Well, the Port is "ta-da!" back where it should be. That is, back to 24% returns, annualized.
Dendreon was the prime mover, of course, and I yesterday sold 500 of the 900 shares the Port held. With the proceeds I bought 2,000 MannKind (MNKD) at $6.93 and sold 20 June $8 calls against them for $55 each.
I promised a brief writeup on MannKind but am lacking in time today. So suffice it to say MNKD is another stock I'm buying in my real-money IRA - selling some calls and holding most long through the summer.
Regards,
Trond
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Greek Bailout - Mauldin letter
John Mauldin's latest letter (click on the header of my blog entry to access it) starts out in a very interesting way:
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It now looks like almost 30% of the Greek financing will come from the IMF, rather than just a small portion. And since 40% of the IMF is funded by US taxpayers, and that debt will be JUNIOR to current bond holders (if the rumors are true) I can't tell you how outraged that makes me.
What that means is that US (and Canadian and British, etc.) tax payers will be giving money to Greece who will use a lot of it to roll over old bonds, letting European banks and funds reduce their exposure to Greece while tax-payers all over the world who fund the IMF assume that risk. And does anyone really think that Greece will pay that debt back? IMF debt should be senior and no bank should be allowed to roll over debt and reduce their exposure to Greek debt on the back of foreign tax-payers.
---
Regardless of the seniority of the bonds, this is pretty outrageous. Anyone feel like contacting their Congressional delegates?
Regards,
Trond
---
It now looks like almost 30% of the Greek financing will come from the IMF, rather than just a small portion. And since 40% of the IMF is funded by US taxpayers, and that debt will be JUNIOR to current bond holders (if the rumors are true) I can't tell you how outraged that makes me.
What that means is that US (and Canadian and British, etc.) tax payers will be giving money to Greece who will use a lot of it to roll over old bonds, letting European banks and funds reduce their exposure to Greece while tax-payers all over the world who fund the IMF assume that risk. And does anyone really think that Greece will pay that debt back? IMF debt should be senior and no bank should be allowed to roll over debt and reduce their exposure to Greek debt on the back of foreign tax-payers.
---
Regardless of the seniority of the bonds, this is pretty outrageous. Anyone feel like contacting their Congressional delegates?
Regards,
Trond
Monday, May 3, 2010
Watchlists
I recommend that everyone who is interested in individual stocks maintain one or more watchlists.
This is simply a list of companies that you are interested in. Most brokerages allow you to maintain a list, or Yahoo Finance! does quite nicely. If you get into the habit of checking in every day, you'll see a few benefits.
For one, you will hear news about your stocks very quickly. Of course, most people don't live and breathe the market, and conventional wisdom has it that one should not do this as it leads to that most evil practice of all - day trading. Ha!
Of course, conventional wisdom also counsels one to place your long term dollars in mutual funds and let the experts do their thing. As you are reading this, gentle reader, I assume you probably had an internal "Ha!" go off yourself.
It's usually not necessary to know news of a stock that is important to you immediately; very few things will be life and death to a corporation. Biotech may be the exception - trial news can kill or revive those very quickly, of course. But being aware of something at least gives you the power of choice. Here's an example: Oncothyreon (ONTY) received the unwelcome news a couple months ago that Stimuvax trials were being halted on safety concerns. It dropped immediately, of course, but kept dropping some more over the next few days. If this news spooked you, you at least had the chance the next day to sell at a higher price than the succeeding days would have allowed you.
Immersing yourself in the news also mean you are more in tune with your choices. You see earnings announcements, insider buys or sells, product information and the like; and hopefully you begin to understand the company somewhat better over time.
The other main benefit of a watchlist is that you begin to have an appreciation for the daily swings in price. I am not endorsing very active trading (although not disparaging it either) - but knowing that a stock you are strongly interested in is at a low point for the year, with no appreciable bad news or other information, may give you the slight extra nudge to become a shareholder. Entry price does matter - even in the long term, buying a stock at $9 instead of $10.50 will mean several extra percentage points of gain, or allow you to buy more shares than you could otherwise have done. And over the course of months, a swing of a couple dollars in price WILL happen.
I desperately need to update my blog watchlist: JAV is being bought out at $2.19 (a nice gain from my rec about 16 months ago at $1-ish), SGMO probably won't see sub $5 again, and Dendreon almost certainly will never be available at my latest upgrade of under $30.
My additions will include MannKind, Oncothyreon, Paramount Gold, Lexicon, and Opexa. I hope to talk of some of these soon in future posts. MannKind, Oncothyreon, and Paramount are probably the most timely buys; Arena and Elan would be next.
On a final note: I sold some small amounts of Dendreon over the last couple days but intend on holding the majority for the absolutely long haul. The guy who sold Microsoft for 3 or 4 times his stake looked really smart in the short term, but I believe this puppy has legs. :-)
Regards,
Trond
This is simply a list of companies that you are interested in. Most brokerages allow you to maintain a list, or Yahoo Finance! does quite nicely. If you get into the habit of checking in every day, you'll see a few benefits.
For one, you will hear news about your stocks very quickly. Of course, most people don't live and breathe the market, and conventional wisdom has it that one should not do this as it leads to that most evil practice of all - day trading. Ha!
Of course, conventional wisdom also counsels one to place your long term dollars in mutual funds and let the experts do their thing. As you are reading this, gentle reader, I assume you probably had an internal "Ha!" go off yourself.
It's usually not necessary to know news of a stock that is important to you immediately; very few things will be life and death to a corporation. Biotech may be the exception - trial news can kill or revive those very quickly, of course. But being aware of something at least gives you the power of choice. Here's an example: Oncothyreon (ONTY) received the unwelcome news a couple months ago that Stimuvax trials were being halted on safety concerns. It dropped immediately, of course, but kept dropping some more over the next few days. If this news spooked you, you at least had the chance the next day to sell at a higher price than the succeeding days would have allowed you.
Immersing yourself in the news also mean you are more in tune with your choices. You see earnings announcements, insider buys or sells, product information and the like; and hopefully you begin to understand the company somewhat better over time.
The other main benefit of a watchlist is that you begin to have an appreciation for the daily swings in price. I am not endorsing very active trading (although not disparaging it either) - but knowing that a stock you are strongly interested in is at a low point for the year, with no appreciable bad news or other information, may give you the slight extra nudge to become a shareholder. Entry price does matter - even in the long term, buying a stock at $9 instead of $10.50 will mean several extra percentage points of gain, or allow you to buy more shares than you could otherwise have done. And over the course of months, a swing of a couple dollars in price WILL happen.
I desperately need to update my blog watchlist: JAV is being bought out at $2.19 (a nice gain from my rec about 16 months ago at $1-ish), SGMO probably won't see sub $5 again, and Dendreon almost certainly will never be available at my latest upgrade of under $30.
My additions will include MannKind, Oncothyreon, Paramount Gold, Lexicon, and Opexa. I hope to talk of some of these soon in future posts. MannKind, Oncothyreon, and Paramount are probably the most timely buys; Arena and Elan would be next.
On a final note: I sold some small amounts of Dendreon over the last couple days but intend on holding the majority for the absolutely long haul. The guy who sold Microsoft for 3 or 4 times his stake looked really smart in the short term, but I believe this puppy has legs. :-)
Regards,
Trond
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