Rules of the Road

I try to run every portfolio on JubakPicks.com so that you know what I’m doing when I’m doing it. So, for example, every buy and sell I make for  these online portfolios is announced first in my blog and in the recent Buy & Sell section of that page. In calculating my portfolio returns I always use the end of the day price for the day when I announced the trade.

Beyond that general principle here are some explicit promises to you from me.

I eat my own cooking. Well, not always. But often. That is, I invest my own money in many of these picks. Sometimes a pick doesn’t fit my personal asset allocation plan or my own investment time horizon and then I won’t buy that recommendation. But much of the time, for better or worse, we’re investing in many of these positions together.

I don’t buy or sell ahead of readers. I don’t buy shares in a stock before I write about it, and I don’t sell shares before I post a sell in one of my columns. I’m not looking for a short-term profit at your expense.

My three-day rule. The requirement for any portfolio on JubakPicks.com is that I don’t buy or sell a stock until three days have passed since I posted the blog entry that contained the recommendation for that particular buy or sell.

I’ll disclose an existing position. Sometimes, I do wind up recommending a stock that I’ve owned for a while. I’ll always note that in the column. Then, I’ll follow the usual rule: no selling until three days have passed since the blog entry was published.

I don’t short stocks. Ever. There’s nothing wrong with shorting a stock, but being successful at shorting is an art all its own—and one that I don’t think I’ve mastered. In addition, shorting is a highly emotional issue for many investors and I get more than enough grief as it is, thank you very much, when a recommendation goes bad.

Disclosure. At the end of every blog entry, you’ll find a complete disclosure listing the names of every stock I own that I’ve mentioned in that particular post.