Obama loves wind energy - he is so powerful he can even cause Chinese wind power to blossom. I sold 1% of the A-Power Energy (APWR) position Friday in the $5.20s (down from 3.4% to 2.4%) and now can return in the $4.60s so I shall (we'll take it back up to a 3.6% stake). On any breakout over $6.50 I might make this a 6-8% position like the old days when we actually held stocks in such large positions, instead of hiding in ETFs and cash. But for now all we can do is trade it below resistance levels. This is about 11% below where we sold it, 48 hours ago.
Obama hearts fertilizer (secretly). I was able to sell Mosaic (MOS) Wednesday at $34; I added some late yesterday in the selloff under $30 and more today at a similar price - so about a 12% lower cost basis. Potash (POT) has not pulled back the same amount so I decided to just focus on Mosaic and make the position size big enough to represent both names. We reduced Mosaic from a 1.8% stake to 0.9% Wednesday, and now I am making it a 3.0% stake. Upside here is to $40.
James River Coal (JRCC) has not pulled back so I did not buy back into that one; look here - Obama does not heart coal at all, but he is so gregarious and benevolent even sectors he hates will go up in the shadow of his aura.
I'm still waiting for the lemmings to please run to the solar stocks - for gosh sakes you know solar panels are going on top of the White House.
(Disclosure - I find this all to be nonsense but these are where hedge funds are running back into, so we'll ride their backs. If the S&P breaks down in the last hour - none of this happened and this post will disappear - along with any other that showed I tried to buy stocks only because "well everyone else is")
We're just grinding things out folks, it's impossible to buy and hold, so this short term swing trading is the order of the day. I guess it's an upgrade from the last 3 months when "sit in bomb shelter" was the status quo. Despite what appears to be a bullish bent (I'm neutral but in awe that bad news only matters to bloggers and not stock pickers) please remember our allocations which entered the week 50% long/45% cash/5% short (which is as "bullish" of an allocation we are going to be doing until a real bull market comes back). We spent the early part of this week selling a good 15% of long exposure on various Kool Aid theories and stocks up 30,40%+ in 2 weeks, meanwhile adding some short exposure back Wednesday as a hedge (but not much). Entering the day we were back up to 57% cash and 10%ish short (for those not mathematically inclined that left a miserly 33% long). The environment is incredibly fluid and when you make 30% for holding a short instrument for 24 hours you have to take some profit. So our cash load was high, and I'm not even back to the long exposure we began the week with. So we're simply incrementally adding some long exposure at lower prices then we sold out earlier this week.
I reserve the right to reverse all of today's purchases if Caesar's New York City panics in the last hour, since the only reason I am buying is "everyone else is", and I have no fundamental reason to be doing these acts of bullishness. As always it is not the news, but the reaction to the news - right now the reaction shows people are willing to suspend all belief that Obama cannot singlehandily reignite the world economy. Midas lives.
Long James River Coal, Mosaic, A-Power Energy in fund; long Mosaic, A-Power Energy in personal account
