Help me, I am making good short term money, it must be time to sell ?

The stockmarket has been like an 18 year old on viagra over the last few weeks, but it can present a dilemna over whether to sell on your short term gains or hold for the bigger gains to follow over the years. Lets see if this piece can help you out.

I made some share purchases last Wednesday, The Warehouse Group [WHS.NZ] and Mainfreight Ltd [MFT.NZ] and two on July 6, Auckland International Airport [AIA.NZ] and Michael Hill International [MHI.NZ]

I also participated in 3 capital raisings (1 2 3) covering off Sky City Entertainment Group[SKC.NZ], Freightways Ltd [FRE.NZ] and Fletcher Building [FBU.NZ] which gave me extra shares mid June to add to the Share Investor Portfolio.

I have done particularly well with short term gains in all of these purchases as the local sharemarket has had a lazarous type recovery over the last few weeks.

At close of market today here have been my returns for these purchases over the last 4-6 weeks.


1. The Warehouse Group $1600.00 - 6.2%

2. Mainfreight Ltd $487.50 - 6.1%

3. Auckland Airport $440.00 - 14%

4. Sky City $1200.00 - 24%

5. Freightways $310.32 - 29%

6. Fletcher Building $225.66 - 37%

7. Michael Hill $350.00 - 8.5%


By any stretch of the imagination a $4613.48 or a 17.82 % average return for the last 6 weeks is pretty good, especially the $2000 plus return in the last week for my two recent purchases.

So why don't I sell?

Well, I think I can make more in the long term by simply holding good companies and collecting the dividends and tax credits along the way. One comment to a recent post reckons my buy and hold strategy is flawed and he can make more money getting in and out of shares quickly.

That maybe right, in fact I may have done it once or twice myself in my investing career, but if you do it intentionally you open yourself up to getting your trading profits taxed and I don't want to enter that level of investing, not just now anyway.

As you will see in my 10 editions of the Long VS Short series, the long term wins in the return stakes and it might also be worth noting that the resurgence of the market has also increased the value of the long-term Share Investor Portfolio by more than $40000.00 in less than a month.

But anything can happen when Mr Market has his crazy mood swings and the portfolio could lose all that in the next few weeks or few days for that matter.

Long vs Short Series

Fletcher Building Ltd
Ryman Healthcare Ltd
Michael Hill International
Auckland International Airport
Freightways Ltd
Pumpkin Patch Ltd
Fisher & Paykel Healthcare
Mainfreight Ltd
The Warehouse Group
Sky City Entertainment


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c Share Investor 2009

Long VS Short: Fletcher Building Ltd

In this tenth installment of the Long vs Short series I am once again going to take look at the chart comparisons for a stock from the Share Investor Portfolio and compare the 10 year return (above chart) to the turmoil of the last year with a 1 year return chart (large chart at bottom of post).

In this series I want to show the merits of investing, using charts, for the long-term vs short term gains or losses. I will use the longest available data to me for the long-term view (10 years )and will make a comparison against the NZX50.

In this installment of Long vs Short I will look at Fletcher Building Ltd [FBU.NZ].

I currently hold 1114 Fletcher Building shares in the Share Investor Portfolio, the bulk of which I have owned since November 2006. (see small chart below for detail)

The company has been a very good performer with great returns and is still going OK under current tough economic conditions.

Symbol	Price	Value	Earned
FBU.NZ	$7.290	$8087.64	$-615.69
You own 1114 [FBU.NZ] shares purchased at $7.81 [$8703.33]

In my 2.5 years of owning this share my return has been a loss of just over 7 %. This includes dividends and tax credits.(see small chart above)

If I had bought this share just a year ago (see large chart at bottom) my return would have been a 34% loss, with a loss of 50% as recent as March 2009.

Now for the real point of this comparison, lets look at the return for Fletcher Building shareholders who have held the stock for 10 years. (see large chart above)

From a high of a 450% return at the end of 2007, the 10 year return as of writing is still around 200%. All those dividends plus tax credits and time has given the long termers another win.

This series has yet to return a positive for short term investors.



Disc I own a small FBU holding in the Share Investor Portfolio


Fletcher Building @ Share Investor

Fletcher Building's Commercial arm keeps their head above the tunnel
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Discuss this Stock @ Share Investor Forum


Long vs Short Series

Ryman Healthcare Ltd
Michael Hill International
Auckland International Airport
Freightways Ltd
Pumpkin Patch Ltd
Fisher & Paykel Healthcare
Mainfreight Ltd
The Warehouse Group
Sky City Entertainment




c Share Investor 2009

Beam me up Davy

I think Contact Energy directors have been watching too much moon landing coverage over the last week because its seems that a number of them may have disappeared up their own planet of Uranus.

Clearly some live in a parallel universe when they can cost their company nearly 40000 customers in just under a year by making a public exhibition of himself by raising electricity prices, granting directors big bonuses and having an expensive boozy lunch on the company in October last year and then expected to be rewarded for it.

David Baldwin, managing director and CEO of Contact Energy Ltd [CEN.NZ] yesterday applied for a waiver from the NZSX to get "financial assistance", an interest free loan from Contact Energy shareholders, so he can participate in the company's Long Term Incentive plan (LTI).

Boy those Contact shareholders sure are generous!

Fair enough, you deserve the free shares for doing a good job, but Baldwin has cost the company 10s of millions in lost revenue over the last year and since he has become the MD this year he becomes ineligible to participate but has decided in his infinite wisdom that he will apply to his mates at the NZX to waive this rule that allows him to participate.

And guess what, the waiver was granted just 24 hrs latter.

Beam me up Scotty, I wanna be where Dave lives, 'cause it don't work that way down here on earth.


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Auckland Airport Sale: Ready to Fly

This blog was visited by a large number of Googlers yesterday. They were searching for Auckland International Airport [AIA] information.

Those searches were principally related to questions about the possibility of its sale, so I thought I would write something opinionated on just that subject.

This interest would have been sparked by the National Government's relaxing of rules and legislation surrounding the overseas ownership and purchase of New Zealand assets announced by them today.

I wrote back in February that we were likely to see just this very scenario occur:

With the new National Government in place and the current relaxing of the rules around the RMA, the major planning law that has stopped economic development of New Zealand, we could expect to see developments in other areas of business in regards to relaxing laws and legislation to allow business to flow quicker and therefore more efficiently and more profitably.

Small parts of overseas investment criteria have been relaxed immediately but there will be a review of the Overseas Investment Act with a view to relax current complications and confusion.

The 3 main points of the act that will be looked at latter in the year that are pertinent to any possible bid for Auckland Airport are:

1. the thresholds determining which land and business investments are screened are set at the right level -- so only genuinely sensitive assets are captured.

2. Providing greater certainty for investors, by removing the ability to substantially change overseas investment rules during applications.

3. Simplifying the screening of investments in sensitive land, while ensuring that overseas investors are subject to a higher standard than domestic investors.

The airport sale was stymied by the previous Labour Administration by a law that was expressly passed for the AIA bid by DAE and the Canadian Teacher's Pension fund as well as confusion brought by the 3 parts of the act noted above.

With an overhaul of this act, relaxation of other overseas investment rules and a business friendly shake-up of Auckland Council's that hold airport shares, Auckland Airport will soon be in play.

Disclosure I own AIA shares in the Share Investor Portfolio


Auckland International Airport @ Share Investor Blog

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c Share Investor 2009