Sold AMD

I knew it was a mistake going into it and should never have bought that second round of AMD. I know that AMD doesn't have a lot of cash and a new chip takes a while to see revenue so it must be that a lot of people wonder if AMD can even survive in this economy. I almost put in a stop loss at 2.10 last night and this morning it was at 2.00. I put in a stop loss to sell everything at 1.94 and it triggered late in the day. I fully expect it to bounce back at some point, but I'm through with this market and was done with it at the end of November. I'm really glad I sold out then as things are a lot lower now then when I sold. Everyone says this is a long term market, and that $10,000 invested in 1929 would have been worth $6,000 in 1935, but the market didn't bottom out until 1932 and what if you invested your $10,000 then? It would be worth $25,000!!! Not to mention that a lot of stocks went to zero and shareholders almost always get zeroed out in a bankruptcy. Long term is a way for others to get you to help stabalize the market while they play the game. Sure, Warren Buffet is buying a lot of stuff, but he's making deals we can never get and getting all kinds of options and preferred stock. He's in a different league and can lose a few billion without any sort of pain.

So, I'm out of the market (and mostly have been since mid-NOV early OCT) except for a little STMP, the ashes of FNM, FMC and a tiny bit of JAVA just to get financial reports from a company I used to love until Jonathan Schwartz messed up Java really badly (by bloating it and ignoring client apps) and then got the CEO spot to everyone's disappointment. Other than those, I'm out for a while. It took almost 3 years for the market to bottom in 1932 after the 29 crashes so I don't expect this one to take any less time. I'm waiting until this feels like a long term market again...

zero for the year!!

Hard to believe I would be really excited to be at 0% gain for the year, but really I'm excited that I'm at 0% loss for the year. This is after one month of being up 12% for the year to -8% in less than a month and back to 0% today. The market this year has been a killer and I'm just happy to be breaking even, but I know that could easily change again. FNM and FMC are really a big part of the problem for me, but ATVID (Activision) has really come back strong and I'm not planning on selling any of it right now, even the FNM and FMC.

I wanted to do some profit taking on ATVI when it became more than 30% of my account, but now I'm looking at the future for them and I really want to ride it out a while longer. I know it is dangerous to have such a large holding, but I feel like it is one I know really well and I'm confident in it moving forward. I don't recommend following me in such a huge stake and I'm not sure I would buy more ATVI since it has seen such a big uptick in recent months. Be your own judge, but to me they are hitting on all cylinders and the merger with blizzard puts together two stellar companies.

A Bear Market

Yes yes yes, all profits are gone for the year and what was looking like a stellar year may be a negative at this point. I took a real beating on FNM and FMC, but now that the blood letting is mostly over I'm willing to hang onto them. Edison took a giant leap back in the Enron days and they came steadily back over next two year (Just look at this chart and see the drop in 2001 and stellar 3 year return). I don't see why this will be any different. I'm planning on holding what I have and maybe buying some more in a few months if it starts to recover. As I've said before I like all my investments and I'm in them for the long term. Nothing has really changed except a general downturn in the market. FNM and FMC are not huge holding.

I agree with this article on dealing with a bear market.


Most of the negative has come from ATVI (Activision) dropping back down after a meteorific upturn. I'm excited about the Blizzard merger and hanging onto it especially since Blizzard is set to launch some refreshes to some of their most popular titles.

USG purchase

I made another USG purchase this morning. It is a building materials (mostly wall board) stock that I have been holding for the past six or so months looking for the bottom of the housing market. I just bought some more about a month ago. I think Warren Buffet was also getting in at around that time. It has gone down more (-9.6%) since then, but I'm looking at it as a really long term buy and trying to hit the bottom with consecutive purchases to bring my cost average down as it continues to drop. With the flooding in the mid-west I'm betting there will be a lot of wall board purchased in the next six months so I'm buying more and may do another purchase in a week depending on what the stock does in the next few days.

This was a 2.2% (of my account) purchase of USG, and puts my complete USG holdings at 5.5% of my account. Before this purchase it was down around 15% and now it is down around 11%. Think long term...

I also really like the 5 year chart.

My account has continued to fluctuate. It opened yesterday at +8.2% for the year and is sitting today at +10% for the year. There was a big drop in FNM and FMC and I'm continuing to look at it. GE dropped a bunch more and I'm really glad I sold it when I did. Wouldn't go near it right now. I got the papers for the Activision/Blizzard deal and voted for the merger last night. I rarely proxy vote so this is one I'm really excited about.

Always bet against Cramer

It looks betting against Cramer worked well for me again.

I've been holding GLD and SLV (8% of my portfolio each) in my IRA for about 10 months now. My broker kept asking me why I was holding it. Mostly the cost of the war and knowing that inflation is coming when you print $500 billion new bills to fund a war. The other night I saw Cramer ranting about how good Gold and Silver were and i decided that it was time to pull out since I already made 30-50% gains. So I switched to FNM (6%), FMC (6%) and a small bit of TGIC (2%).




Here are the I numbers bought and sold at.


GLD sold at 99.02 and 95.82

SLV sold at 194.88

FNM bought at 21.87 and 26.35

FMC bought at 20.95 and 24.49

TGIC at 5.30 so I'm down a little on that one, but I don't own much.





On a short term basis (3 days) it looks like it was a good move. I still think GLD and SLV are good investments, I just don't like stuff that goes up that sharply and I tend to like to sell it. I'm not sure how long I'll hold FNM and FMC as they still make me nervous. Mostly because I don't follow the industry close enough. Tech stocks I feel more comfortable with since I'm in the industry.




A good week since my account is past the January 1 value again and was down over 10% at one point. As I've said, I'm an aggressive investor seeing how wildly my account swings from month to month, but I'm diversified in other ways. I'll just leave that as a warning, don't follow me, I'm lost too!