winners and losers

As of May 5th I was tracking 214 stocks recommended by the BNN guest experts. This isn't all of them, this is just the recommended stocks on the TSE. American stocks and stocks on the TSE venture exchange were dropped. Of the resulting 214 stocks, as of May 5th, 133 were losers and 81 were winners. As a percentage, 63% were losers and 37% were winners. I got thinking though, maybe the losers were losers just because I didn't give them enough time. You know, you see something, you're sure its going to go up, and you buy it but a little too soon. I8 just did that with Goldcorp. So, today May 24th I checked these winning and loosing portfolio's. Of the 133 stocks in the loosing portfolio, 8 are now winners. Overall this portfolio is down 15.25%. Of the 81 stocks in the winning portfolio, 10 are now losers. Overall this portfolio is up 9.51%. Now, we have 79 winners and 135 losers, which still comes out to 37% winners and 63% losers, but with 18 stocks switching between winners and losers. Interesting, very interesting.

I've been busy

Aside from buying Goldcorp, I've been busy. I watch Business News Network [BNN] pretty much every day. This is a TV channel dedicated to stocks and investing. They get experts on who pontificate about the markets, and stocks, and summarize by giving their three top picks. Well, you can subscribe to the BNN top picks and they will email them to you, showing who recommended the stock, when they bought it, and for how much. So, since about February I've subscribed to the BNN top picks newsletter and have been tracking them. The top picks include current top picks as well as past top picks from the last time that particular guest was on BNN. So, the results; If you bought all the Canadian stocks recommended by the experts, as of today your portfolio would be down 6.54%. Yikes! And my BMO mutual fund [GGF70148], is down 2.14% from December. So much for experts.

breaking the rules

Last week I gathered some money, bought some stock, and broke my rules. The year or so previous to doing this investment strategy, I was in and out of GoldCorp [G]. I knew it traded in a range between high thirties to high forties, sometimes even low fifties. So last weeek when I saw G in the mid thirties I gathered some money and bought in. I didn't wait till I saw a 5% [or better] increase. Consequently I bought G at $36.05. I don't think that is terrible, but if I'd waited till it bottomed and turned, I would have bought it today around $35.31. Today Goldcorp [G] is $35.31, up +2.12 (6.39%) on the day. 52 week range is $32.52 - $55.93.