Monday, May 24, 2010

Too much trading?

I should probably burn my password/codesheets to my brokers and get new ones after summer as I have the urge to do too much trading. I am definitely not a day trader and as a big believer of buy and hold strategy I really should minimize selling and short term investments. But somehow I managed yet again do something else than buy and hold.

Here is some changes I have done on friday and today:
  • Closed leverage long positions for gold - not a very smart move as now gold price is shooting up again. However, volatility is not good for leveraged ETFs so maybe I keep my hands off them given that so far my short term trading has yielded pretty much zero profits, maybe even a small loss.
  • Sold Sampo shares even though not long ago I said it's definitely a long term investment. I kind of realized that even though it is a great company, it really did not fit into all the other moves that I have made (selling Berkshire Hathaway). Also, I realized for some articles that I read yesterday that I may be sitting on a time bomb there. You see, Berkshire has most of it's holdings in stocks and I sold it because I believe we are now in a fairly long bear market. Sampo on the other hand is heavily exposed to bonds. Here is why bonds (or atleast bond funds) are not so good idea: http://menafn.com/qn_news_story.asp?storyid=%7B88E69BCA-9396-4AA0-9DC0-C6696D6AA709%7D. So I figured that if I sold BRK for time being, why I am still holding this one. I probably can get back into both cheaper later IF I am right about bear market.
  • Moved money away from ETFS Physical gold (Frankfurt: VZLD) as I don't like the rumours about HSBC which holds the gold in London for ETFS and it seems also for SPDR Gold Trust (NYSE: GLD) which seems to get a lot of flak from some of the gold bulls:
  • http://www.bullionbullscanada.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=10825:the-bogus-bullion-etfs&catid=42:rokstories
  • http://seekingalpha.com/article/206320-seriously-the-spdr-gold-trust-isn-t-a-scam-but-phys-might-be (Article in defence of GLD, but you should also see the comments!)
  • I have seen a lot of this type of commentary and it kind of seems like yet another conspiracy theory. Although I have to admit that if all this is just that then these guys are the best conspiracy theory writers I have ever seen. Don't fully believe it, but sold anyway as I also needed the profits to cover some of my losses (tax planning :).
  • Put some more money into Xetra Gold (Frankfurt: 4GLD) as I find it somehow more credible than other alternatives. But in the end of the day, it's only bits in cyberspace as well, but I can live with it for now.

No comments:

Post a Comment