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

To: E_K_S who wrote (35084)	8/12/2009 6:36:21 PM
From: Paul Senior	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 78750

Continuing to unload OXY also. Easier now that I've been doing it, but still sad. Ha. It's about falling in love with your stocks and why that's good and bad. I started trading OXY (a few shares, not often) in the mid 1990's because it looked to me like the stock just cycled. Can not see this from Yahoo graph, but it seemed so to me at the time. finance.yahoo.com Somewhere about 2002, I noticed the stock was above levels it hadn't been at for maybe 10 or more years. So I stopped selling and began accumulating. OXY's just been one of those stocks that I kept through all turmoil and negativity, e.g. the company is run too much for the ceo and management, the ceo is waaay overpaid, etc. When the view is to buy and hold, and the stock has performed over the years, has raised its dividend, has prospects that look okay (Some pundits believe OXY is THE proxy for an oil stock, replacing the former XOM.), and has moved up so much (@$70, I've got roughly a ten bagger on most OXY shares)... the on-going decision seems almost a fixation to just soldier on by continuing to hold. Except that the trend in oil short term is difficult to predict. If oil falls again, it will take down OXY again, and so many more oil stocks that I still hold. That's important to me, because not having sold any OXY shares, OXY had become one of the top five holdings in my largest portfolio. So maybe too late, or maybe wrongly, I am gradually cutting back OXY now until it becomes inconsequential to my portfolio's daily performance. Same with my relatively large position in CVX. (Like you, I intend to trim this one if it rallies.) What I am doing is going through all my oil, nat gas, and oil service companies, and any stock with a forward p/e (as reported by Yahoo) above 10 and trading above stated book value, I am considering for reduction. Also, if I see I've held the stock for roughly three years, and it's now trading below my cost, I am looking to sell. I suppose I can buy these stocks back at any time; I tell myself that. In practice though, buying back at lower prices has been hard for me. I either move on and forget, or find alternative bets to be more attractive, or get scared that my original decision to sell was correct, so I don't want to buy back. Anyway, fwiw, today I sold shares in these: finance.yahoo.com The cash component of my portfolios continues to be larger than in past years. Somewhat late, maybe too late, I'm making an add to my shares of bond ETF, HYG today. I also bought a few more shares of auto loan company, NICK, mentioned here before. ABT keeps falling again now; I keep adding (sigh). Small though. Have open orders trying to get fills in a few other stocks. etfconnect.com