Bookkeeping: Closing Titanium Metals (TIE) Position

I am closing out my Titanium Metals (TIE) 1.1% position for a minor loss; this will help raise cash position as well. On the back of the Allegheny Technology (ATI) warning, the titanium sector is under pressure; even though the ATI warning was due to stainless steel and not titanium, investors are generally not that sophisticated and like to throw babies out with bathwater, so I don't feel like a return trip to $30; so I will sell here at $32 and watch the sector from the sideline for now. This warning, on top of the Boeing Dreamliner delay seems to be hurting psychology and in the near term fundamentals don't matter; psychology does.

I wrote then re: Dreamliner delay:
In the long run, this is no big deal as these are very long term contracts and the titanium play is a longer term trend, but it could affect short term attitudes towards the stocks and create some artificial weakness - but with this market so overextended I am not in the mood for adding much in term of long exposure. So I am going to let this play out and see how the stocks react in the next few days/weeks.

With the move down today, Titanium Metals has once again broken both the 50 and 200 day moving average, and hence goes into the "going to be tough sledding in the near term" bin, unless it recovers quickly. This is just one of those stocks that has never clearly marked a trend either up or down for more than a few weeks since it has been in the portfolio. With my preference to have more cash and less long exposure this gives me an easy opportunity to adjust the portfolio in that direction, as this sale raises about $13K.

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