Cody’s Latest Positions PLUS Alibaba IPO analysis and an update on the iPhone suppliers

I’m waiting patiently to let $BABA work itself out here the first few days at least. Flipping and/or swing trading IPOs like this can be very exciting, but I always ask people to think about the next 10,000 days of their life and their money — is trying to game the swings of an IPO like this a sustainable means of maximizing your returns while minimizing risks? For some traders, the answer is yes. For almost every trader and/or investor, the answer is most assuredly HECK NO.

Jack Ma the $BABA CEO is giving a great interview to the CNBC Squawk Box gang. I sure like his approach to being a CEO better than I do that surfer dude approach from the $GPRO CEO.

I think Ma and $BABA are making a big mistake by purposely underpricing the shares and hoping for a big pop for hedge funds and brokers who will flip it on the open today. I expect $BABA to open up 30% above where it priced and that it will trade up 50% at some point today. I’m not a bull or a bear on $BABA yet, as I want to see it start trading and what not. It’s a long road ahead. I think it’d be much better for $BABA to have pocketed that extra 30-50% instead of letting hedgies and brokers.

Excellent info on $BABA: @JeffMiller “The claim is that the Alibaba IPO allocation list was vetted to minimize the hedge-fund flipper types. We’ll have to see if that worked. I agree that an excessive spike suggests that the pricing was too low at cost to the company. You also want it to attract some initial buying, so there is a balancing act.” But Jeff, I don’t believe the hype — the brokers allocate like they do, as they always have.

$INVN and other suppliers who were revealed in today’s report are suffering from a classic sell-the-news dynamic. iFixit has already published tear-downs of the $AAPL iPhone 6 (http://goo.gl/VS2D9p) and iPhone 6 Plus (http://goo.gl/6xKhli). Among the chip companies w/exposure – $QCOM, $SWKS,$AVGO, $INVN, $RFMD, $BRCM, $NXPI, and $CRUS.

I still plan to own $INVN for a long time regardless of how it trades near-term like this. I wrote this last week about it: “Invensense has a lot of other products, smartphones, tablets, phablets, drones, robots and wearables to sell their components into so I’m not hinging my Invensense investment on the iPhone 6.”

Here’s a list of my latest positions (I’m removing the aforementioned four positions that I’m closing out this week, even though I’ll be taking a few days over the next rest of this week to close them). 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.

Finally, I 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” (there will never be a 10 rating, because there is no such thing as a perfect investment, of course).

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.

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 biz is always a best bet)
  • Real estate, including land and the ranch I live on in NM (8)
  • Physical gold bullion & coins (8)
  • BitCoin (7) *Not a meaningful amount

• Primary stock exposure portfolio
  • Apple (8)
  • Facebook (8)
  • Google (9)
  • Intel (7)
  • Ambarella (8)
  • First Solar (7)
  • InvenSense (8)
  • Sandisk (8)
  • Amazon (8)
  • Yelp (7)
  • Stratasys (7)
  • Sony (9)
  • Calgone (7)
  • Lindsay (7)
  • Himax (8)
  • IXYS (7)
• Short-term options trades
  • Yandex (6)

Shorts –

• Primary short portfolio
  • IBM (7)
  • EWY (8)
  • JRJC
  • GSV Capital (7)
  • Apollo (7)
  • Barnes & Noble (7)
• Short-term options trades
  • Apple puts (5)

** 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?

First, step back and catch your breath before moving any money anywhere 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 below 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 Weekly Trades that I’ve personally been scaling into.

You can find an archive of Trade Alerts here – http://tradingwithcody.com/category/trade-alert/.