Thruway Portfolio, A lesson In Empirical Intuition...

Sometimes, we come up with strategies too late in The Game (sometimes, they're just bad).  I got a story to tell, here, of one that didn't make it.       

     In October of last year, The Clique had discussed the possibilty of setting up a Port devoted only to stocks of publically traded companies at in an upscale shopping center in our area (Thruway Center in Winston-Salem, NC).

     The proposal never came to fruition because we already had postitions in some of the companies, both as a Group and as indiviuals.  At that time the minimum buyin for a Slot in a Syndicated Trade was $1000 per position (and that was a principle set standard); the obligation seemed too much to tie up in what was, basically, an Investment Experiement.  There was money to be made, elsewhere; deals to be done, etc. etc.
     Last night, the topic came up as a "what if" conversation about the proposal and I volunteered to do the math to see how we'd have faired.  Once I did the math, based on an arbitrary date, I am damn glad we didn't proceed.  Herein are the results:

Thruway has 11 tenants with public offerings.  I picked the Oct. start date from my famous Dart Board.  Price is @ Open.

October 12, 2009 price 

Today, March 26,2010 price 
(Gain/Loss)

Ann Taylor Loft               ANN 

15.87 / 21.11 (+25%)**

Bed, Bath and Beyond   BBBY 

37.33 / 44.00 (+15%)

Borders Group, Inc         BGP 

3.27 / 2.06 (-37%)

Chico's                           CHS  

12.70 / 14.06 (+10%)

FedEx/Kinko's                FDX   

78.40 / 91.35 (+14%)

McDonald's Corp.           MCD

56.93 / 67.26 (+15%)

Rite Aid Corp.                 RAD

1.53 / 1.68 (+9%)
Sprint Store                    S

3.14 / 3.80 (+17%)
Stein Mart, Inc.               SMRT

12.62 / 9.31 (-18%)

Talbot's                           TLB

11.29 / 11.48 (+2%)

Well-Fargo*                    WFC

29.50 / 31.22 (+6%)

4.54% - 6 Month Gain (="nothing")

This result does not reflect on viabllty of the Companies listed above.  We currenty have BBBY-FDX-WFC in Holding Accounts and BGP-SMRT-TLB in Working. 

"Looking at the forest" it seems as though we did the smart thing by not doing a blanket buy.  A couple factors skew the conclusion that the idea was all bad. 
Timing is everything.  The timing was bad for the idea "getting off the ground" at those prices.   We wouldn't have bought in at the static prices above, and we knew the resistance was there.

And we knew this, because...

...we had taken postions on a couple of the stocks over the Spring and Summer, and those stocks were successful.  For example, we had purchased RAD @.86 in April and had dumped it @2.17 in Sept., FDX was bought @52.73 in May and it has been good for profit taking since (closed @91.35, yesterday).  And this is even skewed beacuse I'm serious when I tell you we used a dartboard to pick stocks, last year.  EVERYTHING WENT UP.  October was just a bit too late for a Blanket Strategy for these stocks.  We didn't even take a position in BGP until January 2010.

Thruway Center is an up-scale Shopping Center in Winston-Salem, NC.  The atmoshere, there, makes it more appealing than schlepping to the local mall.  It is owned by Saul Centers, Inc and looking at their run since October [BFS: 32.60 / 40.56 (+20)], maybe we should have looked into who owned the forest! 

Just for the hell of it, I'm going to do follow up in an August Entry.  We'll see.

*Wachovia Branch in Center

**Pecentages rounded.