Of the 35 stocks in my portfolio, only 4 lost money for me in May: Magna International, Group 1 Automotive, Reinsurance Group of America, and Hartford Insurance.  My largest gainer, OfficeMax, paid for all of the losses and then some.

I am only market-weight in energy, so that was not what drove my month.  Almost everything worked in May: company selection, industry selection, etc.  My other big gainers were: Charlotte Russe, Helmerich & Payne, Japan Smaller Capitalization Fund, and Ensco International.  I have often said that I am a singles hitter in investing — this month is a perfect example of that.

Now, looking at the year to date, I am not in double digits yet, but I am getting close — I am only 3.6% below my peak unit value on 7/19/07.  My win/loss ratio is messier: 15 losses against 32 wins.  It takes the top 5 wins to wipe out all of the losses.  The top 5: National Atlantic, Cimarex, Helmerich & Payne, Arkansas Best, and Ensco International.  Energy, Trucking, and a lousy insurance company that undershot late in 2007.

The main losers: Deerfield Triarc (ouch), Valero, Royal Bank of Scotland, Avnet, and Deutsche Bank.

I much prefer talking about my portfolio than individual stock ideas, because I think people are easily misled if you offer a lot of single stock ideas.  I have usually refused to do that here; I am not in the business of touting stocks.  I do like my management methods, though, and I like writing about those ideas.  If I can make my readers to be erudite thinkers about investing; I have done my job.

So, with that, onto the rest of 2007.  I don’t believe in sitting on a lead — I am always trying to do better, so let’s see how I fail or succeed at that in the remainder of 2007.

PS — When I have audited figures, I will be more precise.  You can see my portfolio, for now, at Stockpickr.com.

Full disclosure: long VLO AVT NAHC XEC HP ESV MGA GPI RGA HIG OMX CHIC JOF

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 31st, 2008 at 1:10 am and is filed under Industry Rotation, Macroeconomics, Portfolio Management, Quantitative Methods, Stocks, Value Investing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.