I like to sell my losers. And unfortunately, I have to admit that in the past decade I've picked up some 'non-winners'. This credit crisis has really separated the grown-ups from the children (don't want to be sexist ).
I see this as a wonderful time to dump those sub-par companies, where fundamental changes have occurred in the company that make the business different and hence no longer attractive.
I took some money off the table (Thursday morning) in a stock that had a nice 40% run in the last 10 days or so since I had bought the stock. Since it appeared to be fully valued and at its price target it would be quite a wait to see much more increase and rather than endure a correction in the price I am redeploying the money elsewhere.
I haven't taken any profits off of the table. I did exit some positions that were now in the black but had high average cost per share from me catching the falling knife. What I have still invested has doubled...this includes BAC at $7.71, ING at $3.50, and USB at $11. I'm still holding GE at a pretty big loss but only because I'm planning to DCA it down.
Overall I'm sitting on more cash then I have invested in my taxable account. This is cash from LOC so I can afford to wait. If this bull run is for real then I still walk away with a very nice return with less risk. If the market drops like a brick I'll have plenty of cash waiting to swallow up more shares.
I was happy to dump some of my higher MER mutual funds to put into cash. This strikes me as a bit of a bear rally, the US is still shedding jobs. Mind you the markets do lead the recoveries...
The recent stock market advance has allowed me to rebalance my portfolio away from an overweight in financials and energy to more stable income producing pipelines, midstream services, reits and prefs. Most of these have been lagging the recent surge, and names such as FTS, TRP, IPL.UN and NPR.UN should do nice and steady in the next few months....
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