Trick or Treat

Hope everyone is having / had a good Halloween!
















These two pumpkins are kind of special in that thanks to our good friend Debbie, who provide our youngest son a present of Pumpkin Seeds for his birthday, enabled us to try growing pumpkins for the first time this year. We grew 4 pumpkins, 1 rotted before we picked it, 1 was eaten by the deer, and these two were home grown and carved just for Halloween Night.

Though tricky, the month of October proved mostly a treat stock wise.

Starting lineup returned 5% for month of October lead by:

HOGS: 15%
They engage in the processing and distribution of meat and food products primarily in China. They experienced a good run starting in mid September and continued through the first half of October. Since then it has hit top end resistance (twice) and appears to be cooling back down.

VHC: 22%
Makes their living off of suing other companies for patent infringement. They won against Microsoft earlier this year and using that case as precedence have set their sights on other companies such as Apple, Cisco, and NEC. I think they are still worth watching for further developments with these law suites.

TPI: 10%
engages in the development, manufacture, marketing, and sale of modernized traditional Chinese medicines and other pharmaceuticals in China. After reporting good profits and outlook in September the stock went on a nice run but has since cooled off a bit and is probably again worth watching for another entry point especially if it dips below $3 a share.

My Bench lineup once again outperformed my starting lineup returning 6%. Lots of really good winners in this bunch, including:

QUIK: 17%
TNDM: 14%
ASIA: 12%
GILD: 10%

All of these are still worthy of watching but GILD seems to be setting up a nice resistance line and could be looking to push further upwards for another breakout.

My Practice squad had a return of just under 1% and showed exactly why speculative buyouts are so risky.

It correctly picked:

GYMB: 30% which was bought out.

And completely missed on:

SVNT: -45% who announced they did not successfully find a buyer.

As for me, I had nearly a 7% return thanks in part to HOGS. I hedged my bet on them and was barely up on my other picks. I can’t complain, 7% is pretty good for a monthly return but I coulda woulda shoulda done better.

But at least I beat the averages!

DOW: 3%
NASDAQ: 5%

Stay tuned for my November watch list!