Estee Lauder Rated a Sell

I thought a picture of a rollercoaster, this one of the Colossos from Germany, might best describe my own feelings of the market as euphoria alternates with depression in what I would have to describe as one major financial 'bi-polar' disorder.  Friday morning, with stocks climbing in anticipation of the House approval of the $700 billion bail-out (rescue?), I picked up my fifth new position, Global Payments (GPN) which I wrote about here on this blog in an earlier post.

Moments later I realized that my Estee Lauder (EL) was now hitting a sale point with an (8)% loss after my initial purchase.  I went ahead and sold my 140 shares of Estee Lauder at a price of $45.532.  These shares had been purchased just weeks ago on 8/14/08 at a cost basis of $49.93/share.  Thus, I had a loss of $(4.40) or (8.8)% since my purchase triggering (manually) my sale of the shares.  EL actually rebounded slightly after my sale, closing Friday at $46.13, down $(2.12) or (4.39)% on the day.

With my own sale of these shares, and with the fundamentals of the entire market more uncertain, I cannot reduce my 'rating' to just a 'hold,' so:

ESTEE LAUDER IS RATED A SELL

Now, once again under my five position minimum, I literally have a 'permission slip' to be adding a new position to my portfolio.  Generally after a sale on bad news I would be 'sitting on my hands' but in this case, I shall be looking for a new stock to purchase.

I will do this Monday, pending an improvement of the overall market tone.

Meanwhile, I shall sit back, lick my wounds, and be simply amazed at the incredible volatility in stock prices we are witnessing.

Disclosure: The author sold his shares Friday at $45.532 and currently has no position in EL.