Four Weeks Of Annual Leave

Hi Guys,

Fortunately for me (unfortunately for the blog) I will be on annual leave for approximately four weeks. I am going on my first overseas trip in a long time and will not be back until the 18th of April 2012.

Obviously, I will have access to the internet while travelling to ensure that I can keep an eye on my investments. It will however be too hard/time consuming to post in-depth articles or analysis during this period.

I may get one or two posts out while waiting at airports, etc and will be back into the full swing of things as soon as I return.

There have also been two announcements by Kentor Gold out this week which I would like to write about. I am not sure I will get a chance before I leave so check out the announcements below and feel free to let me know your thoughts.

http://www.asx.com.au/asxpdf/20120312/pdf/424yn629d6jz8q.pdf

http://www.asx.com.au/asxpdf/20120314/pdf/425084jqdk3qcf.pdf

Busy, Busy, Busy!!!

Hi Everyone,

I am still alive!!! I have just been FLAT OUT running my business for the last two weeks and have had to sacrifice a few things to ensure that I don't leave my clients high and dry. Unfortunately my blog has suffered as a result, along with the amount of time I spend on Hotcopper and at the gym.

Just to put things into perspective I have been doing three times the amount of work for almost 10 days straight compared to what I would do during the middle of the year. This is the first time operating my business full time over the New Year period and I have been shocked at the amount of work that has been flowing in.

I have a heap of posts to get out including last weeks report, analysis on Kentor Gold's Jervois upgrade, MHM's year in review (very late) and maybe even some thoughts on how my KGL trade is going.

I hope you all stay with me. I should be back in action within the next 3 to 4 days.

Thanks,

IP

Happy New Year!!!

Happy New Year !!!

I just wanted to take this opportunity to say thank you to everyone who has read, commented or shared one of my blog articles.

Although the hit counter is still fairly low (circa 3,000) it is also good to know people are interested in reading what I write. This project started as a way of me keeping track of my shares and it has certainly grown since then.

I look forward to continuing the blog throughout 2012 and wish you all lots of success in the months ahead.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!!!

Just a quick post to wish all of my readers a Merry Christmas! I hope you all stay safe over the break and get to spend some quality time with all your family and friends without worrying too much about the stock market, the turmoil in Europe and how your investments are performing.

Where Do I See My Blog Going In 2012?

I have now been writing my blog for approximately five months and I have found the process very rewarding. Recently I commented on the benefits of writing a blog or journal so it is certainly something that I will keep doing throughout 2012.

Obviously 2012 has been a challenging time in the markets and although none of my stocks have “taken off yet” I think I have invested in a diverse range of companies that offer significant potential in 2012 and the years to come. I will be posting a brief article on what I would like to see from each of my investments shortly, but for the time being this post will focus more on where I see the blog and my portfolio going in a general sense.

As you would know all my investments are purchased based on fundamental research, however, one of the side benefits of this approach is that I gain an in-depth understanding of the company and its expected future news flow. On top of that I monitor each stock every day and at multiple times throughout the day. This has allowed me to gain an appreciation of strong support and resistance levels that I should be able to take advantage off. As a result I am going to allocate a small percentage of the portfolio >20% towards “trading”.

This will be limited to stocks that I already own or have researched in great detail. The benefit of this approach is that I will be able to utilise my knowledge of the company to generate additional gains in the short term and even if the price was to go against me (in the short term) it is something that I am happy to hold as a long term investment any way.

Obviously this is a slight change to my original strategy and is not something I will do every day/week/month. But when I see an opportunity I want some flexibility within the portfolio to take advantage of it. I will not necessarily trade off charts, but more my knowledge of the company and where strong resistance/support is usually found from my observation of the daily price movement.

Something I have not mentioned on my blog before is the fact that I do have some additional long term shares (blue chips) which I have held since I was around the age of 12-18. As I prove to myself that I am able to generate strong returns in the small-micro cap sector I will be selling off some of these older investments and re-distributing the funds into this portfolio.

I have not mentioned this in the past as most of the stocks have smaller capital amounts invested and are not something that I actively research on a daily basis (like I do with MHM, KGL and OBJ).

On top of all that I would really like to grow the readership of my blog a little more and generate some comments on my articles. So please do be shy, talk up and let me know what you are thinking.

MHM Purchase & Going Camping

Sorry I have not updated my blog much this week, but I am going camping this weekend and have been rushing to finish all my work in time. As a result the weekly report (week ending 2 dec) and monthly report (for November) may have to wait until next week.

Anyway, I posted on twitter yesterday that I bought some more MHM shares and wanted to write an article about it as well. I know that I have missed a lot of the run up (from the mid 50's) but it was always my intention to buy more and I decided to bite the bullet yesterday. I ended up doubling my holding in the company at an average price of $1.01, which was pretty close to the low for the day.

We have less than eight trading days to go until we get to hear about their US expansion via the press conference and I feel it is better to be on the train (and pay a little more) than miss it altogether. I also wanted to comment on the reasons why I missed such a large part of the run up. What happened was I became "fearful" which I know is a really stupid reason, especially considering the amount of research I put into my stocks, but when the share price is getting hammered it is really hard not to question if you have made the right decision. As a result I decided to wait until the first plant was confirmed and information received on how it was financed. I anticipated that if this announcement came in the low 60's or 70's I would still be able to jump on at around 80-90 cents and average down my buy price to approximately $1.

Unfortunately nothing is ever that straight forward and we only received details of individual contracts. I probably should have used this as a queue to jump in, but I hesitated. I will strike this down as a lesson learnt on my long term investment journey and try to be better prepared for these situations in the future. We could well see some weakness in the share price over the next weeks/months, but I remain positive on the company's long term potential and do believe that the announcement next week will be positive from a fundamental point of view. Hopefully it is strong enough to push the share price higher and into profit on this position.

Time to get back to work, camping awaits me tomorrow afternoon. I am not looking forward to being cut off from my computer and hope there is reception so I can at least use my iphone.

What a Week!!!

Your guys are going to have to bare with me today and tomorrow as I have a number of posts that I would like to get out. I had planned to make a number of these throughout the week but business has just been ridiculously busy (which is a good thing!).

As a result I have not been able to complete any more of my online mining courses, nor spend much time research companies and conducting analysis. However, what this week has done, is remind me of how much you can achieve on a daily basis. Instead of moping around in the morning or chopping and changing between tasks if you stay focused and on-course you can smash out an amazing amount of work.

So if you are in a similar position to me, where you have a long list of things to accomplish then just get cracking because by the end of next week you will feel a lot better for it.

There is lots of exciting news to come out today and tomorrow so please make sure you check back.

Additional Cash Injection

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I would be adding a small amount of additional capital to the portfolio. This was due to a decision I made to close down my CFD trading account and withdraw all my remaining funds. For those of you who have read my earlier posts you would know that I have traded a range of instruments over the years, however, I feel my skill set is best suited to the speculative, long term market where my research and analysis can be rewarded.

As a result of this additional capital the weighting of the portfolio (based on initial purchase price is now as follows):

OBJ Limited: 22.2%

MHM Metals: 11.16%

Kentor Gold: 10.55%

Cash: 55.37%

From next week I will also be changing the way I report my weekly results. Instead of using a fixed weighting based on my initial purchase price I will allow the weighting to fluctuate weekly, based on the value of each holding in the company. This will help remove any distortion that has occurred due to the large falls from my initial purchase price. E.g. MHM originally represented 11.16% of my portfolio, however given its comparatively poor performance and halving of the share price its value is now only circa 6% of the portfolio’s value. This does not affect who good/poor the investment is performing, nor does it distort any gain or loss I make. It merely reflects the changing value of each investment within the portfolio, much like the ASX 200 or All Ords operates.

Some Housing Keeping Notes For The Blog

I thought I would do a summary on some outstanding updates/posts that I will be writing over the coming weeks. I am doing this for two reasons:

1.       So you don’t think I have forgotten about the posts I promised to write.

2.       So there is a record of all the posts I will be making in the near future.

So over the coming weeks I plan on writing the following posts:

1.       My background analysis on OBJ Limited

2.       Provide my analysis on MHM Metals Australian plant and future expansion plans

3.       Provide my summary of value/calculations on MHM Metals

4.       Finish summarising my notes on each of Kentor Gold’s mines to arrive at a final valuation

5.       Write additional posts on my researching style and how I analyse companies.

Also if there are any topics that you are interested in hearing more about please feel free to post a comment or two.

New Stock Market Forum

I just thought I would let you all know about a new stock market forum that I have started using, ShareScene.com.

As usual my user name is investorpaul so feel free to send me an instant message or join the conversation on any of the stocks I discuss on the site.

For those of you who are familiar with Hotcopper or Aussie Stock Forums I would describe ShareScene as a mix of the two. It does not have anywhere near the amount of posts as Hotcopper, however there is discussion on a wide variety of stocks and like ASF the conversation does not appear to be as fast paced or speculative in nature.

I hope to see you on there in the future.