BMC vs. S&P 500: Update

I decided I would update my graph of my total return vs. the S&P 500 today, so here it is. Since I last posted it I am up an additional 25%, however I am now 20% off my highs for the year. We can see it is also no longer a steady uptrend and there have been a couple sharp pull backs, however some of that is a function of not having all the data to smooth it out. Overall I am glad I am higher but I am frustrated that I seem to be stalled from making significant advancement so I'll need to determine why that is. My time in market has not been nearly as good because I essentially made my big move during the rally from March to May and have now been churning around only making another 20%. Obviously keeping things in perspective 20% is a great return for a year by pretty much all standards so to do it in two more months is fine but makes me long for a more consistent trend.

I do have to say that we tried to pull back a little but couldn't do it today and ultimately headed higher and ended near the highs again. The usual things happened again, none of my positions worked. This seems to be a more common occurrence the week of expiration. MFE acted like it had a 1.00 delta with the amount of volatility it lost in addition to the stock being down. AA continued higher again. I sit now with a small loss which is of course irritating because I had a very nice profit three days ago. I'll look to close it out into some weakness tomorrow. My three other short positions however will expire worthless so I guess that is technically a 75% success rate and the profits will easily make up for the loss on Alcoa.

GOOG and IBM reported after the bell, both beating expectations. IBM killed expectations and raised guidance again supporting the idea that this rally could possibly be warranted. IBM could be a good stock to get into on a pull back. The financials struggled today even after JPM beat expectations as well so that was an interesting divergence, but possibly expected after things have run up over 10% in the past week. I am actually surprised GOOG did not do a bit better because of the fact that I would assume more people are staying at home and increasing computer time, not to mention the higher adoption rate of smart phones which all should add to their revenues.

Materials continued their move up and I continue to flagellate myself for exiting my UYM. Interesting was seeing the movement in UNG. Oil was mediocre but UNG moved up 7% after forming a decent bottom over the past week. This could signal the time to buy natural gas equities and get back into CHK and similar companies. The idea behind this is the fact that if these stocks can move up while UNG is hitting new lows then if UNG actually starts to get a bid they should outperform.

Overall it was a disappointing day today as we were flat I was holding up decently but things fell apart as we trended higher and things were disconnected in my account. I look forward to next week when I will have nearly all my capital freed up after expiration and I can look to get into new positions.

Total Return for 2009: 149%