Doing a little profit taking

It's been a while since I decided to blog about my ups and downs in the stock market and since I decided to sell a few shares of one of my stocks I figured hell why not. Now I know normally people(including me) say don't look at your portfolio when you have a need because most times you will be selling something before it has a chance to reach your markers for it. And I agree with this premise it is very true, thus when I was buying this laptop I am now typing on I acted like my portfolio didn't exist. This is for a less selfish reason and I knew the money was just sitting there plus as of yet I hadn't locked in any of my Sirius profits so I figured kill two birds with one stone. And yes I said profits now that I have finally sold some shares of a "winning" stock I can say I made a profit, and yes I will be paying Capital Gains on said profits next year, thankfully they are long term capital gains as I have owned said stock for going on 2 years now.  I'm not going to focus on stocks I no longer hold any shares in, they're sold I either made or lost money on them and it is time to move on.

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 This is simply my OPINION on stocks that I OWN, this is in no way, shape or form a recommendation for said stocks, nor is discussion of their past gains or losses an indication of future events

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Sirius Xm Satellite Radio( SIRI :Nasdaq) part of me wants to rail because the last time I looked at Sirius it was well over 2 bucks a share, but as I didn't decide to jump in and sell any shares then and thus lock in that extremely high amount of profit I should really pipe down. Been there, done that, and I DEFINITELY know better. But again I started off at $ 0.13  a share(yes that says THIRTEEN CENTS a share) so *ahem* complaint about a profit of 1.61 per is technically looking the grand slam in the mouth and I will not. For those who do not know Sirius XM is of course the satellite radio company who provides you with that coast to coast non stop radio programming from the skies above. I think the current hit is just because of the overall economic slow down and not indicative of anything being wrong with the company(and hell even if there was anytime you hit 10 times your entrance point shut up and enjoy it, yes talking to myself too).



E*trade (ETFC :Nasdaq) Now some may look at my previous posts about E*trade see it's current price and think yay it's a winner too, actually no at the moment E*trade is at a loss. Last year after the shareholders meeting E*trade performed a reverse stock split basically they decreased the amount of shares there were in the market INCLUDING the ones in shareholder hands so that while there were fewer shares on the market and thus your share price was increased so were the amount of shares you were holding. So since it was trading around the 1.40 range(14.00 a share after) when the stock split occurred and is now around 1.20 presplit (12.00 give or take post markets are trading down today I'll go with todays starting price so I don't have to constantly edit this). So still ain happy with them but not enough of a loss to really offset any gains so I will ride with them a bit longer.

Slight break in the action for a sec, Do you guys prefer the CNNMoney page that I usually use to show the stock prices as well as the market upon which the stock is traded or would you prefer I used the Investor Relations page for each stock like so Sirius , E*trade I personally prefer a non affiliated stock page because I will get good and bad news while the investor relations page is MAINLY to get you to want to buy their stock. I do not fault them for having one, gives you access to podcasts and investor calls but not always objective looks at the company. Feedback is welcome so are questions or queries regarding my experiences in investing, my RULE #1 remains the same though never invest a dime you can't afford to lose. Every penny that I invested in a stock that I have spoken of previously or going forward I kissed goodbye just in case in took a header into the ditch, sometimes you get lucky (and I have a few times) and sometimes you don't(see previous parenthetical) I think without going through every piece of paperwork for every purchase and sale I have made that I can safely say as far as stock picks are concerned I am batting .500(yeah yeah males and sports references). Basically half of my stocks have made money and half have lost money, some have even been delisted and just completely dissolved so I don't have a sale price at all just the loss of said stock from my portfolio(thus I will never make that mistake again if it seems that low and is threatened with delisting I just sell it and eat the loss). Okay back to the stocks

Freddie Mac (FMCC: OTC) yes I own shares of Freddie mac, yes that Freddie Mac that some members of congress continue to malign to this day. It was cheap and I decided to take a chance on it, same as I did Sirius above. You never know where lightning will strike so you put in ya quarter and ya takes ya chances. As the housing market is still bad saying this was anything but an extremely long term shot in the dark would be disingenuous. I wanted to see if Freddie would be another "lightning in the bottle moment" as of yet it hasn't. Sirius didn't take right off and I didn't expect Freddie to either, again don't invest a dime you can't AFFORD to lose nobody wants to lose a dime but sometimes you want to take the chance of making 10 where one stood before.

That's pretty much it. I mean I have some really low share stocks in my portfolio but I don't count those because there is no way for me to sell them to make a profit or take a loss. Some of them were just dividends of older holdings that I sold but didn't get enough per share to really have anything. When I first started out investing I wasn't worried about buying round lots(100 shares) I was more worried about just getting used to buying and selling shares and making sure I calculated in my brokerage fee in both instances. Wins and losses abound in my first few years of investing but it has made me a much better investor. I am a lot less impatient and a lot more discerning in what and why I am buying something.