Investment Club - July 2010

Only four members in attendance at this meeting - attendance always goes down in the summer. We did not present any new stocks at this meeting.  We didn't have an updated spreadsheet so our portfolio review was just cursory.  Regardless I think we made good decisions.

Number of Stocks:  14 (goal is 16 plus or minus 4)

Company Size:  We assume this is still the same as last month.  Large, Mid and Small are all out of tolerance.  Our intent was to lower large cap and increase small or mid cap.
Sectors:  We assumed this is still the same as last month.  All in tolerance except for Technology.  We decided that whatever we did we would try to lower our exposure in Technology and at a minimum we would not increase it.
Individual Stock Percentage:  Neutral Tandem (TNDM) is  too low as a percentage of our portfolio.  Our methodology says that we need to sell or add more. 
Percent Annual Return: in the sweet spot but on the low side
Quality: Good
Growth: in tolerance but on the low side

Individual Stocks analysis:  Two stocks are of concern.
Neutral Tandem (TNDM) due to being a small percentage of the portfolio and the news on Apollo (APOL)is not good.  Irene sent out before the meeting some analyst notes about Apollo.  Most telling was the comment by one analyst that an investor should "forget about it".  Also, the PAR for Apollo is 28 which is well above the sweet spot and just too good to be true.


Our intent this month is to maintain PAR and Growth while improving Mid and Small company size while addressing the stock that is a small portion of the portfolio.

DECISION:  Sell all of Apollo based upon the negative news and our poor expectation about the future of the company given the government take over of college funding (for profits will most likely be squeezed by the government).  With the proceeds from the sale and our available cash we voted to purchase $3,000 worth of US Ecology (ECOL) and about $1800 of Neutral Tandem (TNDM).  Both stocks are small cap and have PAR's in the sweet spot.  The purchase of additional TNDM also raises its percentage of the portfolio into the acceptable range.

Investment Club - Dec 2009

The December 2009 meeting of Investment Club YenoM was a quick one (just over an hour).  There were only 5 members in attendance which makes for less discussion and quicker decision making.  No one came with a new stock to present which also sped things up and not necessarily in a good way.  The club really needed to add a mid or small cap stock in an industry that was not technology.  We were not able to do that tonight.

We discussed selling Linear Technology (LLTC) because it had the lowest percentage annual return (PAR) in the portfolio and no one in the club really understands how Linear makes money – what is the product it sells. However if we sold LLTC we didn’t have another stock to replace it with so we decided to continue to hold until we have something better to add to the portfolio.

So with the almost $2000 we had in cash – some left over from last month and some from our monthly contributions we decided to add to current stocks we own - $1000 to Apollo (APOL) and $750 to Fiserv (FISV).

Fiserv is a mid cap stock (a good thing), with a PAR higher than the portfolio PAR (a good thing).  Our additional purchase will make Fiserv almost 12% of the portfolio (getting close to being too much).  All of the news on Fiserv is positive.

Apollo is large cap (not a good thing), with PAR greater than the portfolio (a good thing), and our contribution brings it up to an almost perfect percent of the portfolio (a good thing).  There has recently been some positive news on Apollo and there still is the cloud of a government lawsuit hanging over the industry.  We still feel confident of the investment.

Portfolio Management June 2009

My investment club met last night (Jun 8, 2009). We reviewed two new stocks and followed our portfolio management process. The overall shape of the portfolio is better than it has ever been so we decided to:

Sell our remaining holding in Lowes (LOW). The stock was our lowest PAR (percentage average return) and we didn't think the future looked good for the stock.

Buy additional shares of Fastenal (FAST). We purchased the stock a month or two ago and it still looks good and did not have a "full" position yet.

Buy an initial position in Apollo Group (APOL) with the $$ from the sale of Lowes. Apollo seemed to be the best company in the education group. We also considered Strayer and ITT.