Watch list updated

[Mike]

It was difficult to pull a watch list together because many leading stocks are extended. I included several (UBNT, EXP, KS) that have broken out but if the market pulls back a little these might pull back to prior buy points. CLR is the only item that is in a new cup base set up.

My portfolio's best performing positions are gold miners AEW and SLW. It remains to be seen if gold is in a cyclical rally in an overall PM bear market. It doesn't matter much except perhaps on the time horizon of the trade. If we are in a new PM bull market the trade time horizon could be more than a year. Gold miners are extended so I await a pull back for any new entries or adding to current positions.

On a cautionary note JAZZ and ACT seem to have moved into a parabolic regime. When too many leading stocks show climactic activity it can mean that we are entering the end phase of a bull market.

[MTman]

Mike,
As the indexes reach levels at which a short pullback would be expected, I find myself with the dilema I often faced last year. My stocks are up 10-15% but have not reached the 20%-25% profit zone. Would you recommend taking some profits or try and hold through a pullback if it comes? These pullbacks are tough to hold at this stage of the overal 12 month + rally, because at some point the pullback may not bounce but continue lower with a larger correction. If that is the case, my profits are diminished. Locking on to my gains is definately my biggest weakness and so your experience with this is much appreciated!

Mark

[Mike]

Mike,
As the indexes reach levels at which a short pullback would be expected, I find myself with the dilema I often faced last year. My stocks are up 10-15% but have not reached the 20%-25% profit zone. Would you recommend taking some profits or try and hold through a pullback if it comes? These pullbacks are tough to hold at this stage of the overal 12 month + rally, because at some point the pullback may not bounce but continue lower with a larger correction. If that is the case, my profits are diminished. Locking on to my gains is definately my biggest weakness and so your experience with this is much appreciated!

Mark

Mark, My gains range from 4% (GRFS) to 28% (TSLA) with most between 9% to 14% (KS, FB, SLW, AEM, PCLN).

If and when I come to a belief that the bulk of breakouts are not achieving 20-25% gains I will lower my profit target to match what the market is delivering. When I do this I also must adjust the stop loss target to maintain a 3:1 ratio of profit target to loss target. So if I concluded that 15% is the proper profit target I have to cut losses at least by 5%.

When the market moves into correction I do not automatically sell my positions. I stop buying new positions and as long as my positions act okay I hold them. So in these small corrections we have had I normally turn over 1/4 to 1/2 of my portfolio.

I so far have not concluded that the market is not delivering normal profits so I am waiting it out. Any thing can happen of course. Yesterday was a distribution day on the NASDAQ and there may be some kind of conflict in the Ukraine. I don't know if a Ukraine conflict would spill over into the market however it might cause an interruption of natural gas delivery into Europe. All of the money printing has prevented debt restructuring around the world. The debt situation is still a ticking time bomb. One of these days we are going to get more than a small correction...