Back to Business...

If you haven't been paying attention lately it has definitely been back to business on Wall Street. Quietly the markets have roared up and surpassed the levels before the great recession of our times, started. We are roughly hovering around Dow 11000 and I am still interested because good companies are recovering and making money. If you go back in time, you will remember that I mentioned the good times will begin to roll again however we need to be better stop pickers this time around. In the past few years, we could afford to buy almost anything and watch it go up. Now we've learned that this is no longer the case a good pickers will be rewarded. I am not a great stock picker so I will say good and that is why I went through that cleansing period. I said if you don't see a stock as a long term hold and can't bear waiting for it to recover through the difficult times then get rid of it. And that what we did, now I would have loved to go back and hold on to my Microsoft holdings but besides that I was pleased with my focused results.

My main holdings continue to be:

Radisys - my largest position with is up fairly nicely. Since the hitting lows in the 4s this stock along with many others has rebounded and is roughly in the 9-10 range.

Collector's Universe my second largest position is poised and looking very strong. It has surprised be and scared me a bit by bouncing off of levels in the 4s and surprising coming in around $14 lately. I followed the advice of the greats and really read through their filings and statements when things were bad. As I've written in the past, they have a good representation of outside investors who have kept the company honest. They shedded non-performing parts of the business...the gem grading business if I recall and maintained their bread and butter...authentication of stuff. They also instituted expense saving processes and cut the dividend which hurt and sent investors scrambling away. But reading through the filing showed me they could continue to make the payments but wanted to reserve the cash to make it through the storm. And that they did, and when they reannounced a short while ago that they were bringing back their 25c dividend things were rolling for this company. Earnings looked good and I was buying more shares through my dividend reinvestment program. Now my holdings are going up even more and they are soaring. They just announced an increase in dividends which is bringing in more investors and we are loving it. Dividends have been increased to 30c and this company looks to be in a great position. I will need to be careful here but we are easily profitable on this trade and making steady dividends each quarter.

Burlington Northern - This is no longer a holding as we made a healthy return after the company was bought out and taken private.

I watching the usual suspects in my watch portfolio:

Legg Mason (LM)
Boston Scientific (BSX)
...and a few new ones:
ViaSat (VST)
Theravance (THX)

Keep u posted, Peace