From Apple to XLF: Cody’s Latest Positions ranked

Near-term, FYI, I’m more likely to do some buying than more trimming. I’ve done a bunch of trimming and raised a lot of cash over the last few months, and as always I am in no rush to force any trades. But I am starting to see some names and prices that are intriguing again. Stay tuned.

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.

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.

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.

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)

• Primary stock exposure portfolio
  • Apple (7)
  • Facebook (8)
  • Ambarella (7)
  • Google (8)
  • Synaptics (9)
  • Sony (8)
  • First Solar (8)
  • Whole Foods (6)
  • Sandisk (8)
  • Twitter (7)
  • Palo Alto Networks (8)
  • Splunk (8)
  • Lindsay (6)
  • F5 (8)
  • Iconix (7)

Shorts –

• Primary short portfolio
  • Pandora (8)
  • McDonald’s (7)
  • IBB (6)
  • XLF (6)

** 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.