Woohoo, it looks like we are buying a house. We negotiated a new deal and one that I think is pretty good. To fund the down payment I had to sell off half of our portfolio. This allowed me to take a look at how good our returns were. Remember this is since beginning of February when I said I was a bull. Net return, 18.5%, which stunned the heck out of my wife and I. She said, “wow you did really well…”
What is the moral of the story? Buying into the abyss is the best buying opportunity. You need an extremely strong stomach, need to manage risk, but when the market turns it’s great. Not everything is golden with my portfolio, there are still some looser’s (GPS), but things are working themselves out.
Tuesday, May. 6, 2008
by Christian
Yesterday I said that Yahoo will close at 25. How did Yahoo do? It closed at 24.47 but it did touch 25. Pretty close considering that most people said it would close around 30% lower.
But Yahoo’s share fall was not as steep as the 30 percent plunge anticipated by some analysts, indicating there was still an “acquisition premium” built into the stock.
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Monday, May. 5, 2008
by Christian
I have not been blogging as much lately, because I have been completely swamped with work. These days I write oodles and oodles of software implementing financial trading strategies using Excel, and .NET. I will be posting a review of Add-In Express which has been helping me immensely. Another thing happening is that I am almost hired as a permanent on-call consultant for a major investment bank. If this materializes I will blog about it later. Why not full time? Because I don’t want to at least not yet.
Implementing dozens of strategies is interesting because it helps me understand the market. One of my deals with my clients is that I don’t talk about strategies and will not even begin that discussion. Though I can say the following:
- Simple is better than complex. I kid you not here. All of those complex strategies like “iron condors” make brokers richer and not you.
- Real traders and investors make money by defining a strategy that is clear and understandable.
- You need to devise your own strategy and stick with it to see its strengths and weaknesses. You can make money with almost all strategies if you know how to use them.
- Learn the market and don’t think that a magic formula is going to make you rich. If you can’t make money with your strategy using manual techniques don’t even consider automating it to find a profitable strategy.
- Oh and if you do go complex you better have a math degree.
Sunday, May. 4, 2008
by Christian
Of this deal there are two interesting aspects; analysts are pretty much clueless, and Google really stepped into it.
“Microsoft is playing hardball, but I think a deal will still happen,” said Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, “It’s like a couple trying to break up — they say they are done, but you know they will get back together.”
How do you know? Gee last Friday Yahoo stock went up because people thought the deal would happen and look where we are. In fact just as the market closed I glanced at 22.50 PUT options and I told my wife, you know I think I will buy some options on Monday.
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Sunday, May. 4, 2008
by Christian
Sun posted miserable earnings, and everybody is surprised… As a result Sun is dragging down tech which is completely wrong. This a Sun problem, not tech. I had an hunch that Sun would disappoint quite a bit. Why? Because at the beginning of March I heard whispers that Sun was loosing some major sales. It was a major shorting opportunity (Disclosure: I have not shorted JAVA, and have no intention to do so.)
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Friday, May. 2, 2008
by Christian
When an email came through entitled “Conference Call with SEC,” I took notice. It’s sort of like, “Police knocking on your door.” Luckily, it was not that kind of conversation; it was actually something far from it.
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Tuesday, Apr. 22, 2008
by Christian
I read both books: “Traders, Guns, and Money” and “An American Hedge Fund“. And I had two completely different reactions. I received an early copy of An American Hedge Fund and have not said a word on it. Why? I disliked it, it rubbed me the wrong way, and thought if you can’t say anything nice then don’t say it at all.
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Sunday, Apr. 20, 2008
by Christian
I originally posted this on the Google Finance discussion boards and then though I’d fix it up a bit before posting… but well anyway…
I was bearish on Google before the last earnings call.
I felt that Google would miss some numbers due to recent changes
they’ve made in the “clickable area” of their ads and their PageRank
formula. Both changes were good long term (since they’ll help combat
click fraud and spammy publishers - and generally increase the quality
of the ads). But the changes came with some immediate cost to the
bottom line in the short term.
I am now bullish on Google for the same reasons. Or really because (1)
it wasn’t that bad and (2) the long term is already here.
Today was a great day for equities, but a horrible day for commodities and gold.
Gold futures dropped more than 3% Tuesday in a broad-based commodities sell-off, as strength in the U.S. dollar exerted heavy selling pressure on the precious metal.
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Tuesday, Apr. 1, 2008
by Christian
