June Notes

June meeting was at Mary's with Judi, Terri and Barb. Francie and Karen, we missed you.
Over fruit salad, and other fresh and tasty Trader Joe treats and wine, Mary told us a bit about Capitla National, which wants to spin off from the holding company Capital National Bankcorp and is seeking investors to fund the buyout of their entity.

24.9% of the new company will still be owned by CNBankcorp.

Cost $11/share with a minimum buy of 100 shares.

Their motto moving forward is: Small Bank, Bigger Service and they want to cater to local, small business and entrepreneurs.

They are unique in that they are nationally chartered, so they could, though not interested now, spread to other states.

We agreed to buy shares with our available cash of approx $2,900.

This is an IPO, so is not yet available through any stock exchange. Edward Jones will cut us a check from our cash and we'll be buying the stock directly. Karen can still track this and do tax reports on Bivio.

On a separate note, Judi and Terri recommend the book "The Social Animal". Mary told us fun stories about nannyhood amongst the Minnesota wealthy...could have sat there all night.

And, now we'll take the summer off with the plan to reconvene in September when we'll create a plan for honing the portfolio.

Informed Guts

I am totally happy with whatever the Collective Gut says about Capital National (I'm in favor, since we have good intel). I can't make the June17 meeting, though, sorry.

Regarding our "Guts" approach: I don't want to diminish it - it's my favorite MO. But our guts are only as good as the intuitions we gain from stimulating our intellects with information. It doesn't need to be complete information - I'm all for a healthy level of ambiguity - but some rational basis seems prudent, even when buying in an irrational marketplace.

I do think the Guts approach works better when buying - and to a lesser extent, selling - than it does for tracking the stocks we own. (I am making the assumption here that we do want to track our stocks in some way shape or form. If I'm wrong about that, it's a different discussion.)

To track stocks, we need information, and to get/use/discuss that information, we need some kind of structure - even if it is CCIC-super-duper unstructured structure. That's where we've always gotten hung up in our underwear - we've been able to agree we need something, but haven't figured out what it is.

The approach to classifying our stocks we discussed at Terri's house on St. Patrick's Day (detailed in my March 21 blog post) was designed to reduce the number of stocks we have to track carefully - I'm still in favor of that - but that still leaves the question of HOW we track our stocks, who tracks them, and how often.

I know my spotty performance in keeping Bivio updated hasn't helped sustain interest in tracking stock performance. But before we set off on another approach to streamlining and simplifying, I hope we can settle on a way to track and compare stocks.

There are some good ideas here: http://www.kiplinger.com/magazine/archives/2008/01/track-your-stocks.html or we can devote a meeting to exploring what Bivio can do. Or both.....or something else.

Your thoughts?

Groupon

Here's the link to the Groupon article:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-0603-groupon-ipo-20110602,0,7549244.story

May notes and ramblings

In May Terri, Francie, and I met at Judis knowing we were not due to make any major decisions. We reminded ourselves that the CC plan was to pick some sell prices, and set benchmarks for selling all or part of the stocks in our watch list and we discussed whether it would be smart to get more Dendreon in hopes it will rise with insurance approval rating. Francie's going to get us more information about that.

That's pretty much all the business from that evening.

If we're going to set up benchmarks, we should decide how we want to do that, and then do it before summer, so passive progress can happen while we're not meeting. And, as we consider Capitol National, do we want to consider getting rid of something we have, as we'd also talked about honing the portfolio? Some of our stocks are up, many are down at the moment...better buying environment than selling, it feels.

I think we may be due for one of our more focused meetings - all of us there if possible, to look at the stocks on the Watch list and determine our strategy for each - get it down on paper and to Mark...and figure out how we want to watch these, as we haven't quite gotten that far. Or, did you at one of the meetings I missed?

I'm game for considering Capitol National if it seems like a good investment also for "support local/Michigan" reasons, but otherwise want to keep the plan we'd made in mind.

On a MUCH more fun note, here's Francie's Daquiri recipe

1# cleaned straberries
1/4 lg can Minute Maid lemonade concentrate - undliluted
1/5 can MM limeade concentrate, or to taste

Blend to purée.
Put in a pitcher with:
1-1.5 c water
1-1.5 c rum

Can blend again with ice, or serve over ice.
Francie served with a lime slice and strawberry over the rim of the glass - beautiful!

A Day Made of Glass (Corning)

Here's a fun exploration of the applications for the specialty glass Corning creates. Fantasy for now, I expect, but things move awfully fast in technology.

Notice the comment below the video that says "Windex will make a fortune!" Another stock tip? =)

Dendreon's prostate drug

This is an article in Health Affairs about the FDA decision on Provenge that was expected in March - with one little twist. They aren't allowing off-label use.

Our stock watchlist moving forward

To reiterate and supplement what Barb said regarding our stocks to watch:

The overall goal of this exercise is to make our portfolio more manageable so we are making decisions based on our informed guts, not the dartboard.

We have essentially two groups to watch. The first group Barb named our "Core & Ignore." This group we consider our own "blue chips," watched but not obsessed over. We don't want to be asleep at the wheel, but we have the highest hopes for this group of stocks. We can always have further discussions about which stocks should be included on this list:

CORE & IGNORE

• Neogen
• Target
• Google
• Proctor and Gamble
• Stryker

The second group (shall we call it the Watch List?) we watch more closely, for shorter term opportunities like buying more (to dollar cost average or increase our position), or selling some or all shares (to take profits and invest elsewhere, to take our lumps and use the loss for tax purposes, or to "peel" off shares and "keep" our original dollar investment).

WATCH  LIST

• Corning - No one was especially excited about this stock. We either need to find a reason to get excited, or track and bail when the time is right by some measure yet to be determined.
• Dendreon (prostate drug Provenge) - We believe in it because it involves men's keen interest in their own health, but should still watch in light of possible uncertainty around health reform. This could be a future candidate for Core & Ignore.
• Emergent Biosolutions (anthrax vaccine, former Bioport) - A fairly new local stock; we should watch and learn more about the company.
• Energy Conversion (solar film) - Later in the year we should decide if we think we can ever break even on this (now that we have lowered our cost basis to around $10/share) or if we want to sell it all before the end of the year and use the loss for tax purposes.
• Ford - At the March meeting we "peel & keep"ed this; we should continue to watch so we don't lose the opportunity to take profits if something tanks with the autos.
• GM - Track and bail. No rush.
• Hormel - Watch. As long as the price goes up or stays steady, we can ignore the poop lagoons and keep our eye on the Chinese market.
• Rofin-Sinar (lasers) - Watch. It's near its 52 week high right now.

The only remaining question, in my mind, is how we do the watching.