Friday File: Panic in the time of Purell

by Travis Johnson, Stock Gumshoe | March 6, 2020 10:00 am

More thoughts on how to invest through the coronavirus panic, along with some buys and sells in the Real Money Portfolio this week

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Source URL: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/2020/03/friday-file-panic-in-the-time-of-purell/


74 responses to “Friday File: Panic in the time of Purell”

  1. tanglewood says:

    If Gilead’s drug, remdesivir, proves successful in the treatment of the coronavirus, I can’t see why the company would not be rewarded for all their efforts in research and development. Can you imagine the big sigh of relief the whole world would express if this event were to occur? The stock market would probably go up 20%, but Gilead would be left at the gate with ‘sell the news’ nonsense. The pundits are saying that, since it is a one time payment (not recurring), it would not have much of an effect on Gilead’s bottom line. Where is the incentive for drug company executives to direct their companies to pursue the next antibiotic, the next antiviral? If this continues, we will lose our position as the world leader in drug development.
    There is a pretty good article that explains the possibility that Gilead’s drug might be a preventatiive measure as well.
    https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/03/09/will-gilead-sciences-make-a-fortune-off-its-corona.aspx
    Long Gilead #GILD and Gilead call options at $80.00 expiring 1/15/2021.

  2. Trade Note:

    As you can imagine, the majority of the positions in my Real Money Portfolio have hit stop loss trigger points this week — many of them just today or yesterday in the washout selling that’s going on. I don’t feel compelled to follow every stop loss signal, but I do look at them and follow some of them… and I’m also seeing prices for many of my holdings that make me much more interested in buying than selling right now.

    I’ll have more detail tomorrow in the Friday File, but for now here’s the list of sells and buys I made today…

    Sold: Ulta (ULTA), CoreSite (COR), II-VI (IIVI) on stop losses

    Bought, spread almost equally among them, incremental shares of: Amazon (AMZN), Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-B), Fibra Uno (FUNO11.MX, FBASF), Kennedy-Wilson (KW), Markel (MKL), Medical Properties Trust (MPW), Power REIT (PW),.

    I’ll go into my thinking more tomorrow, but it’s basically “sell low-conviction stocks or valuations I’m unsure of when they hit stop losses, buy compelling valuations” — and there may be more to add to the list of buys and sells tomorrow.

    I am not at all certain of when the coronavirus-driven uncertainty in the markets might come to an end, and I know I’m never going to be able to pinpoint a “bottom,” so these are not big buys and I’m not betting that things will turn around next week… in most cases, these are stocks that I’m likely to keep buying if they drop another 10-20%, and stocks I’m likely to hold for a long time. My cash position remains large, between 10-15% of my equity portfolio, so I’ll continue looking for opportunity.

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