A Good Quarter – The Aleph Blog

Helping Institutions and Ordinary People Invest Better by Focusing on Risk Control

Posted on 31 March 200731 March 2007 by David Merkel

I’m still looking for a way to document my performance to readers, but let me simply say that the broad market portfolio beat the S&P by a few percent. What worked?

Fresh Del Monte
Grupo Casa Saba
Valero Energy
Helmerich & Payne
ABN Amro (sold too soon) 😉
Dorel Industries (wish they hadn’t delisted)
Lyondell Chemicals
Dow Chemicals, and
SPX Corp

You see any commonalities there? Energy, especially refining. Chemicals. Aside from that, I don’t see anything really correlated.

What didn’t work?

St. Joe
Barclays plc
Japan Smaller Capitalization Fund
Nam Tai Electronics
Cemex
Lithia Motors
Conoco Phillips
Magna International
Jones Apparel
Deerfield Triarc, and
Allstate (ouch)

Commonalities? Autos, maybe? Away from that, it seems eclectic to me.

In my balanced mandates, my foreign bonds and floating rate securities worked. High quality paid off as volatility rose. Really didn’t have any problems with my bonds.

Now I just have to do as well next quarter. 🙂

Full disclosure: long? FDP SAB VLO HP ABN DIIB LYO DOW SPW JOE BCS NTE CX LAD COP MGA JNY DFR ALL

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. Also, though David runs Aleph Investments, LLC, this blog is not a part of that business. This blog exists to educate investors, and give something back. It is not intended as advertisement for Aleph Investments; David is not soliciting business through it. When David, or a client of David's has an interest in a security mentioned, full disclosure will be given, as has been past practice for all that David does on the web. Disclosure is the breakfast of champions. Additionally, David may occasionally write about accounting, actuarial, insurance, and tax topics, but nothing written here, at RealMoney, or anywhere else is meant to be formal "advice" in those areas. Consult a reputable professional in those areas to get personal, tailored advice that meets the specialized needs that David can have no knowledge of.