchase). I'm tired of not understanding the business, and I give up on the stock. ATML: Okay, I mostly give up on this one. Sold 1/2 my shares. (7/03 purchase) Losing money here, but worse than that, I have been VERY aware every day I see the stock that I was once warned about ATML by J. Bash and Spekulatius. I would've loved to have proven them wrong - and confronted them with it -g- --- and now I sure don't like admitting they were right. So I won't. -g- Message 19102318 siliconinvestor.com HUM: At current price I can't decide if this hospital chain is fully-valued or not. I have more shares than I believe I'd like (11/02, 5/04 purchases); I'll take some out of play. MLS: Announced surprisingly poor earnings last night. I'd been trimming position (3/'99 shares, held in a "mom" account), and I sold remainder after hours yesterday. It's a REIT and now with poor earnings and possible accounting/management problems, coupled with relatively low dividend yield - I'm out. Perhaps better opportunities for me are with MCGC. finance.yahoo.com Also, again fwiw, in addition to buys of MCGC today, I added to small positions in HBP (low p/e) and CRMT. (Their business model (used trucks and pay-where-you buy)seems to be working.) finance.yahoo.com