Trade Alert – FutureFuel from the portfolio and a complete run down of Cody’s Latest Positions

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 read the note at the bottom of this article.

The markets are up on a relief rally as the headlines in the western world scream “Putin pulls back.” Meanwhile, the tone is a bit different in Russia’s headlines such as RT’s “Self-defense forces ranks swell in anticipation of Crimea showdown with radicals” or the St. Petersburg Times’ “Russia Slams Kerry’s ‘Threats’ over Ukraine.” There’s still a lot of complacency and confidence in the stock markets and today’s action sure reflects that. Be careful out there. I remain in a cautious, but still net long, stance for the Revolution Investing portfolio. Speaking of which…

Let’s run through some of our positions and update our analysis.

First off, I still think physical silver bullion and coins and especially physical gold bullion and coins are very important anchors to have in any investor’s/saver’s portfolio.

Secondly, it’s time to take our profits on FutureFuel, which is up more than 50% from our purchase price when you include dividends. FutureFuel gets more than half their revenue from heavily subsidized bio-diesel and other bio-fuels and a vast portion of those subsidies started to end at the turn of the year. This will be the first time FutureFuel is going to report earnings and give guidance without the benefit of all that welfare help from taxpayers, and I want to see how their vision of their future shapes up in this report. I might return to the stock down the road, but I don’t like the risk/reward profile into this new year and we just got a special 25 cent dividend in addition to the 11 cent recurring quarterly dividend, so it’s time to pack up and move on.

I still like the IBM hedge against our many highflying tech stock longs. IBM has become a company without a clear mission or vision and that’s not bullish for shareholders. There’s rumors of continued spinning of divisions and somehow trying to morph back into a software-oriented growth company. I think that IBM could face the kind of rough patch that HPQ went through the last few years as it tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to do the same.

Our Samsung short position, via the EWY South Korean ETF, also remains a great hedge for our many tech longs, and for the Apple/Google longs specifically. That is, future cash flows from the Android/Google platforms benefit Google much more than Samsung, so Google’s stock gives us the upside of Samsung’s Android dominance, without the risk of hardware margins tightening. By betting its future on Google’s Android years ago, Samsung doomed itself to a Dell-like future, where it simply sells commoditized hardware. Samsung’s lately tried to create a new Tizen platform, and their latest wearable smartwatches use their new platform, but I’ll declare Tezen faces a Blackberry- or Palm-like doom. The EWY has done better than Samsung’s individual stock has over the last year, but Samsung’s so heavily-weighted in the EWY ETF and its so hard to borrow and short-sell a South-Korean-based equity, I continue to like this hedge.

Amazon sold off hard from its recent all-time highs after a disappointing quarterly earnings report a few weeks ago. The stock has since stabilized near the $350-360 level, but without a clear new catalyst to get the momentum/highflying stock-lovers back into Amazon, the next couple years of Amazon’s stock chart is likely to be rangebound with a $400-410 ceiling. I’m holding my Amazon and we’ve great profits in the position so far, and with the downside likely limited to a $350-360 floor, the more fleet-footed traders amongst you might like to try to buy near the floor and sell near the ceiling.

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).

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 (7)
  • Physical gold bullion & coins (9)
  • BitCoin (6) – This position has gotten to be much bigger than I expected much sooner than I expected and though I remain very bullish about the potential for Bitcoin from here, I’m likely to take a bit off the table with it being up nearly 10-fold since my most recent purchases.

• Primary stock exposure portfolio
  • Facebook (8)
  • Google (7)
  • Juniper (7)
  • Amazon (7)
  • Apple (7)
  • Sandisk (7)
  • Intel (8)
  • Cree (7)
  • Ciena (7)
  • First Solar (6)
  • Calgone (8)
  • Lindsay (8)
  • FutureFuel (8)
  • JDS Uniphase
  • InvenSense
• Long-term social basket
  • LinkedIn (7)
  • Zynga (5)
• Long-term 3-D printing basket
  • SSYS (7)
  • XONE (7)

Shorts –

• Other shorts
  • GSVC (6)
  • Apollo (8)
  • IBM (8)
  • Dollar Tree (7)
• Welfare bank basket
  • GS (7)
  • JPM (8)
• Samsung/South Korea basket
  • EWY (8)
• Bet on interest rates rising
  • IEF (8)

** 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/.

And you can find an archive of our summary of those Trade Alerts in our Weekly Trades archive here – http://tradingwithcody.com/category/trades-of-the-week/.