02 April 2012

My Cunning Plan Will Take Longer Than I Thought


I could just as easily have titled this week's post as My Cunning Plan Has Failed, but it hasn't failed permanently.  It's just failed for now

The Plan was to buy MIND CTI Ltd (hereafter referred to as MNDO) at a low price in September of 2011 and sell my shares in March or April for roughly twice the purchase price.  A simple, two-part plan.

Part 1 went swimmingly.  I bought 1,600 shares of MNDO at $1.85 a share in September.  Yay.

Part 2 never quite coalesced.  The stock didn't peak in March and didn't double this year to $3.70 a share.  It did, however, peak in February and increase by nearly 50% to $2.76 a share.  Had I sold at that time then my cunning plan would have been a success.  Not the success that I had hoped, but a significant success nonetheless.

But I wasn't ready to sell in February.  I missed the peak, just barely.  The day it peaked I did reduce the price of my sell order to $2.78 a share, but the stock never went to $2.78 a share.  Not this year anyway.

But there's always next year.  That's what I'm telling myself, anyway.  My revised cunning plan is that I don't have to buy shares in MNDO in September because I already own shares.  In fact I now own 1,749 shares in MNDO thanks to the magic of dividend reinvestment.  MNDO paid its dividend last week, and 149 additional shares were purchased for me without me spending an extra dime.

My sell order is in.  I'll be selling my 1,749 shares for $2.75 a share.  I'll have to renew that sell order a few times between now and March of 2013, and somewhere in there I may have reason to increase or decrease the price per share.  But if something unexpected happens and the stock price shoots up sufficiently between now and next year then the sale should go through automatically at $2.75 a share.

And my cunning plan will succeed.  It will just take longer than I originally thought.

Meanwhile I will have the distinct displeasure of staring at another item in my portfolio that is worth less than I paid for it.  As of this writing my shares in MNDO are worth $1.81 each. 

Bugger.

But at least I still have a cunning plan.