I've been a bit delayed in getting my bike out this year - I've been deferring some major maintenance - it's needed a new drive train - on it for a couple years, and since I walk to work, there's not much financial benefit to biking. But I love my bike, and can't go the summer without riding, so I buckled down, spent the money and replaced my chain and gears the DIY way, and it now works better than it has in years.
And not it's got me thinking about bikes as an investment. Well...owning a bike is an investment to start with, particularly when it's an alternative to recurring fuel or transit costs. But with gas prices on the upward march, and increased concern about climate change, might there be some buying opportunities in the bike sector.
So I've been searching for bike related companies. This seems to have lead to a bit of difficulty. It seems like most manufacturers and dedicated retailers are privately owned. The ones that are publicly traded tend to do bikes as one of many things...and in a general economic downturn, I'm not sure that making or selling consumer products is generally a good place to be looking.
Shimano, which dominates the parts industry, is publicly traded, but only on the Tokyo exchange. While I'm not restricting myself to Canadian companies in this search, I'm actually not even sure my broker is set up for trading in Japan.
Bah...frustration.
Anyone know of any publicly traded bike manufacturers in North America?
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Friday, May 16, 2008
Profit and Loss
By many measures, my portfolio is a risky one. My relatively small investment fund means that I can't reasonably hold enough securities to have a truly diversified portfolio. Of the stocks that I do hold, 2 of the three are young companies with no history of profit. And I have been seeing some decline in both of them.
But good news on that front. One of my largest holdings, First Majestic Silver Corp (TSX:FR) reported its first quarter earnings today. One million dollars.
The price reaction seems positive so far, finally breaking through the 4.22 resistance where it has been peaking lately. This also means that my performance since I started this blog has moved into positive territory by about $200 (representing a 2% gain). Time will tell whether it can maintain this momentum, but I now feel like my confidence that this company would rebound was well placed.
But good news on that front. One of my largest holdings, First Majestic Silver Corp (TSX:FR) reported its first quarter earnings today. One million dollars.
The price reaction seems positive so far, finally breaking through the 4.22 resistance where it has been peaking lately. This also means that my performance since I started this blog has moved into positive territory by about $200 (representing a 2% gain). Time will tell whether it can maintain this momentum, but I now feel like my confidence that this company would rebound was well placed.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Ooops. Read the Manual.
Interesting. I made a mistake when I was picking stocks to watch with regards to deciding whether swing trading was right for me. My mistake was that while I found to stocks (TSX:DWI and TSX:IGM) that were showing trends, neither was in the buy (or short) zone in between the 10 and 30 day moving averages. Good thing I'm just watching and not buying.
Now, both of them are in the process of pullbacks, moving in the opposite direction of the trends I identified in my last post. Which is good, actually kind of confirms the system. Now what I have to look for is for the pullback to bottom, and hopefully reverse within trading zone. I think I may need to come to a better understanding of ADX before looking to actually trade using the swing trading system, as I am at a loss for why the ADX is going up for DWI and down for IGM. According to swing-trade-stocks.com this would mean that the uptrend for DWI is strengthening and the downtrend for IGM weakening, but I'm just not clear on why.
Lots of factors to figure out.
Now, both of them are in the process of pullbacks, moving in the opposite direction of the trends I identified in my last post. Which is good, actually kind of confirms the system. Now what I have to look for is for the pullback to bottom, and hopefully reverse within trading zone. I think I may need to come to a better understanding of ADX before looking to actually trade using the swing trading system, as I am at a loss for why the ADX is going up for DWI and down for IGM. According to swing-trade-stocks.com this would mean that the uptrend for DWI is strengthening and the downtrend for IGM weakening, but I'm just not clear on why.
Lots of factors to figure out.
Monday, May 12, 2008
A Decision
Dull as it is, I've decided to stick with my current holdings. I think once I do decide to sell, I might try out the swing trading stategy I discussed on Friday, but before I jump in with both feet, I'll keep a watch on a few stocks that I would consider based on that strategy.
The two that I'm watching are Dragonwave (TSX:DWI), and IGM Financial (TSX:IGM). I guess it's clear by now that I'm very focused on the Canadian market. I've concluded that I don't really want to be taking any currency risk at this point in time.
I picked those two from a few that came up use stockchart's stock scanner. DWI showed up as an uptrend, while IGM was showing as a down trend. Of the options, they were the two that seemed to exhibit the patterns that I would be looking for in a swing strategy.
The difficulty I have with technical strategies is that technical patterns are easy to see in hindsight, but are, at best a guessing game while they develop. Patterns with opposing meaning can appear very similar before they complete.
So, I'm not risking any money on it, but if the stocks perform as I'd expect them to, I'll definitely try swing trading on live trades next.
The two that I'm watching are Dragonwave (TSX:DWI), and IGM Financial (TSX:IGM). I guess it's clear by now that I'm very focused on the Canadian market. I've concluded that I don't really want to be taking any currency risk at this point in time.
I picked those two from a few that came up use stockchart's stock scanner. DWI showed up as an uptrend, while IGM was showing as a down trend. Of the options, they were the two that seemed to exhibit the patterns that I would be looking for in a swing strategy.
The difficulty I have with technical strategies is that technical patterns are easy to see in hindsight, but are, at best a guessing game while they develop. Patterns with opposing meaning can appear very similar before they complete.
So, I'm not risking any money on it, but if the stocks perform as I'd expect them to, I'll definitely try swing trading on live trades next.
Friday, May 9, 2008
Finding a Strategy
When I started on stocks, I had intended to trade them regularly in order to lock in profits and move on to the next opportunity. It hasn't really worked out that way. Currently, I'm hovering around the point where I break even since I started this blog. I believe I'm up slightly due to the BMO dividend, but I haven't recieved it yet.
So today, I started reading a bit. At first, I was mainly interested in how to read candle charts, as that had not been well explained in my class. But the website that I linked also discussed one type of trading strategy - swing trading - which makes a lot of sense to me.
Essentially the strategy revolves around identifying stocks that are in an uptrend (or downtrend for shorting purposes), and buying during "swings" in the trend...slight corrections in the middle of a larger trend.
So, I took at look at the technical strategy outlined there, and compared it to my own current holdings. While the news is optimistic on two TSX:BMO and, I think, TSX-V:WEE, it's a little less so on TSX:FR. Indeed, the chart seems to show that its recent recovery could just be the first swing in a downtrend.
So I'm left with a dilemma. I still think that FR is a solid company, and will come back, but I might potentially make more money if I were to cut my losses and try to catch a stock that is actually moving up right now.
There's conflicting emotions, too. (Anyone who can trade stocks completely on technical aspects must have balls of steel.) On the one hand, I am tired of holding on to the same three stocks hoping for good things to happen. But on the other, I am hesitant to sell stocks that I am optimistic about just because they've hit a rough patch.
Markets are closed for the weekend now, so I've got a few days to mull those thoughts over. It's really a decision between finding and sticking to a strategy, whether that be the buy and hold stocks with good fundamentals, or frequent technical trading. We'll see how I feel about it on Monday.
So today, I started reading a bit. At first, I was mainly interested in how to read candle charts, as that had not been well explained in my class. But the website that I linked also discussed one type of trading strategy - swing trading - which makes a lot of sense to me.
Essentially the strategy revolves around identifying stocks that are in an uptrend (or downtrend for shorting purposes), and buying during "swings" in the trend...slight corrections in the middle of a larger trend.
So, I took at look at the technical strategy outlined there, and compared it to my own current holdings. While the news is optimistic on two TSX:BMO and, I think, TSX-V:WEE, it's a little less so on TSX:FR. Indeed, the chart seems to show that its recent recovery could just be the first swing in a downtrend.
So I'm left with a dilemma. I still think that FR is a solid company, and will come back, but I might potentially make more money if I were to cut my losses and try to catch a stock that is actually moving up right now.
There's conflicting emotions, too. (Anyone who can trade stocks completely on technical aspects must have balls of steel.) On the one hand, I am tired of holding on to the same three stocks hoping for good things to happen. But on the other, I am hesitant to sell stocks that I am optimistic about just because they've hit a rough patch.
Markets are closed for the weekend now, so I've got a few days to mull those thoughts over. It's really a decision between finding and sticking to a strategy, whether that be the buy and hold stocks with good fundamentals, or frequent technical trading. We'll see how I feel about it on Monday.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
A Better Day
Finally, an upswing. After a depressing 4 days, watching with fear as my investments just seemed to dry up, I'm seeing some positive numbers again. First Majestic (TSX:FR), the silver mining company that was my first buy in the stock world, has been pummelled ever since the announcement of a new private placement. I bought initially for $5.10, and doubled my position at $4.67. Yesterday, it had closed down to $4.20. At that price, I was considering buying even more of it, but hesitated since it would have all been on margin, and I wasn't comfortable with that. It's bounced a little today, and I remain confident in the company. Its behaviour the past week seems to be following the price of silver and other commodities, which I think is unreasonable, as their production has been climbing so quickly.
Other news - I made my first dabbling into options. It had been my intention when I bought BMO shares to use them to bring in a bit of extra cash by selling covered calls on them at prices that would see a profit. My break-even point on BMO is $46.95, so today, when it was trading in the high $47 range, I decided to sell some July calls with a strike price of $52. After commision, it netted me $125. So, worst case scenario is that they get exercised, and I turn a 13.4% profit in less than 3 months, more if I get my dividend...best case scenario, of course, is that the price holds a little under $52 until they expire, and I get extra money for nothing.
So, currently, I'm down roughly $100 since I started trading. While I'm hardly pleased with that result, I am learning quick, and have high hopes.
Other news - I made my first dabbling into options. It had been my intention when I bought BMO shares to use them to bring in a bit of extra cash by selling covered calls on them at prices that would see a profit. My break-even point on BMO is $46.95, so today, when it was trading in the high $47 range, I decided to sell some July calls with a strike price of $52. After commision, it netted me $125. So, worst case scenario is that they get exercised, and I turn a 13.4% profit in less than 3 months, more if I get my dividend...best case scenario, of course, is that the price holds a little under $52 until they expire, and I get extra money for nothing.
So, currently, I'm down roughly $100 since I started trading. While I'm hardly pleased with that result, I am learning quick, and have high hopes.
Update - Picking a Brokerage
The first thing I did when I started this blog about a month ago was to go through and pick a discount broker. I ended up going with Questrade, and, despite opening the account being a painfully slow process, I've been pleased with them.
Yesterday, they announced a change to their commission structure. And it's a good thing. Under the old system, you had to pick between either the 1c/share ($4.95 min) plan, or the $9.95 flat rate plan. You could only change on the first of a month. While this was still a great deal, there were some problems with it. The big one was that if I, as someone who normally makes small trades, were to find a 10c penny stock that I wanted to buy 10 000 shares of, I'd end up paying $100 in commission on it.
Some, my girlfriend for instance, might think that dissuading me from reckless behaviour is a good thing, but I like choices are better. The people at Questrade seem to agree with me, and they changed to a single fee structure: 1c per share, $4.95 minimum, $9.95 maximum. Options commission remains at $9.95+$1/contract. It's simple, it's cheap, and it should suit almost everybody. I'm impressed.
Yesterday, they announced a change to their commission structure. And it's a good thing. Under the old system, you had to pick between either the 1c/share ($4.95 min) plan, or the $9.95 flat rate plan. You could only change on the first of a month. While this was still a great deal, there were some problems with it. The big one was that if I, as someone who normally makes small trades, were to find a 10c penny stock that I wanted to buy 10 000 shares of, I'd end up paying $100 in commission on it.
Some, my girlfriend for instance, might think that dissuading me from reckless behaviour is a good thing, but I like choices are better. The people at Questrade seem to agree with me, and they changed to a single fee structure: 1c per share, $4.95 minimum, $9.95 maximum. Options commission remains at $9.95+$1/contract. It's simple, it's cheap, and it should suit almost everybody. I'm impressed.
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