Good news and bloody annoying news

Good news first. Today my portfolio increased up +15,200 baht. PTTCH increased 3.5 baht in price as some of their projects were cleared to go ahead in Ma Ta Pud.

Bloody annoying news- after selling THAI 3 days ago, its increased 7% since then. Ugh. Well lesson learned is to be abit more patient as i saw it increased a bit on the day i sold it .

MY LPN and KBANK buys are now up more than 5%- previously i had planned to sell- but now two factors are making me hold on to them:
1) Im relying more now on MACD and RSI to guide me i.e. im waiting until they both give me sell signals before selling the stock.
2) They both should be paying tasty dividends: LPN 4.9 % in a couple of weeks, KBANK hasnt announced anything yet but traditionally pays relatively high divds.

"One ticket to Rally-Ville please"

Well its been a surprising monday and tuesday- despite the political instability my Thai portfolio has almost broken even (after being down 11% last week); its only down 0.2%!!

In fact, if i sold my stocks that have risen in price id take almost 1000 $ or 33,000 baht and still have the principal amount that i invested in them in the last 2 weeks.

Today i sold my THAI stocks as the company does not have the fundamentals (it was a heart- not head buy for me), but I will keep my eye on it because i think later in the year it will push up 20-40% in price given the new CEO's sound decisions so far (including reducing the age of the Thai stewardesses- great move aesthetically and also will attract more business men travellers (and compete with Singapore Airs excellent ad campaign ("Singapore girl, you are a good way to shag/fly"). I sold at a tiny profit (6$) but the point was to move funds into a stock more likely to rise in the short term (LANNA, number 1 on my watch list).

TTA is preforming well, increased 3.5% in the two days since i bought it due to the increasing Baltic Dry Index price (which measures the price of shipping- the higher the BDI is, the more shipping companies, like TTA, get when they transport goods).

KBANK is also increasing, i think because of all the analyst reports of the last few days that have noted that its undervalued and a good buy (JP Morgan, Credit Suiss, SCBS etc).

I was tempted to sell LPN today wehn is increased 8% for me at one point but their dividend XD date is march 3rd and its close to 5% so ill hold on......its RSI and MACD lines are also still radiating strong buy signals when i looked at them just now..... (RSI and MACD tools- i love these puppies- well worth googling them if you invest in stocks)

PTL which i bought last week has been abit of a sleeper....

Value vs Growth stocks

Growth stocks are those with increasing sales, profit, EPS, ROE and rising share price. The idea here is to identify these proven stocks and buy into them when they are already on the way up. My growth stocks in Thailand: KBANK, LPN, PTTCH. KBANK and PTTCH i expect to pay good dividends too.

Value stocks are 'bargains' stocks with low prices that are strong fundamentally but are currently undervalued for whatever reason, you buy at the low price and hope they increase when the rest of the market catches up with your brilliance by seeing what a great stock it actually is.

My main value stock is Thai airways (THAI)- i just bought it- its at a low price historically and i see the new CEO as already making some very good decisions to turn the company around and i bet that tourism picks up. Another value stock that i think could be on the verge of increasing is TTA shipping- it recently dropped 20% in price but has good cash in hand and is undervalued i think (price to book value looks good) - (but there is likely to be oversupply in shipping capacity globally later this year so i think the time to buy is now - there may be an upswing in price in the next 1-3 months (before oversupply of shipping capacity hits the market) as china may increase its iron ore imports and if Greece is bailed out there may be a general bullish sentiment that lifts shipping trade. The Baltic Dry Index which measures the price of shipping goods also increased by 2% today making TTA (a shipping company) more likely to increase.

The key to making it work in stock trading- i think- i hope -is to know before hand when you want to sell....so...my rule is if a stock increases 5-6 % i sell..then if the stock increases further by another 2% i buy into it again hoping it will increase further...if not then i buy into the next stock on my watch list . I figure a 5% return is pretty good these days. Both my PTTCH and LPN stocks increased 5% in one day soon after i bought them last month. At the time though (before i had come up with my sell room) i dithered and they ended up dropping and losing that 5% in less than a day!..so i lost out...

My final stock is PTL- interestingly this came up as a pick using both value and growth criteria, so i bought it to see if it has some extra mojo because of that.