Mechanical Investing was turbulent this month; there were some big losers, but some equally big winners. Overall I was up 1.5% for the month, so I’m not going to complain.

Holding for another month:

Ticker	Return
CCK	+10.2%	Crown Holdings Inc. +18.6% in 2 months; I’ll keep holding it.
LDG	-3.5%	Long Drug Stores Corp. It’s up 5.5% in the last week though, so it’s looking good.
NAFC	-5.0%	Nash Finch Company. It’s given back some gains, but still up 7.2% since I bought it.
PKOH	+5.4%	Park Ohio Holdings; I sold this back in August for a +55.8% return. and repurchased 2 months later.
.LSSEH	-81.8%	Lone Star Technologies (May 05 40). Ouch. Options are volatile, that’s why I buy only tiny amounts. This one will be sold in January.
.UICCH	-55.6%	United Industrial Corp (March 05 40). Options are volatile. 😛 I won’t sell till 1st of January.

Selling these:

Ticker	Return
ADSK	+8.0%	Autodesk Inc. Total +22.9% over 2 months. Wo0t!
APA	+1.0%	Apache Corp. oil & gas. +15.3% over 2 months, but it looks like it’s gone flat now.
CLF	-9.2%	Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. Gave a lot of gains back, but still +13.0 over 2 months.
NFX	-6.0%	Newfield Exploration Co. No more, I give up.
NUE	-12.3%	Nucor Corp. Ouch ouch ouch.
RIMM	+24.7%	Research in Motion. Held this for 3 months; it lost 1.7% in the first month, but final over 3 months was +51.9%. Wo0t!
STTX	-10.0%	Steel Technologies Inc. No mas, no mas.
TIBX	+9.1%	Tibco Software Inc. That’ll do nicely.

New stocks for this month:

Ticker	Return
AAPL	N/A%	I’ve always wanted to own Apple Computer. Ipods are big.
AKS	N/A%	AK Steel Holdings
BRCD	N/A%	Brocade Communications Systems Inc
FDS	N/A%	Factset Research Systems Inc
IWOV	N/A%	Interwoven, Inc. I wov this stock! 😛
MACR	N/A%	Macromedia, Inc.
NVR	N/A%	NVR Inc, builds homes and makes mortgages.
VLO	N/A%	Valero Energy Corp

In addition, I’m picking up a couple more 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
.BGUFF	N/A%	BMHC (June 05 30)
.SWNFJ	N/A%	SWN (June 05 50)

Overall for the volatile month of October I was up 1.5%. Next trade will be November 29.