For fun - current returns
I decided to see how well I’ve done in the last several months. I know how well I’m doing in my real accounts, but what about the stocks I have written about here? As I say, this is for fun, as 8 months worth of data is pretty meaningless for this kind of investing. As you might imagine, if the returns were negative it would be a lot less “fun”. 
Anyway, here are the numbers:
| Ticker | Start Date | Start Price | Current Price | Return (abs) | Return (ann) |
| MGA | 9-Dec-08 | $30.44 | $46.36 | 52.30% | 72.69% |
| ACTS | 26-Dec-08 | $1.61 | $2.32 | 44.10% | 65.60% |
| ATPG | 12-Dec-08 | $7.29 | $11.49 | 57.61% | 81.02% |
| BTF | 5-Dec-08 | $9.37 | $11.66 | 24.44% | 33.45% |
| BXLC | 5-Dec-08 | $23.00 | $24.00 | 4.35% | 5.95% |
| IPHS | 11-Dec-08 | $14.19 | $19.64 | 38.41% | 53.80% |
Not too shabby. It doesn’t really represent my personal investments, as I’ve never owned BXLC, only had BTF very briefly (better opportunities out there), and I don’t remember if I ever held MGA. Furthermore, I’ve been buying ATPG steadily as it fell down into the $3-$5 range. I’ve also been doing some troubled companies investing where the story has not played out yet. There are several other oil stocks I have been buying but not writing about here (PETD, RAME, et al), plus some boring mega cap stocks, and some interesting companies with value to hedge funds.In some way these writeups disappoint me, in that I have several other very good ideas, but on the other hand I feel that what I do write about I support very well, and they have been great performers. Furthermore, they have a lot more legs left.
With all that caveat out of the way, this chart probably still represents some of my best ideas to date.
I’m still very hot on ATPG, ACTS, and IPHS. I have no opinion on the others, as I’m not really following them. BXLC was trading up to $29 earlier in the year, but gave it all up. I wonder if they will ever do something with their cash - it’d still be a home run for investors if they did.
Anyway, compared to the S&P 500, which has an annualized return of about 25% since Dec 15th, I’d say I’m doing satisfactory.
August 29th, 2009 at 10:31 pm
You’ve done well. Even in the kind of market we’ve seen since March, it’s still hard to beat the averages - even hypothetically. I’ve been sweating over a hypothetical (Marketocracy) portfolio, so I know.