Week 9 2012 Performance......Still batting a 1000%

So far this year every week has been a week up for the fund.  Even after taking a hit with the SodaStream $SODA earnings disappointment which took the stock down nearly 15% on one day we were able to ride out the week on the back of Apple $AAPL once again.  Apple has now become our largest position in the portfolio counting for 14.6% of total assets merely by increasing in value as we have not added to our option position since our original purchase back on 10/4/2011.  This week it is widely expected that Apple will introduce the new iPad3.  With a good consensus of people expecting a pullback in the stock as it sits north of the $500 mark, I'm not sure we will see it this week either depending upon what Apple actually introduces.  You can see additional info on Apple with two of my posts this week [March 1, 2012 One Apple Analyst Who Says Sell] and [March 1, 2012 iPhone is Nightmare for Carriers]


As for the rest of the fund we made a great call on Lowe's as they reported a solid quarter on what we believe is a recovery in the remodeling space as people repair foreclosed houses and rent them out.  [February 26, 2012 Investing in Foreclosures How One Company Does it].  Up 53% on our July 2012 Call position I am going to let this one ride it out for another quarter to see what happens.


The only move we made this week was picking up some McDonald's $MCD March 17, 2012 call options ahead of it's same store sales release next Thursday March 8.  McDonald's has been on our watch list for sometime now, but just like Apple it had soared higher and hasn't really given us a good entry point into the position.  So rather than wait I thought that getting in now ahead of the sales release would be as good of time as ever and using the call options give us a little bit of protection to the downside if they don't hit or exceed their numbers.


One word of caution to viewers and clients.  Although I love being on this winning streak and providing you with the best investment management perspective that I can, this level of performance is not common.  Do not expect the fund to be up every week like it has been to start 2012.  While we perform our best there are still unforeseen market forces that could throw our performance off.

As I described in last week's performance update, there was a lot of economic news that came out during the week.  I like to give people a view of the week's up coming data that could affect the daily or weekly direction of the market but from a trading perspective and fund position I don't base my thesis or strategy off of this data.  For me, it is too short sided and these economic releases can just create noise in the market places either up or down.  Second, I tend to form a long-term thesis so when weekly, monthly, or quarterly data come out I review the data but I try not to get to excited about it because it is just one data point.  I need to determine if a series of data points give me reason enough to change my investment thesis.  So with that being said, below is a look at the week ahead.

The Week Ahead

This coming week brings us the release of the February Employment Report on Friday.  If there is any one number besides GDP that the markets are sure to move on it is the jobs report. Non-Farm Payrolls and the Unemployment % are the two key headline numbers.  Consensus estimates predict that 204k people will be added to Non-Farm Payrolls while the unemployment % is expected to stay the same at 8.3%.  These number don't just impact what direction the markets may be headed in but since this is an election year it becomes a rallying cry for either or both political parties

• Mon - Factory Orders, ISM Non-MFG Index
• Tue - N/A
• Wed - ADP Employment Report, Productivity & Costs, Consumer Credit
• Thu - Weekly Jobless Claims
• Fri - Feb Employment Report

I will also be posting our updated watch list and adding some color to the names that we are currently following.  This should help give clients, perspective clients, and readers some insight into where we think things are headed and our investment strategies.  I will note that there are a number of positions that I would have liked to have gotten in on before the upswing of the market but part of my investing thesis is not to chase performance.

Have a great week!

Full disclosure I own shares of SODA in my personal account