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.

!!Attention!!

 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

!!Attention!!

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).

Looking at my portfolio

I don't know when my last check in was so I'm not even going to ATTEMPT to claim a how many month journey this is. For all the stocks I had last year the 3 that remain are Sirius XM satellite radio, E-trade financial and FMCC(formerly freddie mac)

This is a recounting of stocks that I OWN and I OWN only this is not a recommendation for purchase nor do past gains foretell future results

One of these days I'm just gonna go ahead and figure out a macro for that, maybe make it flashing. Anyway disclaimer on the blog, yup disclaimer right up above okay anyway lets star with the "Homer"

SiriusXM Satellite radio(Siri:Nasdaq) for a stock that I took a chance on at .13 cents a share even being "down" today at 1.44(if I would have done this last week I would have been bragging about it being 1.55 a share but I forgot to do it again so meh a home run is a home run) but that's $1.31 a share more then I paid for it, more then a 1.00 a share in the money(how much I paid for the amount of shares I purchased + brokerage fees minus how much I would make if I sold it today). This was a long term investment when I made it, I got lucky there were no reverse stock splits(grr we'll talk about that with the next stock), the stock didn't cater and as it seems to be strengthening it's brand now my only decision is when do I want to exit. Personally THIS is what you hope for as an investor a stock to have made enough money that you aren't worried about how long you gotta wait to get your money back you just wait to decide how much profit you want to make.

E-trade financial (ETFC: Nasdaq) now some may see E-trade at 15+ a share and be like yay homerun, eeeeh wrong answer. Etrade pulled a reverse stock split a few months ago. A stock split is basically a company makes an announcement there are going to "dilute" the amount of shares they have out in the market. So for every share that already exists they are going to create X amount more. and X is the split so if it 2-1 for every 1 share of their stock you own you now have 2. Well a reverse stock split is the exact opposite, to STRENGTHEN a companies position (stock price) they are going to buy back X-amount of shares and eliminate them from existance. And anybody else who owns shares current holdings will be reduced by the amount of the ration, in etrades case it was 10-1. As the two links I provided will show it is all about the share price if a share price is too high(and the company wants more investors) they will divide their shares (thus as I said diluting the price) making it easier for people to buy more. If they have a low share price (or are being threatened with delistment basically being kicked off a major exchange NYE, Nasdaq, S&P) to make the share price look better the reduce the number of shares out their thus increasing the price. Doesn't add any value to me and just made it harder for me to cash in profits later if say I didn't want to COMPLETELY exit my position but I did want to profit take. So yeah it's up but it's not REALLY up.

Federal Home Loan Mortgage Company (FMCC: OTC bulletin board) Remember that delisting I talked about yeah it happened to freddy mac. The housing market deteriorated some more and while they aren't dead(benefits of being a government run publicly traded company *shrug*) lets just say all the people who made a boat load in the mortgage bubble are now asking for freddie and his sister fannie to be put to death. Now I can choose to sell(like I did with GM) and take another loss forward(though just like GM and ford that loss ain gonna be enough, I ain complaining the fact that I don't have enough loss to cover my  potential gains when I sell Sirius isn't a bad thing in my eyes) and be like oh well thats a couple whatever bucks down the drain(I don't have my purchase price sheet in front of me), or I can double down and hope it pulls a Sirius, or I can do nothing. I'm in a do nothing sort of mood right now. I mean yeah 100 shares at .36 cents is like 50+ bucks after I pay the commission on it which you know isn't terrible, but I don't see the housing market improving just yet(just like I didn't see it getting horribly worse either I thought it was gonna remain stagnant for a while so yes the market makes a genius out of you with one stock and a fool with another) so I'll have to be in a good mood to double down in the case of freddie, or even getting back into fannie(or both).

Technically thanks to Sirius my investment portfolio is way up(just like ford had done to it last year) so my spiel about "taking a chance" is already hedged but then again I haven't sold Sirius yet so all that money I am counting is still imaginary at the moment. Potential gains are potential gains, and call me greedy if you want but I'm not selling Sirius this year unless in the next month or so it gets north of 5 bucks. Okay Investment update blog done

5 month check in

Back in April I wrote a blog about the stocks I had bought starting after January of this year(look at the date up top people for the geniuses who read it after the date changes). Now my 6 month check up period has come and gone, and while at the 6 months those stocks looked decent today most of them look a whoooole lot better. Thus why I say be patient when investing(which with one of my stocks is now becoming torture because it may not be full home run but baby you on your way to third base and I'm thinking of telling you to turn on the jets).

Now again investing is SUPPOSED TO BE A LONG TERM THING. So even with the gains I have gotten up to this point I am not selling, because first I am still in short term capitals gainsville and second nobody has really shot the moon and there should still be some growth to come.

Now back to the stocks I had purchased an update:

Ford Motor Co Del Com Par (NYSE:F) purchased @ 2.7076 a share on 1/09/09. Well at over 7 bucks a share today not a home run but at damn near 3 times what I paid for it I ain mad. Ford pulled the turn around a lot quicker then I thought. Now granted if ford shoots up into the 20's in the next 6 months I may sell and the reasoning is simple that's a lot of money. Once ya hit 10 times what ya paid for something unless you see a stock split on the horizon take ya money you've earned it.

E Trade Financial Corp Com (NASDAQ GS:ETFC) purchased @ 1.26 a share on 2/12/09. It's above a 1.60 a share so I've made a little money but you look up above this puppy and you go, meh it's gonna take some work. Which is cool investing is a marathon not a foot race. It was beat up for a while got under a dollar a share for a minute but it has been moving mostly up. I say if we start to see a big turn around next year I think E*trade will benefit. I mean over the last decade a lot of normal everyday folks have been forced to learn about investing. And in this last debacle the mysticism surrounding "experts" has been severely tarnished so do it yourself brokers who charge decent commissions should benefit. I mean while you may not have a lot of time, if your gonna spend your money you're gonna be a lot more willing to spend some of it after you see how wrong experts can really be.

General Mtrs Corp Com (GM) first off GM is no longer GM at least stock symbol wise it is now Motors Liq Co (OTHER OTC:MTLQQ). Now I purchased the former GM @ 1.80 a share on 2/20/09. Today it's under .80 but bankruptcy is hard, I just hope it can come out stronger and more streamlined hitting the ground running but hey ford more then makes up for what I am currently losing on GM. So I'm not gonna fuss I'm going to be patient, I still see GM cars on the road I know they have some new models coming out that should be better and more fuel efficient. I believe GM can come out and make some gains.

Sirius XM Radio Inc (NASDAQ GS-D:SIRI) purchased on 2/25/09 @ .13 a share. Wow reaching right, I mean who just throws money at something under a buck? I do if the company basically still has a good product, appears to have learned from their mistakes and technically has a monopoly in their industry. Their in radio broadcasting so it does have a radio monopoly plus with HD radio starting to get traction they do have newer better competition on the horizon. Well as of todays trading it's over .60 a share. over 4 times my initial investment, so no complaints here from me. I believed them to be a better investment I mean is Google at 1200 bucks today? I don't think so. Granted Google is in a stronger position, I mean they're Google they still have commanding market share as far as search engines go(and maps, are catching up on e-mail, instant messaging and who ever they set their sights on next). But for the money in a bad economy Sirius was just the better buy.and if they hit one or two bucks again I ain complaining.

Washington Mutual Inc (OTHER OTC:WAMUQ) purchased on 3/17/09 @ .056 a share. I admitted last time this was a long shot, everybody used to love Wamu, it was everyone's favorite thrift yadda yadda yadda. so I figured pffft it's 80 bucks, who cares about that 80 bucks thats going to the movies a few weekends in a row. currently at .16 a share not out of the park but hey 3 times what I bought it for ain't bad either.


Fannie Mae (NYSE:FNM) purchased on 3/24/09 @ .82 a share. now this one was a slight chase there was more pain ahead in the future but hey easiest way to completely miss out on an opportunity is to always wait for "the bottom". I saw the price I wasn't upset about the price I got myself right with the price I bought it as of today it's over a 1.60 so it's like double hey double is good, double is money still waiting til next year.


Freddie Mac (NYSE:FRE) purchased on 4/07/09 @ .70 a share. Just like his sister Fannie freddie had some more pain in his future as well but at that price who was gonna complain. not me today it's over 1.80 
so it's over double as well.

I said 5 month check in because the last time I posted what I bought this year it was april, I did my 6 month in june most of them looked okay wasn't perfect but save GM they appeared to be heading in a nice direction, what a difference a few months make from when I did my 6 months eval and now. GM is way under but so what everything else that I bought is in the money, some of them are even 2-3 times what I purchased them for so that when I decide it's time to exit said position for the most part I will be getting money in my pocket even after I pay my commission(which is important). I hope any who jumped in at the beginning of the year like myself are seeing similar gains. Just like the disclaimer I put in the April blog

This is simply a listing of stocks I myself have purchased I am in no way shape or form recommending them to you, I am not insinuating that you will match my results if you buy in today or that past gains in anyway will predict future movements. 

 This is me saying hey this is how I am doing with the stocks I purchased woohoo I've seen some gains(I haven't sold anything so I haven't made any money yet), I've seen some losses. That is all. If you were gun shy at first but wanna try investing because you hope to see similar gains in your investments. Do your homework, read up on the companies you are interested in buying, see how the stock has moved the last few months, and decide how much you can afford to lose. Because if you are wrong you will lose money. I won't sugar coat that, investing should only be done with money you can afford to just toss away. No you don't wanna toss it away yes you hope to get some return on your investment. But if your using rent/mortgage money, car payment money, kids college tuition money  basically bill money this is not a good idea. If you have to start small start small, trust me I didn't start out with 100k either, I bought what I could where I could in amounts that I felt at the time I could justify losing that much money, on this company if it went south(see my comments about Wamu). Again I trusted my research and instincts some of them panned out. GM I understood the strong possibility of them going into bankruptcy (which they did) I bought the stock anyway. So while I look pretty smart right now I'm not breaking out any PRIMAL DATA Super Genius plaques anytime soon(a parody of the old looney toons Wile E. Coyote Super Genius bit).

Following the market

I know some of yall don't know me anywhere but here sokay, as these blogs continue you will learn more and more about me and the twisted way my mind works sometimes. Not talking about that today though I'll do one of those ramblers later.

I happen to trade a few stocks here and there on the net, now I had stopped investing after 05 because I thought the market was at a shakey point and I didn't like how it was looking. Then after a slow start in 06 I used up most of our savings(I'm married remember seperated but married and wasn't seperated in 06) in a job market that had started to dry up(nothing like what it is now, but for the type of job I was looking for yeah weren't a lot of openings) but as most folks say have 6 months of savings welp I had that easily. But I digress like I said I stopped investing after 05 because I realised the bubble that was about to burst and I wanted no part of it, what I already owned I would sell when they hit certain prices(because for most of them I had already cashed in my profit so anything I sold was just money in the bank) but no new purchases. As you can see 4 years later I seemed to have made a wise decision. So now because the market tanked(not crashed, crashed would have been all of them damn near penny stocks, didn't happen wasn't a crash) it is one hell of a buying oppurtunity which I have taken slight advantage of I bought a few companies that I felt got the hell beat out of them, for some fairly for others they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I wasn't perfect there were some companies that I wanted in on but was not patient enough for(it happens) but I'm pausing for a minute, I subscribe to the 6 month evaluation theory. I have bought some companies, they have fluctuated in price up and down(most of them mostly up a few of them have been on the roller coaster, especially one that may end up a wasted 80 bucks but o well) but for the most part it seems I have made some good choices. As such watching the market make it's fluctuation but it's slow and steady move upward I am happy. Now will I be so in 6 months I believe so. I think I positioned myself nicely yes I would love to have gotten into a few more sectors, but the most important thing when you invest is pick your price range and stick to it.

(PSA the stocks I am about to talk about were my choices and in no way shape or form am I making an endorsement of them. If you do your own research and decide you like the following stocks so be it, but I repeat I am not recommending these stocks for anyone else. I am just recounting my experiences ONLY).

So what stocks did I buy into, well I'm glad you asked:

Ford motor co del com par (F:NYSE): ford was the first stock I bought getting my feet wet again and I will admit it I chased. Boy did I chase I didn't set a limit price or anything the price I got in at was $2.70 which considering it's current price wasn't bad but since it dropped down to 1.01 later I should have waited. But hey it's a game of chance sometimes and well I ain made I'm in the green now thats all that matters.

E*trade financial corp com (ETFC:Nasdaq): E*trade was actually the second stop purchase but not the second one I put an order in for. I basically put E*trade in for another market order but only because I figured I was willing to ride the roller coaster with it's current average price paid $1.26 a share, yes it dipped lower but hey I got a decent price and thats all I care about.

General Motors corp com (GM:NYSE): GM is only third because it took and extra few days for it to hit my price now yes it has been beated down lately but in my eyes $1.80 a share for what I expected to regain it's footing and be soaring again in the next 3-5 years was a good price. Yes they have been beaten up a little bit lately but just like Ford I expect them to turn it around.

Sirius XM radio inc com (SIRI:Nasdaq): I won't lie sirius was a thumbing my nose at the "expert advice" simply because I read an article sirius which bought up it's only competition and appears to be keeping it's customer base steady and putting out a good product was a smarter buy at $.13 a share then was google in trying economic times at $300+. Of course not how the experts saw it and looking at todays price I was right. Now I have no clue what this will look like in a few months but if it continues to climb out of the doldrums man will I look like a genius.

Washington Mutual inc (Wamuq:other OTC): This is a long shot pick I won't lie and claim that I had research that said oh wamu is gonna turn it around, like I thought sirius would nope this one was just a well known company that had gotten beat down and was so cheap again whats 80 bucks if it shoots the moon? at a price of $.05 really what did I have to lose if it hit's $1.00 thats 20 times what I put in, hell for that one doesn't matter how long it takes I can wait that out. And if it blows up in my face wow I missed going to the movies a few times, meh if you don't go for the home runs every once in a while whats the use of stepping up to the plate huh?

Fannie Mae com (FNM:NYSE): Fannie I let make a few moves upward before I bought now it did retreat after I bought it which is okay, again I don't expect everything to fly up it would be nice, but it's unrealistic. But at $.82 a share it had shown some nice upward moves and is once again above what I initially paid for it.

Freddie mac (FRE:NYSE): Fredro is the pause stock yup the last one I bought. I was a little more patient with freddie, don't ask me why I just was I set the price lower then fannie and at $.70 all that can be said it dude you should learn a little patience.

Thats it thats all I bought since january of this year those are the prices I paid as well as each stocks ticker symbol so if you ever wanna see how ya boy is doing with his picks each week or maybe in 6 months like I myself plan to(6 months from either the first or last purchase I haven't decided yet, I know pitiful.). Most people won't tell ya the price they got in on because well they wanna sound brilliant, me I want you to be able to figure out my break even point and see how I handled my rocky situations or success. I learned a lot of what I learned about investing from books and blogs, most of them would talk about stocks and would give you arbitrary numbers that of course may or may not have had a basis in reality.

Now if I later find out I ain allowed to do that I'll stop(I don't think I'm not allowed to give a stock price on a previous date, I just know your not supposed to not mention if you own a stock when your talking about it) but like I said that gives you a starting point as well as gives you the chance to say check my math. So you know I'm not pulling a bernie madoff talking about "if I told you how I did it I'd have to kill ya", anyway I hope if your also taking the plunge into the market at this time your stocks are doing well.

The emperor still has no clothes

I don't know about you but back in late 99, early 2000 I started investing for the first time. Now when I started invested like any other bright eyed and bushy tailed rookie I would watch the various financial channels, and hang on the commentators every word like it was gospel. I'm sure I'm not alone in this initial fascination with these people who are on TV and talk about stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and commodities. Now as I was listening, memorizing what they had to say, and takin notes here and that for stocks I might wanna purchase later I would constantly hear one phrase being repeated over and over again:

Do your DUE DILIGENCE before ever investing in a position

Wow I was amazed I was like hmm this must be important, so I treated it like sage advice. But as I started to take this sage advice I began to realize something if I did do my own research(thats what due diligence means) many times what they were saying on TV about the company and what I would come up with on my own would not match up. Now granted we can all read numbers differently, and maybe the info I got was just a better hunch on my part then what they got. But then I started to notice a pattern, it wasn't just off it was almost deliberately off. Some of the things they were saying were in essence meant to get people to react a certain way, as if they were being told what to say and how to present things instead of doing the due diligence as they were instructing you to do.

Now yes of course some of this can't be helped I mean some companies for the longest time during the early part of the 2000's were masters of the accounting tricks. It started with enron, then it crept into the housing bubble, and now it has fully reared it's ugly head in the mortgage crisis. And do you know what the funniest thing is, if you go back and listen to the "analysts" on most of the financial channels, they didn't seem to see a single thing wrong. They were all too happy to inform you about the new math and the new metrics, and how you could ignore old methods of capitalization and valuation because we were in a brave new world.

Problem with their brave new world, it seems math didn't exist in their brave new world. Okay that is slightly unfair math did exist just not 1+1=2 math or if jimmy has $5.00 and he goes to the store and wants to buy a few snacks and an apple costs .75, a bag of chips costs .35, a soda costs 1.35(remember when a soda was only like 1.00 tops with tax wow) and a pack of cupcakes is like 1.50(let's not even talk about cupcakes). well the first part of the question of course would be does little jimmy have enough. Now he's got 5 bucks looks like he should have enough right if he gets one of each he should be straight right be about 3.95. thats regular math, thats the math we would have gotten a 100% on in grade school.

Thats not the math they were using, because they would be talking about little jimmy having that same 5 dollars to buy those same items at that same prices but tripling how much he bought, and saying it's okay if we know he's only got 5 bucks because we're on that new math and mystically magically in a few days, weeks, months yadda yadda little jimmy will magically have turned that into a 50 dollar profit. Okay slight simplification on how he would have done it but NOT on the attitude. Now the fact that up until saaaaay february of 08 most of these guys had no clue how bad things had gotten were still talking up these companies who were about to tank due to credit default swaps, and being undercapitalized for the amount of debt they had taken on, you would think that they would be A sorry as all hell because the looked like grade A fools and B more vigilant about what was going on after that point. But no most of them had that same mindset immediately after the crisis hell many of them continually look shell shocked.

To make matters worse many of them still want us to believe they have some amount of expertise in the subjects that they are speaking. Ladies and gents if say me or you blew it as bad as they blew it we would be out of a job. You saw the coach of the detroit lions, hell the interim coach neither one could win a game all year they both got the axe, neither one of them cost their teams the amount of money the blunders in the financial market cost. I mean yeah the owner may look at his 3-4 or 500 million dollar investment with it's 300 million dollar payroll and think damn did I waste my money this year. But as the arizona cardinals showed(as did the stl rams, oakland raiders, tampa bay buccaneers, boston celtics, tampa bay rays, boston red sox and on and on and on) you can have a bad year, or a string of bad years and then the next year catch fire and whip either everybody in your path or everybody but 1 team. So you might dump the coach but maybe with the right leadership your players can go from bums to heroes. and if you did decide to give the current coach another chance humble pie would be his everyday dish.

Not the idiots on the financial channels, yeah they did some mea culpa's for a few days but as I was watching a promo for one of the shows(today it was suze orman but some days it's kramer, or maybe the closing bell yadda yadda) and she was like let me tell you what you and everybody else was doing wrong. And I'm looking and I say, um if the persons answer isn't " Listening to you suze" they ain learned nothing over the last few years. Because most folks were calling suze, or they were calling kramer, or they were tuning in to bloomberg, CNBC, Fox business what have you, only to get information from people who have proven to know no more if not even less then the people watching them. Because it seems for some of them the fact that they got to smooze with some of the big wigs they forget to check and see if the persons darting eyes looked energetic or nervous, was it actually hot in the room or was the person panicking.

I call this the emperor has no clothes because these folks are at it again. These guys are talking like they have all this expertise that you should listen to when, the time to have exhibited expertise has passed and these folks ladies and gentleman failed that test miserably. They weren't just surprised at the level of chaos in the financial world they had no idea how it had gotten there. I mean think about it if you did something every day or your life, and were paying attention to how things worked the ebbs and flows wouldn't you through nothing else but watching it over time see when things were maybe going a little off? Shouldn't you at least have had an inkling that hmm damn I mean I hope I'm wrong but this just doesn't smell right?

Or maybe I am expecting something else of these talking heads that is unfair, some common human decency and humility. If you screw up apologize and get down off your soap box and join the rest of the crowd as we try to fix the mess. Don't act like nothing went wrong and it's cool again for you to act all intelligent and high and mighty. Sorry you had your chance to be soothsayer of the economic world, but if your barely doing better then a dart thrown at the stock section of the paper why exactly should I listen to you? Everybody looks good when the market is steadily going up, only people who can guage whats good or bad, and will recover faster or not at all when this are looking bad get "authority" credit.