Friday, February 13, 2009

Bookkeeping: Cutting Some BHP Billiton (BHP) and Mosaic (MOS)

Posted by TraderMark at 11:15 AM TweetThis
Let me be clear I hate this trading environment; things move so quickly and turns everyone into a daytrader. I am sick of filling the blog full of entries of trades - if I could make 4-5 trades a week I'd be much more content. The amount of trading required for very little reward is not a good balance nowadays.

But I have quick 6%ish gains in both the Mosaic (MOS) and BHP Billiton (BHP) positions we started yesterday morning; the former in the $43.30s and the latter in the $42.70s. Together they were about 3% of the portfolio; I am going to cut it in half for now and take it from there. Both have nice setups on the chart where you can buy the dip and sell the rip, so I'll continue to manage around these positions. To repeat my strategy here, I now have 4 commodity stocks which I am treating as one basket - just like HAL9000 the quant fund computer does. So when I view my portfolio it's "one" position to me, even though it is four to the average bear. Hence my commodity 'blob' position is now about 4% of portfolio in total down from 6% before this sale. If we start taking off back towards S&P 870 I'll probably increase the stake.

This has to do more with the overall portfolio balance as well - I added a decent amount of exposure yesterday on the long side while lifting quite a bit of short exposure. Hence I am quite unbalanced to the long side - with the S&P 500 in the middle of this disgusting range than never ends (800 to 870) I'd prefer to be back to a 50/50 type of long/short feel. In lieu of that, I want to find some long exposure to liquidate to build back cash and with profits handed to me this quickly I chose these 2.

Long Mosaic, BHP Billiton in fund; no personal position

Posted by TraderMark at 11:15 AM Comments (4) | Edit This Post | Create A New Post

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4 comments:

sm said...

Mark said:

"with the S&P 500 in the middle of this disgusting range than never ends (800 to 870)"

Hi Mark, is there a possibility, that markets are entering this type of behavior, that may last not months but years to come, i.e. go sideways most of the times, with dips and ups sprinkled here and there?

February 13, 2009 11:36 AM  
TraderMark said...

That is find and dandy. The problem is not the market - a flat market is fine and I've handled it before. The problem is individual stocks nowadays simply do not follow a trend for more than 96 hours in most cases. That is the part that kills you.

It's a market of stocks, not a stock market. I only care about 30-35 stocks. The other 3000+ can do whatever... the indexes can go sideways for 10 years for all I care. We just need something to stay consistent for more than 3 days.

February 13, 2009 11:49 AM  
sm said...

Got it, THANKS!

February 13, 2009 11:52 AM  
jegan said...

BHP is a good company, and I was looking at going long if the Stimulus Package turned the market around. I see it as having at least another $3 upside by about the 20th of this month (I'll have to flag myself to see how it goes..)

Also odd is your cutting some MOS. I just bailed on my POT short with 10% profit, as I think the market should react positively when Obama signs and all the **favorites** should rebound.

Albeit, I do think it is way too early for commodities. I did note some weakness in the Baltic Dry, and I do think the recent runup is a combination of ridiculous bottoming and irrational hopes of a China comeback.

jegan

February 13, 2009 5:20 PM  

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