Cody’s Latest Positions and ratings for every stock in the portfolio

It’s been two months since that morning when $DJIA was down 1000 points at the open and we were buying into the panic. The hardest trade to make that morning was to buy more. I was sitting in a doctor’s office in Albuquerque waiting for a specialist to look at my new daughter that day when I sent out the Trade Alert that I wanted to “Scale in amidst the panic.” Do you remember how you felt that morning? I often remind you that the hardest trade to make is usually the right one. That morning and the returns we’ve seen in the markets since that morning underscore that very principle well. And since then, the hardest trade to make has been to remain steadfastly long and/or buying more stocks as I have, as we’ve been doing.

My own analysis has been pointing to higher stocks and I’m going to step up and do some more buying this week, scaling into some more long exposure. I might go ahead and just get back into Netflix and some other names on my Buy List. I’ll also just add another tranche or two to some of my highest-rated existing longs like Twitter.

Every few weeks I sit down and go through my entire portfolio and rank each position on a scale of 1 to 10 and then send it out to my TradingWithCody subscribers. It’s very important to look at your own positions in order from largest to smallest and to rank each asset, equity and position you own. Doing so will help you realize the opportunity costs of owning lower-rated positions and to help you sell your losers while riding your winners.

Here’s a list of my latest positions. I’ve broken the list into Longs and Shorts. And from there, I’ve broken down each list into refined categories in order from the largest positions within each category to the smallest. I also give each stock a current rating from 1 to 10, 1 being “Get out of this position now!” and 10 being “Sell the farm, I’ve found a perfect investment.”

So here’s the list:

Longs –

• Forever assets and other permanent holdings –
  • Media and other private investment/business holdings (9+ because betting on yourself and running a business is always a best bet)
  • Real estate, including land and the ranch I live on in NM (8)
  • Physical gold bullion & coins (8)

• Primary stock exposure portfolio
  • Apple (8) – I’ll probably buy some more Apple common stock and/or some long-dated call options if the stock gets back near $105 or lower.
  • Facebook (7) – Still the best run App company on the planet. Remember when Yahoo paid $1 billion for Tumbler about the same time Facebook bought Instagram for the same amount? Tumbler has done nothing for Yahoo. Instagram just passed its 400 millionth user and is worth worth at least tens of billions of dollars now.
  • Google (7) – YouTube, and even more to the point, Android are the future for Google and both outlooks are very bright.
  • Synaptics (7) – The stock is on fire since word hit that they’d turned down a $115/share offer from a giant Chinese semiconductor firm. I think it can get back to $100 if the upcoming earnings report is strong.
  • Ambarella (8) – One of the hardest hit highflyers in the market. There was just too much momentum money in Ambarella when it was above $100. At some point the last of those weakhanded shareholders give up on it. If the growth and earnings are there in the next earnings report, Amba will pop 10-20% or more. If they miss, the stock will be down 20% or more. I expect they’ll show the growth and earnings the markets are looking for, but not betting the house on it either.
  • First Solar (7) – Stock’s been on fire for the last month, up 25% in a straight line. Holding it steady for now.
  • Sandisk (7) – This stock is also up 30% in a straight line since the August lows when I was lamenting having ridden it down. Might be time to trim some here, just to catch my breath on it and give it a fresh feel to me.
  • Sony (8) – I think this stock can run to $40 if we start getting some strong growth in the licensing catalog of TV and movies Sony owns. They are also selling billions of image sensors to Apple, Samsung and other smartphone/tablet vendors.
  • Amazon (7) – Amazon dominance in the online/app retail world is killer. Amazon Web Services (think: Cloud) are dominant too. Their streaming video, tablets, talking speakers and other businesses reveal how Amazon wants to become its own eco-system.
  • Twitter (8) – The stock’s popped since they got a full-time CEO. Dorsey’s come back and probably is trying to clean up some of past-CEO Costolo’s initiatives and/or in areas within Twitter that he thinks have gotten away from the core places he’s going to focus on. He’s got an eye on profitability as revenue continues to grow quickly. Sad for the employees being laid off but probably good for shareholders long-term to keep the company fine-tuned and focused. The CEO, his choices about setting priorities and shaping the company certainly make a difference over time. Dorsey could be the next Terry Semel who never seemed to steer Yahoo correctly and saw shareholder value destroyed during his tenure or Dorsey could be the Eric Schmidt who oversaw big growth and a rise to dominance as CEO of Google.
  • FitBit (9) – The stock popped after we bought more on word that Target is going to be buying millions of Fitbits for its employees. We trimmed some near the recent highs making a nice little trade.
  • F5 (7) – Seems a bit boring right now, which probably means it’s about to make a bigger move. I might be nibbling more of this cyber security and app-enabler company.
  • Silicon Motion (8) – This stock has been crawling higher since we recently added it to the portfolio. It’s very cheap on most metrics and if they show the growth I expect this quarter and over the next few quarters, we would likely see this stock continue to ascend.
  • Applied Materials (8) – I should have bought more when this stock was near $14 a couple weeks ago. I plan on holding it steady for now.
  • GDX call options (6) – I think gold could run to $1200 but I will be trimming more of those GDX calls if gold were to get there.
  • Axogen (8) – Recent small cap purchase. I made a very rare exception in buying $AXGN because I’ve personally spoken to management, studied their industry and otherwise researched this company in depth. Remember that I am very leery about penny stocks and reverse mergers in general.
  • GoPro (8) – Frustrated with this recent purchase. There’s a lot of concern in the market that GoPro’s going to miss this upcoming quarter as there’s been some price cutting in the company’s retail products. I’ve long struggled with the company’s CEO and management and am likely going to move on from this stock since we already have exposure to GoPro’s business with our long-held and still-a-big-winner Ambarella stock.
  • SLV call options (6) – Silver’s been popping lately too, up 10% from its recent lows. I’m going eat a loss on some of these SLV options that will expire this week.

• Primary short portfolio
  • Pandora (8) – I’m holding this short steady for now, expecting some ugly commentary out of the company about their struggles in the courtroom over royalty rates in their upcoming earnings report.
  • IBB Biotech ETF (8) – Recently got back on the short side of IBB with some puts here. It should be a great hedge to our broader net long portfolio.

Remember: I wouldn’t rush into a full position all at once in any of these stocks or any other position you’ll ever buy. Patience and allowing the market and time to work to your advantage by buying in tranches is key. Maybe 1/3 or 1/5 of whatever you  might consider to be a “full position” in any particular stock. And I wouldn’t ever have more than 5-15% of your portfolio in any one stock position at any given time. The younger you are and/or the higher the trajectory of your career income, the more concentrated and risk-taking you can be with weighting in your portfolio. But spread your purchases and your risk out over time and over a several positions no matter your age or risk-averse level.

Scaling into a position using an approach of buying 1/3 or 1/5 tranches over time is how I build my personal portfolio positions, but there’s no scientific answer for your question. Sometimes you have to pay up for the latest tranche but I try to be patient and wait for a temporary sell-off to add to the existing position.

** NOTE FOR NEW SUBSCRIBERS:

If you’re new to TradingWithCody or if you’ve been a subscriber for a while but haven’t acted on much of my strategies yet and/or if you haven’t been in the markets, but you’re sick of getting 0% on your CDs, Treasuries, savings, checking, etc while the markets have been continually hitting all-time highs this year, what should you do now?

Before you ever make any trade, step back and catch your breath before moving any money anywhere. Rank your positions and your whole portfolio and make sure you’re not about to make any emotional moves with your money.

If you haven’t yet read “Everything You Need to Know About Investing” then spend a couple hours doing so, please. It’s a quick read but chock-full of important ideas, concepts and strategies that amateurs and pros alike should understand.

Then, take a look at my own personal portfolio’s Latest Positions and slowly start to scale into some of the ones you like best and/or the ones I have rated highest right now. I’d look to start scaling into a few of the many stocks in the Latest Positions that are at all-time highs along with a couple that we’ve recently featured in our Trade Alerts that I’ve personally been scaling into.

You can find an archive of Trade Alerts here.