A Glance in the Rear View Mirror, and Peering Through the Windshield

                 

Over the holiday weekend, I spent a bit of time looking back at my portfolio’s performance, during 2010, and was more than a bit gratified by a gain of 30.70% (including reinvested dividends). That’s not to imply that I didn’t make some mistakes!

 

Like a lot of folks, I doubted the staying power of the market’s recovery, and on two different occasions, opened and closed positions in SDS, before finally recalling, as the saying goes, the market could stay irrational longer than I could stay solvent. Not to suggest that the positions were all that large (roughly 10-12% of the portfolio), but certainly large enough to cause a notable drag on returns.

 

I did much more trading, primarily in PM miners, than I’ve done in the past, and although the trades were almost all profitable, I’m still down by 2% on my current position in SVM, having completely misjudged how volatile the stock could be.

 

OK, I’ve learned a few lessons; thankfully, at not too high a price, and spent the rest of the weekend trying to figure out what to do for an encore, so to speak. I’m actually content with the stocks that I’m holding, by and large, but they’ve run up so much, I find it hard to justify putting more money into them, at current levels. Because of that, I’ve started to take them out of dividend reinvestment mode, and plan on taking the dividends/distributions in cash. At some point, there will be a correction, and I’ll be able to add  to positions (assuming the fundamentals are still good) at lower levels.

Disclosure:
Long: AVK, DHT, FTE, GG, KMR, MMP, O,  TOO, MO, JNJ, PVX, SVM, STO, TNK, TEI,

Disclosure: I am long AVK, DHT, FTE, GG, JNJ, KMR, MMP, MO, O, PVX, SVM, STO, TNK, TEI.