Once again the stocks in my portfolio are taking a dive. The rest of the market is too so I’m not terribly worried. Overall I believe that the stocks I’ve picked are solid companies with good future prospects. This week looks like it will be a roller coaster ride for the markets in general. There is a ton of volatility in commodities and significant inflation worries, made worse by the Chinese allowing their currency to appreciate against the dollar.

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My IE portfolio experienced an ugly drop in value this past week. Ameritrade lost about 7.5% of it’s value in the last 5 days while Shanda lost a bit over 8%. I think the market way over-reacted to the earnings conference call where the founder disclosed that he and a few other Sr. managers would be selling several million shares in order to diversify their holdings (perfectly reasonable). Shanda is down on no real news, just a rumor that they have been prohibited from marketing IPTV in China (denied by the company). Overall I am down about $1,000 in the past week.

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Last week while the market was going nuts I was attempting to buy back Gasco (GSX).  The Ameritrade (now TD Ameritrade) website was down for a couple of minutes (probably too much load) and I missed my price on the stock.  This caused me to miss out on a small profit from the trade.

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Just so I am sure to write about the bad days as well as the good… Two of my stocks are down in excess of 5% today.

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After yesterday’s big run-up I sold the 300 shares of (GSX) I had purchased on Monday and netted a nice 9% gain after commissions. My thought was that the stock would fall after such a good day and I was right. This morning it fell more than 4%. After I patted myself on the back and it appeared to bottom and was heading back up I placed an order to buy back my 300 shares at $5.60. It wasn’t meant to be and I didn’t feel like chasing it so I let it go.

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The market had an awesome day today despite the continued rise in oil prices. The main impetus for this was a modest rise in the March PPI numbers (Producer Price Index - mainly this is a measure of inflation for businesses.) Another piece of good news came from the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC)’s minutes which gave indication that the Fed was close to finished with raising interest rates.

All of my holdings were up by at least 1% with GSX up nearly 13% for the day! I will not be at all surprised if there is some profit-taking tomorrow bringing stocks down a bit.

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It’s been a while since I’ve bought or sold any stocks in my taxable account. I’ve been continuing to contribute $1,000 per month to the account and now have a balance of just under $11,000. I’ve been watching a few stocks and today decided to pull the trigger on two of them. This will diversify my account a bit and hopefully allow me to capture some more gains.

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It’s been a while since I did an update on my portfolio.  I haven’t found any new stocks to buy yet and am waiting for a market correction to come along (and the buying opportunity that would ensue.)

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As I mentioned on Saturday I had bought 100 shares of Shanda in expectation of solid earnings.  I had based this expectation on their competitors reporting solid earnings.  I was wrong.

Tonight Shanda reported a loss of $.04 a share vs an expected $.26 per share profit.  The stock, which was up a couple percent during the day, tanked after hours by around 18% (I’m down around $3 per share).  I expect it will recover some over the next few days but I may have to use covered calls to get back to even on this one.  I’ve done a bit more research on the company and despite it’s aweful earnings report I think the stock is still undervalued at this price.

I haven’t yet decided if I am going to sell and take the loss or hold on and wait for it to recover.  I’ll dig into the numbers some more over the next few days and make that determination.

Friday saw some good results coming out of a couple of Chinese Internet companies. (Netease.com) The whole sector rose nicely. I’ve been watching Shanda Interactive for a while (SNDA). It was mentioned by Cramer a couple of months ago as being a good company that had been beat up. Shanda releases earnings on Monday which I am guessing are going to be positive. I bought 100 shares to cash in on it if it does happen. This is about as close to gambling as I get with my investments…
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