As much fun as the occasional weekend pipe dream is, jam packed with physics and wacky ideas, from time to time, Monday brings with it a serious responibility to engage in actual thinking that produces real gains.

I see the weekday pipe dreamers are out and about now, writing mock up papers for major publications detailing how the hyperloop will create displacement by causing passengers to ride an acoustic wave, knocking my own crazy nonsense off the top. I suppose I’ll leave the making of unsubstantiated and ridiculous guessing to the professionals.

Back to things that actually matter; I’m watching RGR closely and have made the probably bad choice to hold through earnings. I am betting that gun ownership in this country will continue to expand at a higher pace that old normals, even after the initial fear buying craze has subsided. It’s difficult as RGR just announced some plant trouble, and background checks are down. Do not be surprised if RGR takes a spill lower. Whether or not I re-up my stake at that point will depend.

AEC is making to recover from the earnings miss. I am betting it will make new highs within the year.

BAS remains in a correction, and if my feeling for the stock is on, I’m betting that puts it around $11. Or rather, I’d buy around $11, if it can get there.

If you are trading BAS, I want you to memorize this passage, which I put up inside of The PPT for the privileged and well connected.

BAS is down 11% at the time of this writing on bad earnings. Bad earnings should be expected with this company, for the moment and into the forseeable future.

As it stands, I actually was pleased with BAS’ earnings, as they were about what I expected. I will break them down later this weekend, when I have time. I will point out; even though the company lost money, their cash level increased from earlier this year. That has a lot to do with why I am in this name in particular, and not one of their competitors.

If you are following along, I caution you to reflect on what kind of person you are. Are you prone to panic? Do you actually understand what’s going on here?

I am in this name because I believe they will emerge, following a great consolidation in the fracking revolution taking place in the US, victorious and on top. I anticipate that they continue to lose money from fierce competition for the time being. It is the floundering deaths of BAS’ competitors that has put pressure on their bottom line, and will continue to do so for the forseeable future.

Just before July 4, I restructured BAS down, selling shares until it was only 7% of my account. I view this price collapse as a buying opportunity. But I want it lower, closer to $10-11.

Despite much fear of a Detroit bankruptcy, last night the city seemed pretty quiet. I suppose there’s not much more in the way of hardship that can be imposed on this place; it’s pretty much at rock bottom.

This failure is a stinging rebook to a philosophy that still very much haunts our country, not unlike the Nain Rouge haunts Detroit and brings suffering on its residents.

My portfolio is rather quiet today, with exception being made for BAS, which is now up more than 2% on the day. Everything else I have is lower or flat.

I would urge caution, as I have for the better part of three months. A correction is taking longer to form than I suspected, but that does not mean a correction will not form. We are going into a very tumultuous year, from the stand point of prospective growth and complex changes.

It’s better to be guarded and maybe have sub-optimal returns (by have a large cash position to the long side), than arrogant with losses.

Welcome, and I hope I find you well.

I’m coming into the afternoon with strong rallying across my portfolio. AEC and CLP are both up over 100 points. CCJ, RGR, and BAS are all pushing 200. The euro cracked this morning, and EUO is now up 150. Silver is enjoying a relief rally, but it’s down so much inside of this year, it seems stupid to talk about.

The only place I’m losing money today are the TSLA puts. And since they’re puts at 2-3% of the account, I really don’t care.

I’m actually looking to add to the Tesla put position, this time targeting the 2015 expiries. A $70 strike price should do nice – maybe as low as $50.

I believe TSLA is the new NFLX; sans the recovery.

All in all, I’m still up over a percent so far, with a 30% cash position to boot. But if I were to be honest, I would say I still expect the summer to end dreadfully.

Have a great day.

Every now and again, I like to look back over where I’ve been to see what I should have done. Sometimes I find I was exactly right. Sometimes I see the errors (hopefully not relevant). And sometime, much to my frustration, I see I was exactly where I should have been but then decided to wander off just before the party got started.

Utilities more or less sum up those frustrations.

I called the utility move about 2 years ago. My reasoning was essentially that a utility is equivalent to a publicly insured bond (a company with a legal monopoly and appropriate guarantees), and that since these bonds have (had) a nice yield, they would become the de facto target if bonds held low prices. But even if bonds somehow fell, they were good enough value to warrant the buy at the time.

Then I picked through and found my favorite utility – AWK (water).

I bought AWK in the low $20’s, road it up to $30, and then…I just sort of wandered off.

So much money got left on the table. Did I leave the utility play because I thought the move was done? No, I mostly left because I thought we were going to sell off and wanted to trade both ways. So I raised cash.

I cannot tell you how many times I’ve overplayed my hand like this, trying to nail the inflection like an ace. And what I’ve witnessed, in hindsight, is that I’m a much better stock picker than I am a market timer.

Which brings us to oil.

I just sacrificed some more money on the alter of oil. But this time, instead of shorting more like a beast, obsessed with “being right”, I’m taking my drubbings and walking off. I’ve been almost perfectly hedged the past few months (excluding silver, which I treat as almost an off balance sheet position at times). And I refuse to let the SCO “hedge” (read, loser) sink my year, which has been very profitable. EUO is doing well, I have a healthy cash position, and BAS, CCJ, AEC, CLP, and RGR will all prove winners. Of this I am confident. The only other thing is the TSLA puts, which are low single digits of assets and will cause as much fluctuation in my portfolio as the month of June, should they burn out.

Or they make my year.

The message here is flexibility. Learn to have it – don’t waste away your hard labors on the rash emotions of the moment.

Have a quick look at the graph on this site. I haven’t audited any of the numbers, but if the author has done his homework, it fortells fairly clearly what oil longs have to expect.

For the moment, all of my short exposure is being pesteringly resilient; most probably because I am counting on those positions to even out my account. So of course, oil is holding up here, the euro is trying to push higher, and TSLA recovered a $3 move.

There’s no reason for any of those things other than that they hurt Cain Hammond Thaler. The market is trying to harm me, because that is the only consolation anyone in these positions will ultimately have…if they can shake me out.

But I have the patience of sheet rock. You will not win.

Current positions by size (greatest to least)

Cash – 27%
CCJ – 18%
CLP – 8%
AEC – 8%
SCO – 8%
EUO – 8%
Silver – 8%
BAS – 7%
RGR – 7%
January 2014 TSLA 35 Puts – 1-2%