What a Day!

I didn’t feel well today, but my broad market portfolio did better than me. I probably could not have picked a worse day to do my reshaping, but here are the results:

Sales:

  • Aspen Holdings
  • Flagstone Reinsurance
  • Redwood Trust
  • Mylan Labs
  • Lafarge SA

Purchases:

  • Reinsurance Group of America (old friend, cheap price)
  • Honda Motors

Rebalancing Buys:

  • Valero
  • ConocoPhillips
  • Vishay Intertechnology

Rebalancing Sale:

  • Deerfield Capital

I’m not done. My moves today raised cash from 5% to 10%, and trimmed positions from 36 to 33. I have room for two more ideas, and am working on where to place cash. My timing of buys and sells today was good — not that that is a key competency of mine by any means.

Aside from the sale of the reinsurers, which were just cheap placeholders, the other positions were not as relatively cheap as they once were. RGA and Honda are quality companies selling at bargain prices. If I had more names like those, I would buy them all day long.

Away from my broad market portfolio, I raised my equity exposure in my mutual funds fractionally today. Time to rebalance.

PS — I can’t remember another day quite like this, where the late negative to positive move was so pronounced.

Full disclosure: long DFR RGA HMC VLO COP VSH






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Asset Allocation, Industry Rotation, Insurance, Portfolio Management, Stocks, Value Investing | RSS 2.0 |

One Response to What a Day!

  1. AA says:

    Hi David,
    I would rethink the Honda purchase – money is flowing out of the exporters, and into beneficiaries of yen appreciation in Japan.
    If you’re buying ADRs, maybe you make out ok, but in general, the better place to be is domestic small caps in Japan, utilities and REITs.
    Not as smart as you by any means, but I thought I’d pitch in with my 2c. At these levels, its a trap (like GPI).

Disclaimer


David Merkel is an investment professional, and like every investment professional, he makes mistakes. David encourages you to do your own independent "due diligence" on any idea that he talks about, because he could be wrong. Nothing written here, at RealMoney, Wall Street All-Stars, or anywhere else David may write is an invitation to buy or sell any particular security; at most, David is handing out educated guesses as to what the markets may do. David is fond of saying, "The markets always find a new way to make a fool out of you," and so he encourages caution in investing. Risk control wins the game in the long run, not bold moves. Even the best strategies of the past fail, sometimes spectacularly, when you least expect it. David is not immune to that, so please understand that any past success of his will be probably be followed by failures.


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