quiet....too quiet

not much action on the forum this week.

Probably because max is rolling in his new found money bin from his smart aquisition of UUU.

Fred is living it up in swinging London town.

I am getting the feeling that i'm becomming a bagholder in PPI and my other stock IXS has been halted for 3 days now.

On a good note. anyone remember my very first trade, AFA.v African marine minerals?

Decent news from them and high volume today, I am up 23%!!!! too bad I only own 450 shares, lol.

Have a good week everyone!

Haha, not quite. I sold UUU and Cameco early. Made some nice, but small gains. I didn't expect UUU to climb back up that fast considering the ongoing controversy, I just figured it had about bottomed when I bought it, and even if it didn't it would eventually recover beyond my purchase price.

Lots of trading last week, but only small gains.

Thinking natural gas may have a big rise, if there is talk of an alternative to nuclear. Don't know if this is a serious option, but Encana's entry into the LNG market through BC looks very promising.

Holding my QEC for now (just barely above water), and sold pretty much everything else waiting for the next dip.

Probably will buy some Encana next time I get a chance.

Well, I just got back from a great trip to Budapest to visit a friend. Three solid days of drinking and now I have to get back to work. As I've mentioned before I'm all in right now, so no trading at the moment. However, I am quite excited about some recent events and some upcomming news releases. Looking to sell SPM soon... it is doing nicely, and I think we weill get a nice spike still, and likely continued upward movement into the spring, but I will be out before then. I am also optimistically awaiting news from WND regarding the share buy back. I think I will add to my position with ROK, as the mine start up will be in the comming few months, and I think its hit its lows again.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments about those stocks, and I will post more if you like.
Fred

ROK is the only one with a price below book value. Doesn't necessarily mean it is cheap though unless you plan to see earnings sometime soon as the rate of losses will burn through book value in 2 years, assuming that the resource claims support book value in the first place. I notice they have a $6M loss carry forward that expires between 2026-2031, but I only see 1.5M listed on the balance sheet as a future tax asset.

Note 1: At August 31, 2010 and in light of ongoing operational difficulties at the MAX Molybdenum mine, the Company determined that a portion of its previously recognized future income tax assets was no longer more likely than not recoverable, resulting in a future income tax expense of $11,584,037 in the consolidated statement of operations and loss.

I would have to go digging through past financial statements to confirm if this was applied, but looks like there is reasonable cause to expect they will not turn a profit for some time (as of November/December last year when these were issued).

Has something significant changed during that time?

For the overall market, the Euro-zone is about to collapse, Japan's economic troubles are not helping, US is hurting. I don't see the good news that is going to take the S&P to much beyond 14,000 for a while. I think we have peaked and there will be a pullback.

ECA, NXY, and QEC, are three I am watching closely. NXY is on the brink of slipping into a risky stock. Right now, they have high, yet manageable debt levels, good assets, and income generation, but when hedging and forward contracts reset, who knows....

I have been playing Sherritt and Neo Materials back as more speculative plays, but their fundamentals look strong.

As far as Uranium, the upside is in the very long term it will recover just fine. However, in the next 5 years, I am starting to think this Japan situation will cause some delays of a year or two in bringing new nuclear plants online, and that will suppress the spot price for the near future. Juniors should be hardest hit. Cameco should be safest, but I think it is a little overvalued right now.

I had a brief look at Japanese blue chip stocks, but feel they were overvalued to begin with and the prices have only come down 10-20%, so no real bargains there.

I am also watching the Citibank situation carefully too.


As a side note, I just finished my taxes, and I did something like 300+ stock transactions last year that I had to sort through (and deal with exchange valuations on US trades). I am using now the average exchange method and forgetting about tracking individual exchange rates like I did the previous year. Maybe once I get it all worked out into formulas I can revisit that. I have to look into whether there is a way to submit consolidated reporting of trades. This year I had to type out all the trades into Quicktax, and it took up just about every last line available (already used some slight consolidation). I like to take comfort in the fact that I only have this problem because I am making money, but its not true. If I take a loss next year, I still have the same amount of reporting. So, I guess it is worth the time to try and automate this process.

At that level of trades, for $6.95 each, it means I spent more than $2,000 on commissions. Is there anywhere 300+ trades would get me siginificantly better than $6.95. I could save some serious cash, or maybe even negotiate with my existing bank if there was a more competitive offer out there.

Anyway, I am very pleased with the results for 2010. Annualized average gain of 9.4% including commissions and dividends. This was obtained while during the majority of the year, only a small percentage of my portfolio was invested (rotating in and out of stocks for small gains over short periods of time). In the same time, the S&P returned 20%, so not sure I can be too proud of my results yet.

Top Performers:
Lake Shore Gold (LSG)
Kirkland Lake Gold (KGI)
Manulife (MFC)
BP (US:BP)

Worst Performers:
Questerre (QEC)
Pele Mountain (GEM)

I learned a lot last year, and in 2011 I am devoting significant time into using more scientific methods for controlling my investments. So far the results have not been great (CCME), but that is a part of the process.