Bookkeeping: End of Day Transaction - Selling Strength & Buying Weakness

One day we will all look back at this and share a great laugh ... ;)

In the last 10 minutes I decided to sell some of the stronger positions since I wanted to raise some cash. I was debating whether to do that Friday and did not - of course those strong positions were decimated today. I did not get all the buy orders in time.

I closed 2 positions
Blackrock (BLK) this was a sub 1% position. I really like this financial but with some of the other stocks down so severely the near term upside in those positions over the next few months is now greater in those names than Blackrock.

iShares Hong Hong Kong (EWH), this was roughly a 1% position - if China panics all the Asian related ETFs I hold (Malaysia, Singapore) will fall, but Hong Kong probably most. The ETF was only down 1% today so I just needed to raise some cash.

I reduced
Ciena (CIEN) which has been a relative strength champ and held up today as well, near flat - I just needed to raise cash so I sold 200 of 550 shares; it is still a 1.5% position - same theory as Blackrock, with the panic selling in other sectors I just see more upside now in other names in the near term.

I tried to buy the following 4: Potash (POT), Shaw Group (SGR), CF Industries (CF), and Baidu.com (BIDU)

Only Potash triggered in time - of the 3 fertilizer stocks I own, I as most underweight in this name, since its valuation was the highest. It held better than the other 2 all day but fell on its sword there in the last hour or so. I picked up some at $103s; and its now up to 2.9% of the portfolio. As I said, I want to be overweight agriculture and infrastructure going into 2008 and I sure am now.

Baidu.com is still a small position for me, but I wanted to double from 30 shares to 60 shares, as the stock is now down suddenly to its 50 day moving average. That order did not go in time, and neither did the other two stocks I was looking to buy. So I will have a bit of cash if we open with more carnage tomorrow.

Solar stocks imploded even worse than agriculture and infrastructure today - still not that interested....

As always, keep days like this in mind when everything is easy and everyone is printing money hand over fist. Keeps us grounded. Suffice to say the fund seriously underperformed the indexes today as all overweight groups were smashed to pieces. Amazingly outside of NASDAQ the indexes were not really down much today. Unless we are going back to 2002 type of environment there should be some light at the end of the tunnel here relatively soon as all hot sectors have now been humbled. To say sentiment is awful would be an understatement.

How was your day? :)