2009 Stock Picks – Q1 Review

It’s time for the end of the first quarter review of my 2009 stock picks and the picks of my fellow bloggers in this friendly competition.  The bad news is that none of my top stock and ETF picks (DRYS, NDAQ, SSO and USO) for 2009 are up through Q1, but the good news is that my timing on exiting these in real life saved me some losses. 

I actually made money on NDAQ trades so far, but have naked puts that are in the money (ITM) slightly now.  I got out of DRYS before it reached its current lows, but not at the top by a large percentage.  I made a small profit on an SSO vertical put spread and plan to go back in for more when I think we’re at another turning point for the broader markets.  I just flat out lost on USO when I sold my covered calls on my long shares too early at $25 for a loss although I did reduced my cost when I took in $1.65 for covered calls and $0.75 from naked puts with the same expiration and same strike.  That took the price not too far from the current USO price and I’m going to make another run at it when the chart agrees with getting bullish again.

This is how my picks faired over the first quarter:

Here is the ranking of bloggers for our little contest.  I’m sure all of my loyal readers (thanks mom and dad) will agree the rankings do not matter until the year is over or I’m in the lead, which ever works out better for me.  At least I’m up more than 4% YTD in my real trading account where I can adjust for changes in market conditions. 

I’ve included links to the ones who have posted their updates on their respective site.  I’ll have the rest when they come on line – stay tuned and please visit their sites.

1 – IntelligentSpeculator   4.33%
2 – TheFinancialBlogger  -0.94%
3 – FourPillars                 -2.67%
4 – MDJ                           -2.96%
5 – DividendGrowthInvestor  -8.27%
6 – WildInvestor              -8.90%
7 – Wheredoesallmymoneygo -21.77%
8 – ZachStocks               -24.19%
9 – MyTradersJournal      -27.54%

* Funny (or sad?) note – the bottom two in the group are from Atlanta.  The top two are from Montreal.

On March 31st and April 1st I charted my four 2009 stock picks on my chart analysis blog.  Here are the charts for each.

NDAQ Chart

In place of SSO, I’m charted SPY which SSO mimics times two.  The patterns between the two are the same, but on a less exagerated basis on SPY, so I prefer to chart it, but trade SSO.

USO chart

DRYS chart