Other Stock Picking Strategies

[bryanmcn]

I am now out of all positions except TEC and PHX/un.to
I believe TEC may rebound to a better price and PHX/UN is still climbing.
We are past support levels on most SSP stocks and as I have said before and we are due for a healthy (if you can call it that) draw down.
LOOK OUT BELOW!
I have maintained a position in a US money market fund.

[DCA]

Well today I bought a lottery ticket with TEL.  Rumour of news this week is going to move the stock up or down when released.  My bet is up.  This is a company I had sitting in my debris pile and now they seem to be turning from an uranium to a potash play.

D

[bryanmcn]

What is TEL?

[DCA]

Trigon Uranium is TEL.V.  It is a penny uranium company that has not done well in heavy metals but is poised to move into potash.  (Even has it's own tame Canadian politician on the board!)

[bryanmcn]

July 2 - a few hours before the markets close.

I have been saying for some time now that both the markets and SSP are due for a correction. As I speak we are witnessing a 1 percent downward move on the TSX putting at levels not seen since early may. The charts are very convincing. 
GCE, BNK, HLB, TEC and FDG.UN are all off significantly from their recent highs. 

The question now is - where is the bottom? We should be learning from this correction and looking for opportunities to buy in!

I persoanlly am in US dollars.

[garilou]

bryanmcn , you wrote:

We should be learning from this correction and looking for opportunities to buy in!

I am not looking too intensively for opportunities to buy, because I don't know where the correction is leading, I think on both sides of the border, it's too early to "bottom fish".

I keep only one income trust in my RRSP, where the dividend is already interesting, and gets better when the stock goes down: one of the few where I accept a loss of more the 6%, since the dividend is over 13%.
For the rest I am in shorting! Too bad 'we not allowed to short in a RRSP!
Almost every day, I am saved by my shorts, both Canadian (IMP, which I just covered because there is really too little volume, had to sell "to the market" but got a better price than the closing), and INM, for the second time: the first one brought me an 8.1%, (210% year equivalent), and I'm holding hard to my second short, at least for another 10 days. I expect it to help "my end of the month"    .

But I am a little "chicken", I do not sell as many lots when I short, so in %, it's good, but in absolute $, it is never astonishing.

I am also shorting on the US side!
After shorting twice Home Depot, I am now short on MCO, and the slide down goes pretty well.

I don't know if I am pessimist by nature, but I have always done better with the shorts.
In 2008, from 11 shorts, I "won" 9 times, and the 2 times I "lost" (but very little compared to the other ones) it was because I was kicked out by stops. So no more stops for me!

On the US side, well it's China in reality, but traded on the OTC, I just bought on June 30th CNEH: although it has a big gap down today, I think it's a normal correction after a huge increase in the past year. I am quite confident in this one, but I'll watch it close.

DCA, are you still holding on TEL? I might go along with you in a few days, I still not sure, penny stocks... But it might go back up. It's still  over its 50 and 200 MA, I wait to see if the downward slope of the past weeks was just a correction or a real trend.
Most of all, I'll check the trend of uranium, because they did make an investment in potash, but (according to their web site at least), they are still mostly in uranium. Maybe it's a buy and hold, not too much my style of trading.
You are right, penny stock are lottery tickets: they are sometimes refuges in bear markets, but the information is so hard to get: this can sometimes bring a huge gain, but...


L.

[DCA]

Still holding TEL but watching my margins carefully.  Looking for some potash news to pop it so I can get out before I lose too much sleep.

[bryanmcn]

Only the brave and "ego-less" will be posting their trades these days. I am neither as I have been in 100% cash for 2 weeks. What a weak coward I am!

The V1 is showing YTD returns of -6%, 6 months returns of -2.3%, and 3 month returns of 18%.

The weekly has YTD returns of .4%, 6 months returns if 3.2% and 3 month returns of 27%

I post this for future enthusiasts who want to jump into SSP when it posts those fabulous 6 month and YTD returns. There should be warning signals going up when they get over 50%.

How many out there are still 100% invested in a SSP portfolio?
Be honest!

[dhamel]

Still holding all my position.

I have 2 accounts following SSPV4, they are now back to where they where at the beginning of the year.

If they where not fully invested, I would start now.

[bryanmcn]

When I say  100% invested I mean all of the money you have to invest. I'm not referring to a couple of accounts or a portion of your RRSP.
We all get exited when we look at 100% yearly returns and then think about how quickly we could be millionaires if we invested out total portfolio.
Its exiting to think that if you started with $75K and got 100% per year you would have over a million dollars after 4 short years.
My point is that no one could invest ALL of their life savings and continue to re-invest every peny of returns in the SSP for 4 years. The draw downs like we are experiencing right now are just too much to stomach.
Maybe if we all gave our money to some investment guy and told him to follow the SSP EXACTLY as they require and come back four years later it would work.

[metro]

I am getting killed thanks to SSP!

Tec - down 26.17%
HLB - down 40.20%

[bryanmcn]

What are you learning?
Its an expensive tuition if you come out of this with a lesson. Its a waste of money if you don't.

[wm]

Does anyone have any recommendations for other sites that have done well and have the same format as SSP?

Bryan,

This site todayhotstocks.com seams to use a similar approach as SSP but fot US stocks. Their 2008 trades are listed here: http://www.todayhotstocks.com/index.php?page=closedtrades

wm

[dhamel]

70% of my RSP is in SSP4

30% is in another automated strategy, wich is based on momentum
and do have some of the same stock as SSP4 in it.  But typically hold 8-12 stocks

my other investment are in Commodity trading.

I am tracking SSP very precisely, even with the exact allocation mechnism for number of stock.

And I'm even preparing to add money into it. in the coming weeks

The only time I had been nervous was when we had to put all our money in one stock BNK at one point a few month back.  At that point I waited one week because other stocks where coming in from SSP3.

But dont forget SSP4 select the best performing stocks in the markets, where there is a lot of volume.  Also company like WTN wich have a market cap of 1.2 Billion and GCE with a market cap of 550+ milion are not small company that are goinf to disappear.

Obviously I am a firm believer in system trading, I would rather follow exact

Also, prior largest drawdown was on January 21, 2008 we went through, and came back to new high.

Current drawdown as of yesterday is at 27.07%

Do you know that the TSX had a 50% drawdown from 2001 to 2002

History will tell.

Denis

[wm]

30% is in another automated strategy, wich is based on momentum
and do have some of the same stock as SSP4 in it.  But typically hold 8-12 stocks

Is this a online service like SSP? if yes, could you post the URL so I can check it out.

Thanks,
wm