Smashing Up Against a Brick Wall

With WNR down more than 6% now, I am reminded of the rout in my silver stocks when I was visiting North Carolina back in February. Upon landing, I was getting nailed in AG and EXK to the point where I was close to booking the losses and moving on. However, I kept my cool and ended up minting money on both ideas.

WNR, as well as all of the refiners, has a lot of hot money shareholders, people who only care about making coin right now. I’ve seen these people before; they sashay in and out of stocks only for the decadent pleasure of it all, nothing of substance. Let me remind you that WNR, VLO and HOC are operating under ideal scenarios, from a business perspective. Aside from recent share price performance, these are great businesses to be long. All hot sectors go through periods of adjustment, through panic. But if the fundamentals are solid, eventually, you will be rewarded.

Specific to the pinless hand grenade action today: I can only tell you to position defensively, so that you are not flushed out with some margin liquidation. As you know, I have 250%+ of my personal in WNR, which has undergone a real 13% correction times 2.5 this week. In other words, I am barely up for the year. This is NOT the sort of investment style you should be copying. It’s reckless and foolish.

Nevertheless, I am literally playing with the houses money, so there is a certain degree of security in that.

For managed accounts, I am very overweight refiners, specifically WNR and CVI. Thus far, in 2011, I’ve had some really good runs, only to give it back during periods of correction. Frankly, assessing my performance year to date, I’ve been abysmal. I sold out of plenty of good stocks too low, like OPEN and FTK. And, I held onto losers too long, like MOTR and BORN. These are classic mistakes that are easily avoided using standard stop losses.

Bottom line: I am likely going to shake things up a bit, in an effort to find my groove again. As for the refiners, I am not selling out due to VLO’s issues. Aside from hedges, the underlying EPS for their qt. was $1.00, .70 cents better than expectations. With crack spreads sustaining $25, it’s only a matter of time before these fuckers turn around again.