The Home Trading Blog

Excuse me for sounding like a broken record, but we are still in a period of uncertainty in the market. What initially looked like a good week (looking at the international markets), ended with a sharp fall of the US and European markets on Friday. This meant the major markets finished the week slightly down compared to the week before.

However the Australian market and our portfolio finished the week marginally up compared to the week before. Most stocks in the portfolio didn’t move much with the exception of ILU. Last week’s profit on ILU was 37.81 % compared to when the stock was bought and this week’s profit is 48.77 %. A shame that we sold half of our holdings some time back. On the other hand, I am quite happy to have some profits secured. You never know how the market will be moving and most analysis and future prediction is made based on probability. One of the biggest mistakes an investor can make is not to lock in profit. I have spoken to many people that have seen a 30% profit turn into a losing trade and this really hurts. I happily accept the fact that I can’t be correct in each of my trades and that a minority of them end up being losing trades. What I can’t accept is having made some good money on a trade and then losing it all.

I set myself a profit target, in the case of trading the HSC rules it is 15%. When I then see weakness in a stock I sell half of the holding. Depending on the circumstances I then bring the original stop up to break even at the original purchase price or I look for another logical place above the stop that was set with the initial purchase.

Sorry I got sidetracked here, back to the portfolio. Apart from this not much else has happened, there weren’t any transactions in the portfolio. Looking ahead though I have two stocks that I flagged as a buy according to my analysis. They are SKI (Spark Infrastructure Group) and once again DJS (David Jones). TOL (Toll Holdings Ltd) will also a buy when it gets above 6.21 and the monthly swing turns up. Fingers cross that the only down day will be Monday and the markets will continue on their way up for the rest of the week.

The portfolio as of 16th July is: