After making a ridiculous 40.8% in 15 months, we decided on Tuesday morning to get back to cash in our Long-Term Portfolio. We still have 13 positions left, mostly in the materials space but, as you can see, our cash now exceeds our portfolio's total value ($703,885.23) because the positions we did keep were our "losers" (so far) that are down, as a group, by $73,780.
There is almost not a single position we sold that I wouldn't be happy to buy back if they get cheap again but we didn't make 40% in just over a year by chasing winners. The way we built this portfolio was first creating a Buy List (Members, see our Virtual Portfolio Section for our last list) and then choosing a bargain every few weeks to add to our Long-Term Portfolio. As we move through Q1 earnings, we'll be making a new Buy List for 2015 and, now that we're back in cash, we'll begin making new picks for our Long-Term Portfolio.
In our last review (just 3 weeks ago) we were at $640,797 in the LTP so we gained 10% in 3 weeks on our positions – that's ridiculous. Never confuse being lucky with being good – gaining 10% in a month is lucky becuase, if we were that good, we'd be averaging 100% a year, right? Since we KNOW we're not that good, we need to take advantage of our luck – especially when we are worried about what lies ahead for the market.
Even luckier, our Short-Term Portfolio, whose primary function is to protect the Long-Term Portfolio, held it's ground while the LTP made its gains, going from $201,495 on…
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