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Tuesday, April 10, 2007

End of the Quarter: How did my stock picks fare?

Today was the official end of the quarter of some companies, such as Alcoa who did surprisingly well. Their success was largely fueled by growth of the metals sector from the booming growth in China. So, with this news, I wanted to reflect on my stock picks. I purchased stocks and index funds with $10,000 of virtual money using www.howthemarketworks.com. I tried to divide the stocks fairly evenly at first, but as you know we had a huge crash in February, so that was my opportunity to strike and buy more of my favorite stocks at a discount! Here are my picks:
Freeport-McMoran (Copper and Gold Mining; FCX), Halliburton (Oil; HAL), General Electric (GE), Altria (Cigarettes; MO), AT&T (Telecom; T), IBM (Duh; IBM), and Streettracks Gold Index Fund (NYSE:GLD). My portfolio overall this quarter is up $856.01 (8.6%). Not too shabby for my first quarter EVER of investing. I mainly used a value approach when selecting my stocks. I looked for growing industries with low P/E's (less than 15 preferred), with a solid PEG ratio (Price-Earnings-Growth). I mainly held onto them through thick and thin, watching them for any new developments. I must say, Freeport-McMoran (now the world's largest copper company) has done really well for me. It's my largest holding and it was up 27.2% this quarter for me. My next big winner was AT&T - up 9.4% this quarter. My loser, however, is Altria. There was some bad press recently in the news about price wars and foreign countries. That may have hampered Altria's growth some, but nonetheless, I lost 16.9% this quarter. Ouch! I wish I could take that one back! I was hoping it would rebound. It's such a solid company with such as addictive product, I was almost positive I'd gain some! Instead, I took the loss - like a man! Thank God that was only virtual money. Oh well. Overall, I am very pleased. I will continue to update you as to my progress. Until next time...keep investing wisely!