Fire sale going on

[preben]

Al; good graph - the spike a few days after the first news is not that big, so I checked my gambling/trading account:
2005-08-15 12:54:27 Sell MOVI (Stk) 240 22.05 5.00 0.00 5287.00
2005-08-11 13:23:02 Buy MOVI (Stk) 240 20.80 5.00 4997.00 0.00

So after costs ($10) I earned $280 which is about 3 months of groceries or 1 year of internet+water+drinking water+ change for a 6-pack of beer every month here in Thailand.

PCRDX (or PCRIX in my case) have done great - YTD nothing I hold beat the VGPMX (metals/mining) though being up 30%.

Brewer good to know that you did not follow it all the way down - you wrote that you held a substantial position so I was a bit worried.

Cheers!

 

[Nords]

Wow, this thread is so old that it predates the stockpicking forum.

I keep a postmortem file for my most interesting stock picks, so I thought I'd revive this 1627-day-old thread to point out that MOVI is not only still wandering aimlessly through their second bankruptcy, but is also closing all of their U.S. stores.

Movie Gallery to close all U.S. stores: report | Reuters

I've learned almost as much from MOVI/MVGWQ as I have from Nortel, Berkshire Hathaway, ISM/OSM, and Apple...

 

[brewer12345]

Eh, you win some, you lose some.

 

[Leonidas]

Eh, you win some, you lose some.

I appreciate reading over your shoulder, so to speak, and your thoughts on shipping stocks turned me on to that industry when it had been severely beaten upon. I found two issues I liked and doubled my money on a couple of short term trades. Thanks for sharing your thoughts from time to time.

 

[Nords]

Eh, you win some, you lose some.

The former is far ahead of the latter in cap gains...

... but the latter is always more educational.

 

[brewer12345]

The former is far ahead of the latter in cap gains...

... but the latter is always more educational.

I always learn more from my mistakes than from my successes. That is true in investing, homebrewing, marriage, etc. Maybe some day I will get good at learning from others' mistakes, although I suppose that is what I got for the grad school tuition and CFA blood, sweat and tears.

 

[soupcxan]

It still isn't clear to me that NFLX will ever make enough money to justify the stock price.

I'm a lot more interested in businesses that flow obscene amounts of cash.

Since we're all picking on Brewer...NFLX prices then and now:

11/17/2005: $25.74
5/3/2010: $101.88

So it outperformed the S&P by about 250% (the S&P was basically flat).

 

[ziggy29]

The moral of the story in individual stock picking (not that I do much of it any more) is to cut losses short with a stop and let the gains ride with a trailing stop.

If you do it right you can profit even if you are wrong 60-70% of the time because your gains will be larger than your losses. That's sort of like a .300 hitting baseball player being a "star" even if he fails 70% of the time.

 

[brewer12345]

Since we're all picking on Brewer...NFLX prices then and now:

11/17/2005: $25.74
5/3/2010: $101.88

So it outperformed the S&P by about 250% (the S&P was basically flat).

What I missed was the massive paradigm shift in this business. I tend to stick with boring businesses and avoid things like tech, drugs, etc. because I know I cannot call big transformational shifts. This underscores it, I guess. Suppose I should stick to boring businesses from now on, which reflects my portfolio (if you count reinsurance as boring).

 

[NW-Bound]

The moral of the story in individual stock picking (not that I do much of it any more) is to cut losses short with a stop and let the gains ride with a trailing stop.

If you do it right you can profit even if you are wrong 60-70% of the time because your gains will be larger than your losses. That's sort of like a .300 hitting baseball player being a "star" even if he fails 70% of the time.

Tell me about it.

I like to go bargain shopping too, and have sold out stocks when I doubled my money, only to kick myself to see they kept rising to 5X or more. I have also hanged on to real losers, and occasionally rode them down to bankruptcy.

Still, I have survived and even beat the S&P in the last 10 years. Of course I am still learning from my mistakes.

 

[ziggy29]

What I missed was the massive paradigm shift in this business. I tend to stick with boring businesses and avoid things like tech, drugs, etc. because I know I cannot call big transformational shifts.

That is actually pretty similar to what Warren Buffett has said and has been part of his aversion to investing in tech.

 

[NW-Bound]

There is always more than 1 way to make money...
And then, there are even more ways to lose it...

 

[brewer12345]

That is actually pretty similar to what Warren Buffett has said and has been part of his aversion to investing in tech.

I can understand his aversion.

Actually, as I get closer to my goal I am just waiting for my big holdings to hit my price targets and then will be selling out in favor of wide diversification. I will probably always keep ten percent of the portfolio or so for individual securities, but once I am FI I will be strictly controlling this amount to a modest level.

Now to hit a few price targets...