Continued to tune portfolio risk lower

The situation in eurozone seems to be slipping from bad to worse. Thus, the risk of recession and even full panic (think Lehman 2008) seems to be greater than ever before during the eurozone debt crisis.

Therefore, I decided to lower my exposure to basic minerals and oil, which I presume would be hit the hardest if another recession/slowdown would begin. I sold shares in Talvivaara and Chevron. I completely eliminated the position in Noble Corporation, which represents exposure to offshore drilling contractors in our portfolio along with Fred Olsen Energy. I decided to leave Fred Olsen Energy and Statoil untouched as both are not too far from the lows of 2009 (in terms of Norwegian Krone). Thus, the downside with these seemed to be much less than with the ones I sold (Nickel price is still very far away from lows of 2009 and both Noble Corp. and Chevron are still riding high).

I really don't like holding cash, but now it seems like a good time to hold some for the time being..

Europe's debt crisis as seen by 9-year old

Michael Cembalest, the Chief Investment Officer of J.P. Morgan, describes the European debt crisis in a funny but understandable way in the "Eye of the market" letter dated September 6th, 2011.

For the debt crisis in the European Monetary Union as seen by a 9-year old" see page 2 of the letter.

  

"If today’s diorama analysis borders on the absurd, so does maintaining the fiction that accumulation of massive public and private sector claims in Europe can somehow be engineered away."

10 Most Owned Stocks By 'Super Investors'

Dataroma.com tracks investment activities of successful value oriented “super investors” such as Warren Buffett, David Einhorn and Bruce Berkowitz. Here I examine the top 10 most owned stocks by the 49 investors tracked by Dataroma. Microsoft (MSFT) is the most owned stock currently (24 out of 49 investors holding it).

Read the full article at Seeking Alpha:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/291897-10-most-owned-stocks-by-super-investors

Bye bye Nokia (for now)

It's hard to take loss. It's even harder to admit that the reasons why you bought some stock were wrong. Well, after a review of our portfolio and couple of weeks of thinking I decided to let go of Nokia. It's too hard to value right now.

I sincerely hope they will succeed in the chosen path, but I think it is better for me to reallocate our money to some other stocks in our portfolio. I don't like to wait for turnarounds especially when the company is facing incresingly tough competition in mobile phones and loosing market share so fast.