Gary’s Quarterly Report
Before I
grade myself on my fourth-quarter reports,
let’s go through what I said.
The most important report was my first report on Oct
4. I laid out one very important point: The action in the market had
changed to the positive. This was an excellent evaluation of the
“follow-through days for all the major indices.” I urge you to put
this report in your archives. We were just weeks from the attacks — all the
news was bad — but the market spoke up. When the market speaks…I obey. I
actually think that it was one of my best reports ever because I did not let my
own feelings get in the way.
I was also very happy with my Nov.
19 report, picking up the Restaurant theme. I
have always believed that 75% of buying a stock is buying a sector that is
either breaking out or is strong. Many Restaurants have
cooked since that report.
I put the second installment of
insider selling at the lows in my Nov.
29 report. So far…not bad. Please remember that in my
first report, the average stock dropped 50% in 120 days. Ten stocks were up,
12 were down and the rest were about even. Blow-ups included
(
PDLI |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating),
(
PLT |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating),
(
STOR |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) and
(
SLR |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating).
I was definitely early in my Dec.
3 report when I stated the market was starting to act ragged. There was
another leg up just a couple of weeks later. DUH!
My Dec.
10 report mentioned the Homebuilders as a group
to be on as a few names started to break out at the same time, mso-fareast-font-family:”Times New Roman”;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:
EN-US;mso-bidi-language:AR-SA” Times>Ã la the Restaurants.
I will take it as several weeks later, as Maria Bartiromo says, “These
stocks are on fire.”
Dec.
14 was a killer report. Didn’t even pay attention to the market — just put
out the Enron
(
ENE |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) chart and how you
should have recognized multiple signs that there were problems. Great piece of
classic American literature. Never, ever, forget what can possibly happen if you
don’t have stops.
The rest of the reports were basically
non-events.
I give myself pretty good grades. I
was my most bearish I have ever been while the markets had their follow-through
days early in the quarter. I was still worried — like you — about terrorists,
recession and anything else that can go wrong. But I still told you it meant
higher prices. I was smart enough not to give targets, time or leadership,
knowing that it would be a fruitless endeavor. My sector calls were pretty good,
especially highlighting certain charts from Homebuilders
and Restaurants. My “DUH” for the quarter
was believing the market was done and just a couple of days later — straight
up!
If you have any thoughts or
feedback…please let me know. Sorry about the lateness of this report.