It's Been too Long

Well, it's been far too long since my last post. Unfortunately I've been extremely busy over the last five months and I just haven't had the time to sit down and write. The last five months have been very volatile in the market. In my last post, which was made in late July, I talked about the decision I had made to shift out of the stocks in the Cramer portfolio and move the money into the stocks in the Buffett portfolio. Thank goodness I made that decision when I did. As I have said many times in my investing career, the toughest thing an investor will ever learn is when to sell. Most of us are reluctant to sell a stock that we have a gain in because we're afraid it will go higher after we sell. For some strange reason we're also reluctant to sell a stock that we have a loss in because we're afraid it will go higher after we sell it. I also think it's harder to sell a loser because by closing out the position with a loss, we're, in a way, admitting defeat. That's the decision I was faced with in July. I had a lot of stocks in the Cramer portfolio that were down since I had bought them. I had the choice of selling them and locking in losses or hanging on and hoping that the stocks would rebound. I like to be very open about my trades and I often give the exact buy and sell points but I don't reveal the number of shares. Below is the list of stocks that I have sold since my last post along with the price I sold them at and their closing price as of Friday, December 12th. As you'll see, I made the right decision by selling these stocks.


Apple (AAPL) - Price I sold at: $166.03 - Current Price: $98.27
Burington Northern (BNI) - Price I sold at: $94.37 - Current Price: $71.38
Bucyrus International (BUCY) - Price I sold at: $58 - Current Price: $18.72
Chesapeake (CHK) - Price I sold at: $32.75 - Current Price: $16.64
Freeport McMoran Copper & Gold - Price I sold at: $64.75 - Current Price: $22.28
Google (GOOG) - Price I sold at: $411.69 - Current Price: $315.76
Goldman Sachs (GS) - Price I sold at: $99 - Current Price: $67.74
Raytheon (RTN) - Price I sold at: $56.09 - Current Price: $50.80
US Oil Fund (USO) - Price I sold at: $77.81 - Current Price: $38.10
US Steel (X) - Price I sold at: $141 - Current Price: $39.03

I also sold Eaton Vance Tax Advantaged Dividend Income Fund (EVT) at $18.37. It's closing price on the 14th was $10.72. This closed end fund was listed in the Buffett portfolio. I kept two stocks in the Cramer portfolio, Teva Pharmaceuticals (TEVA) and Wal Mart (WMT) because I felt these stocks were much safer than the other Cramer stocks, most of which were tied to commodities. That turned out to be a good move as these two stocks have held up well recently. Another fortunate move I made was to significantly increase my exposure to the Ultrashort DOW ETF (DXD) which seeks to perform at twice the rate of the DOW Jones Industrial average, just in the opposite direction. This is a holding that I've owned since late 2007. However, I never reported on it before because I always thought of it as an insurance policy rather than a holding in the portfolio. It certainly saved me from even greater losses when the mrket turned really nasty in September. Hopefully, I'll be back sonner rather than later to post some more.