What a wonderful month for Mechanical Investing – for the first time since sometime in 1999, no losers at all! If I could make 15.8% every month, I’d be able to retire in a couple of years. 🙂
Holding for another month:
| Ticker | Return | |
|---|---|---|
| ADSK | +15.7% | Autodesk Inc. |
| APA | +14.4% | Apache Corp. oil & gas. |
| CCK | +9.3% | Crown Holdings Inc. |
| CLF | +26.8% | Cleveland-Cliffs Inc., producer of iron ore pellets. |
| NAFC | +13.6% | Nash Finch Company |
| RIMM | +24.2% | Research in Motion. Glad I held it; lost 1.7% last month but more than recovered. I’ll hold a while longer still. |
Selling these:
| Ticker | Return | |
|---|---|---|
| BMHC | +23.3% | Building Materials Holding Corp. |
| MRCY | -0.0% | Mercury Computer Systems. Ok, technically, I lost my $5 commission. I sold it for the same price I bought it. Close enough. 🙂 |
| OMM | +27.5% | OMI Corp. |
| PBR | +18.6% | Petroleo Brasil. Total return over the 2 months was 38.9%. |
| PHM | +7.4% | Pulte Homes. |
| SMF | +8.9% | Smart & Final, a California grocery store chain. |
New stocks for this month:
| Ticker | Return | |
|---|---|---|
| LDG | N/A% | Long Drug Stores Corp. |
| NFX | N/A% | Newfield Exploration Co. |
| NUE | N/A% | Nucor Corp. |
| PKOH | N/A% | Park Ohio Holdings is back; I sold this back in August for a +55.8% return. |
| STTX | N/A% | Steel Technologies Inc. |
| TIBX | N/A% | Tibco Software Inc. |
In addition, I’m picking up a couple of options; I buy these calls 10% out of the money as far in advance as I can get them and sell them 3 months before they expire:
New options for this month:
| Ticker | Return | |
|---|---|---|
| .LSSEH | N/A% | Lone Star Technologies (May 05 40) |
| .UICCH | N/A% | United Industrial Corp (March 05 40) |
Next trade will be November 1.
Chasing the Wind 
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