YTD trading analysis

Mutual fund holdings

flpsx 1/1:41, 3/20:44 7.3%
dodfx 1/1:36, 3/20:38 5.5%
dodgx 1/1:139, 3/20:146 5%

My stock portforlio has been suffering this year due to neglect.  I’m down 2.5%, which is a miserable result, considering my mutual funds blew it away.
midd 87.05/86.2
I made a play on panic selling, but didn’t sell myself once the stock recovered.
This was up 11% at one time, for a few days.
wcc 44.5/47.7
I sold too quickly on this one. It moved as I expected, and I decided to
take the gains because of some earlier experiences with waiting too long
for the sell. Well, this was different, because the stock made some
big headway, and is now at 63. My mistake here was not paying attention
to the price action,and understanding the post spike consolidation pattern.

qqqq 41.92/41.23
Playing around with the qqqq reliably cyclic pattern. Unfortunately for me,
I bought in too late in the cycle, at the MACD crossover point. If the
rally would have continued, I would have made a small profit. The point here
is that I made the right move, and sold when the pattern stalled, but I bought
3 days late in the pattern, which cost me a about 2.5% on the trade.

kbh 75.71/64.01
Well, I bought this on 1/27, right before it changed trend. I was at
the right point in the macd/stoch cycle, and even say gains for a couple of days,
but external market trends worked against me. The trend continued downward until I took the max loss at 15%.
I’m running it as a bear call play in my virtual portforlio at the moment.
The thing I should have done different here is watch the news better, and
see that housing trouble in California was severely affecting this stock.
Of course, slg, a real-estate company, saw awesome runup. It was also on my close watch list,
but I decided against it because of it’s weak trend. Go figure.

ppdi 68.25/70.2
I played this on about as well as it could have been. It just didn’t
move like I wanted, and the market forecast looks bearish, so I’m bailing
before it turns into a loss in a near-term market downturn.

arg 37.2/37.88
I picked the right day to buy, but I was a few hours too late. I should have woken
up earlier, prior to market open, or bought the day before. It’s better to buy a little
early, and see a day of unrealized loss, than miss a big move up. I sold
at what I would consider a reasonable moment. It was nearing the top of the cycle,
and was unhappy with the overall trend. In review, it looks like it’s going to recover
into a nice trend, but it’s not showing up in my screen anymore.

MSN Stock Screener

I must say that I’m impressed with MSNs FREE!!! stock screener.  It covers a wide selection of criteria, and is very flexible.  I only wish it could screen on the Zacks rating.

Here’s my current screen, for interest’s sake.  Note I temporariliy tweaked down the % Price Change for the Last 6 Mos, otherwise almost all the stocks fell of the list.

http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/invsub/finder/finderx.asp?Query=SV1QS1F227Z00F234Z04L1000ZF136Z04F314ZF181Z04F314ZF114Z04L70000ZF151Z04L25ZF154Z04L25ZS10F406Z00S10F412Z00S10F410Z00S10F408Z00S98F98Z07F9998ZF154Z04F151ZS6F226Z04%22Hold%22F157Z04L25ZF106Z04L1Z&Name=StockScreen&Tickers=25

Industry Name    Display Only

Market Cap    >=    1bil

ROE              >=    Industry Avg

ROE 5yr        >=     Industry Avg

Avg vol last 2 weeks     >=    70k

Rev Growth Year vs Year    >= 25%

EPS Growth Year vs Year    >= 25%

Fundamental Grade    Display

Valuation Grade    Display

Technical Grade    Display

Ownership Grade    Display

EPS Growth Year vs Year  >=    Rev Growth Year vs Year

Mean Recommendation     >=    Hold

%Price Change Last Qtr    >= 25%

%Price Change Last 6mos >= 25%

New strategy update.

Some input from a friend of mine finally gave me the push to get into options spread trading.  The plan is to exercise my optionsXpress virtual trading account for the next 4 months to get the hang of the various spread trading strategies, and get a sample of what I can expect.  If I’m doing good, then I’ll risk 20k in my real-money account.

In parallel, the I’m going to stick with trading off my stock screen/macd/stochastic strategy, which holds up pretty good.  I was up about 10% in January, but lost most of my gains shortly after I peaked.  I’m now up about 2% from the beginning of the year, which is pretty lame.   Most of my losses have come from holding a good trade too long, and trying to get more out of it than it had.  On more than a couple of occassions I’ve been up between 5-15%, then had the stock drop, either suddenly, or take a long dip into negative territory, due to either industry trend change, or oftentimes I’m blindsided by an earnings event.  Both of these can be remedied by reading the news a little better.

New strategy update.

Some input from a friend of mine finally gave me the push to get into options spread trading.  The plan is to exercise my optionsXpress virtual trading account for the next 4 months to get the hang of the various spread trading strategies, and get a sample of what I can expect.  If I’m doing good, then I’ll risk 20k in my real-money account.

In parallel, the I’m going to stick with trading off my stock screen/macd/stochastic strategy, which holds up pretty good.  I was up about 10% in January, but lost most of my gains shortly after I peaked.  I’m now up about 2% from the beginning of the year, which is pretty lame.   Most of my losses have come from holding a good trade too long, and trying to get more out of it than it had.  On more than a couple of occassions I’ve been up between 5-15%, then had the stock drop, either suddenly, or take a long dip into negative territory, due to either industry trend change, or oftentimes I’m blindsided by an earnings event.  Both of these can be remedied by reading the news a little better.

Whoa…snow!

Well, the crocuses came up earlier last week during the SNOW STORM.  Luckily, I had already put some plastic over the front of my garden to dry out and warm up the soil.  I planted some Beans, and chard last week, but that was it.  It was a good thing too, since the weather turned south.

I found that the slugs come out after dark!  I figure the best way to control the slug population is to go out and patrol the garden area each evening.  The sluggo worked ok, but was pricey.  Hopefully this method will provide a little better protection.  I’d like to set out some beer traps, but I just can’t bring myself to see any beer go to waste.

2/26 Seedling starts

i included the ‘time to harvest’ duration listed on the seed packet.  According to information from WSU, you need to add 50% to the time to harvest numbers  for this region due to the lack of summer heat.
I think I’m a week or two late in starting these tomatos.  Last year a stupice came up on it’s own in the garden, from seed dropped the previous year!  It did pretty well, and even set fruit.  The fruit never ripened, but none of the other tomoto plants ripened much fruit, either.

Tomato:

Manitoba(66 days) Determinate

Sun Gold Cherry(65 days) Indeterminate

Matina(75 days) Indeterminate

Gold Nugget(60 days) Determinate

Stupice(60-65 dats) Indeterminate

Tomatilla

Verde(60-68 days)

Cabbage

Derby Day(58 days)

Broccoli

Small Miracle(56 days)

Cauliflower

All-the-year-round(70-90 days)

Leek

Fall Time(80-90 days)

Strawberries

Mignonette

Italian Alpine

Lettuce

Esmerelda(48 days)

Some random seed from a Salad Blend packet

Parsley

Forest Green(80 days)

Basil

Sweet Basil

Lemon Basil(60-70 days)

Initial draft of garden planting schedule

I’m attempting to formulate a generic planting schedule for the Baring microclimate. There’s not much collected data for Baring, so I’m starting out with the Seattle numbers, and hedging a couple weeks towards the conservative side. It’s a good thing too, because we’ve had a run of real nasty cold and snowy weather the past week. Seattle was hit with some cold weather, but not as nasty as up here on the western slopes.

Last Frost: Seattle(3/24) Baring(4/7)
First Frost: Seattle(11/11) Baring(10/25)

General Planting Schedule
LF=last frost

Phase 1 (2/24-3/10 LF-4 to LF-6)

Iffy weather. If it’s a mild year, get an early start on Phase 2. If not, then keep the transplants indoors, and sow seeds cautiously.

Phase 2(3/10-3/24 LF-4 to LF-2)

Seeds to plant: peas, spinach, lettuce
Transplant out: broccolo cabbage, cauliflower, onions, parsley, lettuce

Phase 3( 3/10-4/7 LF to LF-4)
Seeds to plant: beets, carrots, chard, radishes
Transplant out: chard

Phase 4(4/7 to 4/21 LF to LF+2)
Seeds to plant: cucumbers, cantaloupe, winter squash
Transplant out: cucumbers, eggplant, cantaloupe, peppers
This is just a general set of guidelines, to give a quick view of what I should be looking at planting, or starting indoors. A specific planting out schedule needs to be set, then work back to find out when I need to be starting my seeds inside.