February was looking good until 3 stocks took a 15% nosedive within 2 days. Bah. Why don’t they ever nosedive upwards? Still, things are looking good so far this year even with that bump.
- Last 4 weeks: -3.60%
- Last 3 months: +3.2%
- Year to date: +3.8% (Dow is +3.7% ytd from 10,718)
- Last 12 months:+1.3%
Holding for another month:
| Ticker | Bought | Now | Months | Return | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CRDN | $46.15 | $59.08 | 3 | +28.0% | Ceradyne, Inc. |
| FHN | $38.75 | $39.95 | 4 | +3.1% | First Horizon National Corp |
| IM | $19.77 | $19.89 | 2 | +0.6% | Ingram Micro Inc. |
| UNTD | $14.69 | $12.37 | 2 | -15.8% | United Online Inc. Ouch. I can’t fathom why the screens say to keep this one. |
| WM | $38.54 | $43.39 | 5 | +12.6% | Washington Mutual |
Selling these:
| Ticker | Bought | Sold | Months | Return | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ATI | $51.88 | $52.77 | 1 | +1.7% | Allegheny Technologies Inc. |
| CLF | $81.4799 | $87.74 | 4 | +7.7% | Cleveland-Cliffs, Inc. |
| GT | $18.10 | $14.46 | 2 | -20.1% | Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. Ouch. |
| ILMN | $20.82 | $25.19 | 1 | +21.0% | Illumina Inc. Ah, that was a nice month. |
| LMS | $25.76 | $26.39 | 2 | +2.4% | Lamson & Sessions Co. |
| MRK | $34.18 | $35.49 | 1 | +3.8% | Merck & Co. Inc. Hey, look, I used to own a pharmaceutical company. |
| RYI | $19.89 | $26.26 | 7 | +32.0% | Ryerson Tull Inc. I held this one a long time. |
| SPY | $128.58 | $129.86 | 1 | +1.0% | SPDRs. |
| TKR | $36.40 | $29.10 | 1 | -20.1% | Timken Co. Ouch, make it stop. |
New stocks for this month:
| Ticker | Bought | Sold | Months | Return | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AH | $58.86 | $N/A | 0 | N/A% | Armor Holdings. Hot dogs, maybe? |
| BAC | $45.98 | $N/A | 0 | N/A% | Bank of America Corp. Hey, I own a bank. |
| FDG | $41.01 | $N/A | 0 | N/A% | Fording Canadian Coal Trust. Dang it, I sold this last June for $29.45. |
| OATS | $17.75 | $N/A | 0 | N/A% | Wild Oats Markets, Inc. Finally, after all these years, I’m sowing my wild oats. |
| PBR | $89.57 | $N/A | 0 | N/A% | Petroleo Brasileiro. Dang it, I sold this one, too, last year, for $69.16. |
| TEN | $23.33 | $N/A | 0 | N/A% | Tenneco, Inc. |
| TLAB | $15.15 | $N/A | 0 | N/A% | Tellabs, Inc. |
Options Sold:
| .MDREI | $3.50 | $8.5 | 3 | +142.9% | MDR May 2006 45.00 Call. When options work, they work really, really good. 🙂 |
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The next trade will be April 3rd.
Chasing the Wind 
Wooohoooo!! April 3rd is a good day.
Not to a pain in the you know what, but have you ever calculated your returns after taking into account short term capital gains and the trade costs versus an index fund?
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About 2/3rds of the funds are in an IRA and there are no short term capital gains.
Right now the S&P 500 is beating my returns, but I’m beating the Nasdaq 100 and the Dow. If I average all 3 index funds, my returns are about the same. Hindsight says I should have put the whole thing into a SPDR, but my goal is to beat the index funds.
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