Hello Friends!  Thanks so much for stopping by and visiting my blog, Stock Picks Bob's Advice!  As always, please remember that I am an amateur investor, so please remember to consult with your professional investment advisers prior to making any investment decisions based on information on this website.

With the market moving higher (at least temporarily yesterday), I visited the lists of top % gainers and since I was under my 5-position minimum, I had a 'permission slip' to be buying a new position, I was looking for a possible new holding.

Seeing National Oilwell Varco (NOV), an old favorite of mine, moving ahead strongly, I purchased 210 shares at $28.796, near the high for the day.the company's latest quarterly report was strong, and their Morningstar.com "5-Yr Restated Financials" are also impressive.

Even I wasn't prepared for the same-day price volatility in this stock.

Reviewing the Yahoo Finance Chart for NOV for 10/17/08, you can see the wide price swing of this company yesterday as it swung higher and then dipped in an almost as strong fashion.

National Oilwell Varco (NOV) actually closed at $25.58, up $2.05 or 8.71% on the day.  But my performance was obviously rather less than that.  Based on that purchase price of $28.796, I already have a loss of $(3.216) or (11.2)%.

Should I be selling at this point?  Somehow I don't think so.  Maybe this amateur is learning something.  My entire strategy is based on avoiding compounding my losses by stepping away from the market when times are bad.  So called 'sitting on my hands'.  However, I am getting clobbered in the extreme portion of my own strategy, my insistence on keeping myself at 5 positions is allowing me to compound my losses, buying stocks in sequence after they hit sales points on losses, instead of avoiding reinvesting in a declining market.

Something is very wrong with my approach!  

Two proposed changes.  In the bottom five stocks of my range, that is when I am down to five or less holdings, I shall continue to sell portions at the same intervals as they appreciate.  In addition, on the downside I shall be doubling my loss tolerance to (16)%.  

Next change.  When I am adding stocks to get to my '5 minimum' holding, I shall decrease the size of my purchases.  That is, if my 'average' holding is approximately $5,000, then my purchases that I make 'just to get back to 5' shall be 1/2 that size, or $2,500, for example.

These holdings shall still be good as indicators for my portfolio, but they haven't really shown that the market is truly ready for a new holding.

Will this help?

I don't really know.  This is all new territory for me.  For us all.  And while my overall performance has been above the S&P for the last 18 months, I am quickly declining to match the mean, if I haven't done so already.

Thanks for bearing with me.

If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to leave them on the blog or email me at bobsadviceforstocks@lycos.com.

Yours in investing,

Bob