In yesterday’s portfolio update I talked a lot about what was going on with our current positions, but only mentioned in passing some of the stocks that may eventually become positions. Since it’s the future trades that matter most though, I want to walk all of us through part of the though process of turning [...]

Our patience paid off today, as our portfolio gained 0.7%, versus the market’s (S&P 500) rise of 0.3%. The relative outperformance isn’t the big deal in itself though…. it’s the fact that we more than doubled the market’s return while only being about 30% invested – the other 70% of our portfolio is cash. The [...]

After last week’s update to the portfolio – the one in which we added Teleflex (TFX) and subtracted Dynegy (DYN) – I received several questions about how I pick and choose which stocks stay and which ones get the boot. Here’s a little bit of the answer.
First and foremost, yes, I have an exit system [...]

There’s a fine line between being stubborn and having faith, and Dynegy (DYN) has pushed us to that line. We’re going to go ahead and cut the stock out of our portfolio; sell it if you were in a position based on our recommendation.
Though I can probably stomach more volatility than anyone, nobody wins if [...]

Stocks were up pretty sharply today, as I figured they might be after a fairly bearish post yesterday. It’s hard to not bound after four straight days of strong selling. Just let me reiterate my warning from then… the downtrend didn’t start in a day, and it won’t be halted in a day. Today’s pop [...]

You may recall Charming Shoppes Inc. (CHRS) from our mention of the stock back in mid-October, when the stock went on our watchlist as a potential buy candidate. We had an official buy signal based on our chart pattern requirement at the time, though we elected not to actually take the trade…. yet.
So are we [...]

Every Saturday from now on we are going to highlight a group of articles from around that internet that has caught our attention during the week. Here are this week’s articles…
From Money Blue Book:
ETrade Online Broker: Discount Brokerage Account Review
From ETF DataBase:
The Definitive Oil ETF Guide: Crude Oil ETFs 101
From Pasadena Financial Planner:
Investment Asset Allocation
From [...]

One of the core ideas of my stock-selection strategy is to find groups (sectors and industries) that have not yet taken flight, and are not ripe for a big dose of profit-taking. The media doesn’t make that easy to do, since they tend to fixate an “what’s hot” right about the time it’s ready to [...]

I was finally able to create the charts and portfolio tracking method I wanted to that also generated (automatically) the sector, style, and market cap allocation charts we need to constantly monitor. The first visualization of that data is below.
Though somewhat academic on the surface, don’t underestimate the meaning and purpose of these charts. While [...]

Though we’ve received several buy signals from our trading system, the only one I feel strongly enough about to enter now is ADTRAN Inc. (ADTN). Go ahead and add this stock to the portfolio. The signal came this week, at the same time the stock broke above a major long-term resistance line.
This makes our third [...]