Time for Portfolio Spring Cleaning

I have been an active seller of stock in the past two weeks. My cash positions are now at 10% on average and I plan to expand that as we progress through the week. Some positions that I own for our clients such as CME Group (CME) and McDermott (MDR) are off the books with the MDR position getting sold after yesterday’s rally in the stock. Buffalo Wild Wings (BWLD) is still racing higher even after I sold half my stake.

In addition, I have been systematically shaving off parts of other winning stocks in the portfolios such as Google (GOOG) and Helmerich Payne (HP) all of which have had nice runs. However for those stocks I have just skimmed off some profits while pretty much maintaining full positions.

Why am I doing this spring cleaning? This is a normal part of the risk management process. These actions help to maintain proper sized positions, scale out of profits, cut out losing positions and do some research in preparation for another round of purchases once the stock market retreats after having such a fantastic run the past 8 weeks.

If you have not done so, I suggest taking the time to do some spring cleaning of your own. However, before you do, you may want to read my recent article on The Street.com, Portfolio Tune-Up.

Disclosure: At the time of this Blog entry Scott Rothbort, his family and or clients of LakeView Asset Management, LLC were long shares of BWLD, GOOG and HP --- although positions can change at any time.

Comments

[DutchMark:]

Wow, I can hardly imagine worse advice. Earlier in the year was the time to tune, now is the time to let them run.

2008 May 15 04:02 PM

[omooc:]

Shouldn't portfolio review be done more frequently than once a year?

2008 May 27 10:20 AM