The full scoop on all my latest positions

Here is a list of my latest positions with updated commentary and ratings for each position.

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
  • Facebook (7) – Here’s a pattern I’ve noticed as a long-time Facebook shareholder: the company will report an amazingly strong quarter of profitability and growth and the stock will pop big…and then spend the next two months treading water or fading lower until the company reports another blowout quarter. Rinse and repeat. I do think it’s wise to trim some Facebook if you’ve owned since the teens and $20s like I have.
  • Apple (7) – When Apple’s stock was in a funk trading in the $90s, I repeatedly wrote that I expected this stock to get back to $130 by the end of this year. It’s getting closer. I still think it will get close to $130 by year end. But I would consider trimming some if you were freaking out or hurting when the stock was in the $90s. As you know, I’ve long said that there was no way Apple was going to be rolling out an iCar in the next few years. They’re still working on other car technologies and platforms and ideas though.
  • Google (7) –Google has, like most stocks and the broader tech stock market, been toppy-acting lately. The company is a cash machine and Android makes it a great mobile play. That said, there is a conventional wisdom right now that Google will be a big beneficiary of the Samsung exploding phone problem, but I d0n’t see it that way. Google benefits most when there’s a strong ecosystem of Android phone makers. Google is potentially hurt by Samsung’s problems. Google and Samsung and Android are competing against Apple, not each other. At least not yet.
  • Amazon (7) – The market just loves this stock again and Jeff Bezos is widely considered today’s version of Steve Jobs. Hard to argue since I’ve long thought that. The valuation of Amazon is as crazy as ever and its now one of the top four or five most valuable companies on the planet, so I wouldn’t want to be building this name up just now. But it’s still an incredible Revolution Investment.
  • Sony (8) – There’s a lot of moving parts at Sony but most of the company’s businesses are indeed booming right now and set to boom even more in years ahead. Sony’s virtual reality push positions it to be one of the winning VR ecosystems in years ahead and the reviews of first version of the PlayStation VR product are raving. There’s also the movie/tv library that’s in high demand and the camera module business and more.
  • Nvidia (8) – Nvidia is loved for being a pure-ish play on some of the most Revolutionary sectors of the economy today — VR, AI, deep learning, data crunching, self-driving cars, etc. If this company dominates the chip platform in any or all of those sectors, the growth over the next five to ten years will blow our minds.
  • Qualcomm (6) – Qualcomm’s still quite cheap, still positioned as a growth supplier to all things Android-based and is now seeing its name kicked around the mergers and acquisitions world.
  • Ambarella (7) – Turns out that recording high definition digital video in all kinds of form factors is pretty Revolutionary. Ambarella is to the wearable/drove/robotics/smartphone video industry what Intel was to the PC industry.
  • Axogen (8) – Axogen was going to need to raise some more money at some point to fund its continued growth and innovation. The fact they did so at a rather high valuation and removed the uncertainty of the funding raise, was obviously bullish for the stock.
  • Zillow (8) – I’m curious to see Zillow’s upcoming report and if there’s continuing to dominate the real estate app revolution. I expect Zillow to continue to set its app apart from the competition to and to start reaping the benefits of being the largest real estate app platform on the planet.
  • First Solar (8) – Solar is just hated right now. Which is why I’m nibbling on the most revolutionary companies in the sector right now. I am going to give our solar stocks a wide berth for now and will look to nibble more of First Solar at maybe $30 or so if it were to get there. Otherwise, I’ll hold what I have for now.
  • Twitter (6) – Twitter’s going to be sold! Wait, no, it’s not. Yes, it is, buy, buy buy! Or, hmm, maybe now, sell, sell sell! We bought the stock when it was widely hated and nobody thought it could get bought. We sold some for nearly double when the world believed there was a bidding war brewing for the company. I’d probably buy some more near $15. I’d probably sell some more near $25. Other than that, I’m just sitting on the shares I have left for now.
  • FitBit (8) – Too much competition from the low end from Fitbit knockoffs like the ones serial-shiller Brett Favre is pitching to me on TV all the time. Then there’s the Apple and Android smartwatches on the high end. Oh, I’m sick of Fitbit but am not ready to give up on it just yet, I guess.
  • Impinj (8) – I recently added another 1/3 of a full-size tranche to this position, as the stock is a small cap with little liquidity here, had taken a big hit. We’re not investing in this stock for a short-term trade. We’re building this position because this company and its passive RFID platform has the potential to be a 5- or 10-bagger if they deliver and win the marketplace over the next five or ten years. If they fail, well, that’s the risk.
  • Lion’s Gate (7) – Lion’s Gate needs a few blockbusters to get this stock back on people’s radars. Another Orange is the New Black and Hunger Games or five would be great.
  • Solar Edge (7) – I still think it looks like solar stocks are trying to bottom here as the market hates them all right now. But there certainly could be more downside if energy prices collapse again or if the market just gets in a funk ahead.

• Primary short portfolio
  • IBB Biotech ETF (8) – The biotech index is down 15% in the last month and I think there’s a general toppiness to the industry and that there could be huge earnings revisions downward in years ahead. I might add to this short if it pops on a near-term rally around the election or something.
  • Pandora (8) – Apple Music has already failed next to Spotify and the market doesn’t care as Apple Music will never again move the needle for the iPhone company. Amazon Music Unlimited, streaming and downloading songs on demand, on the other hand is another huge hurt for Pandora.
  • Hubspot (8) – Hubspot still hangs tough. The company can’t afford a miss this quarter or the market will lose faith in this unprofitable internet marketer.
  • EWY (8) – I think Samsung is the next $BBRY and there’s no stopping the decline in earnings and stock price in years ahead. For years, Blackberry was THE only smartphone. Before that it was Motorola. Before that it was Nokia. Samsung today is set up like any of those preceding dominant phone vendors when they were at the top and everybody was sure they’d never let others pass them by. If you don’t own the platform, you’re commodity company.
  • Herbalife (8) – I still find it hard to believe that the market doesn’t think the brand new business model that Herbalife is trying implement is going to be as profitable as quickly as the one the government made them stop doing.
  • DIA (7) – I’m still down a little bit on these puts but these are just hedges that I put on when stock were at all-time highs heading into the election
  • QQQ (6) – I’m now down about 70% on these put hedges, but that means our corresponding long positions have down very well and since our longs in the big tech names are much bigger than this tiny put hedge, the portfolio overall has been doing very well too. Remember that the PowerShares QQQ tracks a modified market-cap-weighted index of 100 NASDAQ-listed stocks, which actually serve as an almost direct hedge to our own long-held huge winners $AAPL, $AMZN, $FB and $GOOGL as they (along with $MSFT which I don’t own) are the largest components in the $QQQ and combined make up more than 30% of the QQQ’s weighting. By the way, when I first bought Apple, Google, FB and Google, they either weren’t in the QQQ at all or they made up less than 1% of it. As they’ve gone up 5-100x in the years since I bought each of them to become the move valuable companies in the world, their weighting in the QQQ increased proportionally.
  • Valeant Pharmaceuticals (7) – *Tiny Position I’ve been short $VRX since the $170s, as you guys know but I’ve covered most of it. I still think $VRX heads much lower. Back near its lows again, I’m holding my remaining short steady.

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 way to go about investing and trading. 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.