One Lucky SOB

I have been a major recipient of serendipitous timing over the past several weeks. What has happened simply cannot be attributed to skill.

In early August my portfolio was 100% long HCLP, CCJ, BAS, ETP, MAA, AEC, NRP, and BTU. But things felt wrong so I persuaded myself, based mostly on the opinion of others, that I should raise cash into September.

Where major luck comes into play is how I raised that cash. HCLP, BAS and CCJ were all >20% sized positions. I clipped HCLP, and sold BAS and CCJ down hard to around or under 10%. This was all mostly at the highs.

But where the fortunes get greater comes next. I really wanted more cash, but I couldn’t bring myself to trim those three any more. So instead, I made some tough choices and discarded both NRP and MAA. Plus, everything that was left was sent to the 5% mark.

Almost everything I have has taken a severe beating. This, coupled with the EURUSD, leave me convinced that the worst is yet to come. But I’ve mostly held out intact.

BAS and HCLP have pulled back very hard, but I’m up so much and scaled them down so intensely, I actually added to BAS around $24 because I could afford to. Elsewhere, BTU, MAA and NRP have all felt the worst of it, but my exposure to them is almost gone. As far as the multifamily sector is concerned, AEC as the one position I retained has held up pretty well. Physical silver is the only place I didn’t manage to find a silver lining (…).

And ETP has actually risen. That was maybe my only error this past month, was selling that down to 5%. I turned around and bought it back up to a 10% position last week. It’s shrugged off economic weakness, because the company is awesome.

Sometimes, you just get lucky. This year has held that theme for me.