Hello Friends! As ALWAYS, I am delighted that you took the time and decided to visit. Someday I should write a book about blogging. Well, first of all I suppose I should learn how to do HTML instead of all of this "fill in the blanks" posting....but there is always time tomorrow. Now REMEMBER to PLEASE do all of your own due diligence on ALL stocks discussed on this blog and consult with your financial advisors because I am an amateur investor just writing some ideas about investing and all decisions regarding YOUR financial situation should be made by qualified individuals who know your particular situation. Enough said!
Anyhow, it is Sunday, and I really need to get these reviews in so let's get on with it! One of the things I noticed about my postings on the blog the week of 2/9/04 was that I was getting SLOPPY. I mean can you believe it? I posted four stocks: Thor Industries (THO), Giant Industries (GI), Netsmart Technologies (NTST), and Cyberguard (CGFW). On TWO of them, check it out yourself (!), I forgot to post the price of the pick...well fortunately, I can look this up through Fidelity.com, so that's how I got the prices. I used the HIGHEST prices I could see for that day, so that would be the most conservative approach, without the risk of overstating our performance.
O.K. back to the blackboard..."I will write the prices on the posts, I will write the prices on the posts"....Honest, I will try harder!
So how did these stocks do these past ten weeks? Well on 2/10/04, I posted Thor Industries (THO) on the blog at $33.86. THO closed at $29.29 on 4/23/04 for a loss of $(4.57) or (13.5)%.
Next, I posted Giant Industries (GI) at $16.50 on 2/11/04. (This was one of the two stocks I needed to reconstruct prices). GI closed on 4/23/04 at $20.31 for a gain of $3.81 or 23.1%.
On 2/11/04, I posted Netsmart Technologies (NTST) on the blog at $17.60. NTST has been a weak performer and closed at $12.24 on 4/23/04 for a loss of (55.24)% (yikes).
Finally, on 2/12/04, I posted Cyberguard (CGFW) at $11.96. This was the other stock I needed to reconstruct the selection price. CGFW has also been fairly week since the post at $9.58 on 4/23/04. This represents a loss of $(2.38) or (19.9)%.
Quite frankly, this was NOT a great week or a 10 week period for my stock picks! We had since their selections, performance of losses of (13.5)%, (55.24)%, (19.9)%, and a gain of 23.1%. The average of these was a loss of (16.4)%. This was a mediocre week at best and you can see two things from this: #1) No stock selection is a guarantee of success over every type of market, #2)Why it is so important to avoid buying into weak markets over the short-term, #3)Why it is important to have sell points on stocks to limit your losses, and try to avoid selling stocks that are winners.
Thanks so much for stopping by! I will try to do the longer-term view, about 7 months out I believe, a little later today! If you have any questions, comments, or words of encouragement, please feel free to email me at bobsadviceforstocks@lycos.com Unless otherwise directed, I will try to answer your letters online in the blog so that I can share my response with our other readers!
Bob