Every now and then I do a post to talk about the blog itself, and my future plans for it.  While talking with an old friend of mine, who founded and majority owns a company that makes the best commercial lawn mowers in the world (full disclosure: I own a little less than 1%), I told him about my blog, and he thought it made perfect sense for me to do it.  Regardless of the eventual result, he said that I was building my brand.

I never thought of it that way before, and much as I like contributing to RealMoney.com, I am putting more of my thinking, and the better part of my thinking here.  So where am I going with the blog in the near term?

• Finishing off the portfolio reshaping.  RealMoney will see the results of this second, and the blog first.
• I have five news compendia posts coming on Economic Theory, Macroeconomics, Speculation, Derivatives (yes, Bear, subprime, and more), and Miscellaneous (the grab bag).
• I also plan on improving some of the permanent pages, particularly my bio, fleshing out the investment books that I have learned from, and fleshing out my investment performance, so that I can publicly display it to readers (I’ve had a great last seven years).

Now, my ultimate goals are to either start an investment newsletter or start my own investment shop.  I have described what I would do on the following permanent pages (newsletter — investment management).  So far, I have gotten about 20 bites on the newsletter, but I would need a minimum of 100 to make me quit my job to do that.  As for investment management, I am actively interested in any seed investor that would be willing to fund me.  Aside from that, I am still working with a fellow who is looking to revolutionize the health insurance industry, who if he gets funded, would like me to be his CIO.  We’ll see.

Because my main calling is to be a good husband and father, I can live with delays in my longer-term planning; things are going well.  I also have a calling to my church, which is having its annual meeting this coming week.  I can’t tell whether I will be posting more or less while I am at the conference; I’ll see what I can do.

Regardless, have a great week as the second quarter finishes up.

Here are my current industry ratings.  Using my Bloomberg Terminal, I  ran a screen looking for cheap companies in those industries.  The result yielded eight tickers:

ACO CONN GMRK HES NSIT PDE SMRT SSI

I also added in the top 12 tickers from the last time that didn’t make it into my portfolio, and aren’t on the current list.  Here are the tickers:

ABFS [DBK GR] FINL FL GGC HERO [NGX CN] PTSI RADN SNSA URI WIRE

If you have other stock ideas for me, let me know (post a comment!).  Remember that I am a value investor.  I like them cheap.

Aside from any names that readers might give me, my list of possible replacements is done.  All that is left is to run my valuations/technicals model, and think about what to but and sell.  Early next week, I will run those models, and make the decisions by Independence Day.

Well, the second portfolio reshaping of the year has begun. To refresh your memory on what I do here, you can review this short post. Here are the tickers from my initial stack, candidates to replace my current portfolio:

ABY ACI ACTU AFN APA ARLP ASEI BBG BHP BLX BMI BOW BTU BVN C CBE [CMB PE] CMC CNX CQB [CRY CN] CRZ CTHR CTL CVX CWEI CY DELL DNR DVN DVR EMR EOG EPEX EPL ERF ESV FCGI FCX FRD FRO FRX FSS FST FTO GIFI GMK GMR GSF GVHR GW GYI HHGP HNR IDCC IMMR IMOS INTX IO IR ITW IVAC KAR KEP LRCX LRW [LUN CN] MEOH MGS MKSI MLR MRO MTL MVC NAT NBL NBR NFX NR NRP OMM OPMR PCZ PH PRKR PTEN PVX PWE R RDC RDS RGS RIG RIO ROK RRC RSH S SHOO SPH SPI STZ SU SWKS TAP TLM TPL TSO TX TXI TYC UNT UNTD UPL WCC WDC WFC WIN XTO

If you have ideas, post them in the comment section of this post.  I’ll be running my industry model and an additional screen to generate a few more tickers, and then the comparison to my current portfolio. I should have more later today. Till then.