Today’s Results - Up $535.60

Yikes. AREX dropped 9% by noon today. 9%! Fortunately, AREX recovered steadily, for a final down day of only. 2.5%. That’s a great recovery. More on this in my investing post. We also saw another 4.5% from Sandridge today, for a cumulative two-day result of almost 11% .

Today’s Results - Up $66

A pretty quiet day. Up $65.49, mostly on Sandridge Energy.

A quiet day on the Market?

It’s weird. Today was my “lowest” positive day. A gain of $66 and I was disappointed.

It’s weird how stock investing twists your thinking around. First off, when I have a down day, I can’t help but stress over it. I read articles, postmortems, commentaries, and I do so over and over and over. I hate down days.

But I’ve also gotten used to a pretty high level of volatility in my portfolio. And that means, when the numbers go up, they really really go up. So $66 seems like a bust. Especially when I feel like I need to recover from last week (net down -$410)

For the most part, the day was pretty quiet, with the exception being SandRidge Energy (SD) delivering more than 5% up. I’ll take it, especially when crude oil closed the futures trading session at $128.85, its first notable pullback in a week.

Oil and oil services companies are currently very strong buy candidates. When you take into account rising international demand and supply that’s just not growing (no to mention the possibility of peak oil), you have the perfect storm to explain why oil and gas is so expensive. Oil exploration and production companies are VERY profitable at $130 oil.

No only that. If for some reason oil prices drop precipitously - for whatever reason - these oil and gas companies will continue to be safe investments. Imagine, if SandRidge Energy is profitable at $80/barrel of oil, you’d have to see a full collapse in oil prices before you have to worry about these companies.

It’s a market holiday. (Sigh)

It’s a holiday, so the market is closed. Not here in Canada, but rather, it’s a holiday in the US.

Unfortunately, as a US equity investor (I know, I know, I’m missing out on opportunities locally and around the world. More on the later…), I am subject to the vagaries of the US holiday calendar. Somethings that works out great - last week, while I was home from work due to the Victoria Day holiday in Canada I was able to truly be an active participant in managing my portfolio. But often, that means that the market is silent for another day. Which really just makes weekends seem long in that “not so good” way. Who would have thought that was even possible.

Besides, I have RRSPs and a financial advisor who worry abour the “Canadian content” in my equity portfolio. Phew. Now if only I could convince him that, yes, really, Brazil is full of potential.

Today’s Result

It was another down day, in a string of down days.

Politics

Thoughts on politics and the state of the economy.

The Stress of Being a New Stock Investor

I’ll admit it: this has been a stressful week as a stock investor. Especially a relatively inexperienced stock investor trying to make my way to eventual (fill-in-the-blank financial outcome: retirement, supplemented income, etc etc).

Who wouldn’t be stressed? The Dow dropped 4% this week, oil is at staggering numbers, steel and gold are racing to new highs. Taken together, that’s a lot of market uncertainty.

In fact, the week started quite poorly for me, but by mid-day Thursday I was certain I was safely in the black. Sadly, it was not to be. The wheels simply came off the bus. From about 2:30EST on Thursday to the end of trading on Friday, my portfolio lost more than $1400 in value. That is staggering to me. Unsettling. Discouraging.

Looking at the week overall, I ended down just over $400 from where I started. It could have been a whole lot worse.

Starting with a relatively small investment pool myself (in the range of $5000), it wouldn’t take long for my “dispensable” investment fund to simply disappear. Hence my first goal, at least in an ideal sense, has been to maintain capital. Unfortunately, with my ongoing emphasis on specific industries, namely agriculture stocks, oil and gas investments, and metals, it feels like perhaps I’ve strayed far from the security of “diversity”.

But I’m leaving that to my RRSPs and my financial planner. Diversified portfolios are his job. At the very least, I hope to finish the year ahead of where I started. If I accomplish that, I will have considered it a success.