2008 11
My life as a non trader
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
Most investors who trade stocks and other securities trade frequently. I don´t. I am your average broker´s nightmare. I probably do around 1 trade per month. This year I decided to share my portfolio in my blog. And it has not been a bad year.
In a post I wrote on May 4th I told my readers what I thought was going to happen with the dollar. I said that Europe was in worse conditions then what it looked like at the time, and that the US were in better conditions then what it looked like at the time. That while the dollar was in a seeming freefall that it was going to turn around. For my own portfolio I reversed a 7 year trend and started moving away from the euro into the dollar. And while I haven’t done any oil related transaction, last July I wrote in my Spanish blog that oil prices were absurdly high and they had to fall.
I started sharing what I was doing with my portfolio in early 08 with a post in which I recommended buying Apple stock (on January 23rd). Apple stock had fallen from $202 to $134 per share in less then 60 days and I loved the company, I bought shares and I told my readers I had done so.
So my two trades of the year until now were shifting my liquidity into dollars and buying Apple shares. Other than that my money was mostly in hedge funds that are down around 8% on the average this year. Bad but not as bad as the markets. And here´s another 3 trades I did. I bought TEO (Telecom of Argentina) mainly because I am Argentine and don´t think Argentina is going to hell again. I bought Citigroup and Bank of America because I lived in the States for 18 years and I can´t imagine the two leading US banks going to hell. But if you look at the stock performance of C and BAC you would think that everyone else seems to think they are going to hell. So I bought those shares. I also have bought shares of Cresud (CRESY) a very large landowner in Argentina for the same reasons. They trade as if fertileland will be worthless something that in this world of still very high food prices I don´t think will be the case.
I should also note that my investments are very long term. In 2001 when I switched to the euro I kept with it until 2008. The Apple, Citigroup, Bank of America, Cresud and Telecom of Argentina stock I’ve bought I also plan to keep for quite some time. And overall I don´t own in all these equities combined more than 5% of my net worth so until this year I had no stock exposure and now I have very little.