Dr. Strangelove himself couldn’t have contrived a more diabolical plot than my tango with ATP Oil and Gas (ATPG).
Way back in September (Was it that long ago?) I ran across an article touting ATPG as a potential 200% gainer. I have always been partial to oil and gas companies — good liquid assets you know. So, I took a gamble, buying shares at 22. However, I was foolish enough to not use a stop-loss. By October 10 my ATPG was down 40%.
Wow, I thought, surely now this has to be an outstanding value! Obviously Mr. Market is making a big mistake here and things will only improve. A little mental math now showed a potential 400% gain, Oh Boy! Other investors will soon become as enlightened as I am, and we will all be rich. So I did it, I bought more. What do they call that? “doubling down” or is it “dumbing down”? You see, I hadn’t read about that “falling knife” stuff yet.
On November 20, minus several fingers, I was mournfully watching my ATPG ticking south of 4, an 82% loss in little over a month, bleep bleep bleep! In my darker moments I ‘m thinking of flying to New York to look for the guy who wrote the original article. Rather difficult, however, as I: couldn’t remember his name, couldn’t find the article and now didn’t have the money for a plane ticket - even if I sold my ATPG.
Misery always love company so I decided the check ATPG’s message board on Yahoo Finance. Yep, my misery found plenty of company. The general consensus was that the dropping price had something to do with hedge fund selling. Perhaps I could out wait those hedge funds fellows. Sure enough, on November 26, things got much better, ATPG was up 50 % to over 7. I was ecstatic, never mind the fact that I was still down 70% from the original purchase. Then another drop. On December 9, more signs of life, up 20%, December 10 up 12% more.
Lessons learned? Like the naive investor I was, I didn’t use a stop-loss so had a wild ride down, hoping and wishing for recovery. I am now wiser. I learned that “hoping and wishing” doesn’t work in markets, neither does believing everything you read. Maybe, though, patience does.
From this point forward, my plan is clear. I am going to buy one of those ultra short ETFs and the next time the market plunges sell and plow all the proceeds into more ATPG Maybe, just maybe, all my money and then some will come back when all Paulson’s dollars find a home in real assets. With the money the government is pumping into the economy we should soon have hyper-inflation and all “real” assets such as oil (and ATPG) will sky rocket. Seriously, I really do plan on doing this, and then I will finally love ATPG
Maybe next I should write about how one can make 200% on ATPG. It gets even better, though. Here is an article claiming ATPG may have more than $15 billion oil and gas reserves and could be a takeover target for Exxon. December 9’s market cap is $255 million. So, you see, I really do love ATPG. Thank you Dr. Strangelove! … err, I mean Mr. Paulson!
Disclosure: Long ATPG
Way back in September (Was it that long ago?) I ran across an article touting ATPG as a potential 200% gainer. I have always been partial to oil and gas companies — good liquid assets you know. So, I took a gamble, buying shares at 22. However, I was foolish enough to not use a stop-loss. By October 10 my ATPG was down 40%.
Wow, I thought, surely now this has to be an outstanding value! Obviously Mr. Market is making a big mistake here and things will only improve. A little mental math now showed a potential 400% gain, Oh Boy! Other investors will soon become as enlightened as I am, and we will all be rich. So I did it, I bought more. What do they call that? “doubling down” or is it “dumbing down”? You see, I hadn’t read about that “falling knife” stuff yet.
On November 20, minus several fingers, I was mournfully watching my ATPG ticking south of 4, an 82% loss in little over a month, bleep bleep bleep! In my darker moments I ‘m thinking of flying to New York to look for the guy who wrote the original article. Rather difficult, however, as I: couldn’t remember his name, couldn’t find the article and now didn’t have the money for a plane ticket - even if I sold my ATPG.
Misery always love company so I decided the check ATPG’s message board on Yahoo Finance. Yep, my misery found plenty of company. The general consensus was that the dropping price had something to do with hedge fund selling. Perhaps I could out wait those hedge funds fellows. Sure enough, on November 26, things got much better, ATPG was up 50 % to over 7. I was ecstatic, never mind the fact that I was still down 70% from the original purchase. Then another drop. On December 9, more signs of life, up 20%, December 10 up 12% more.
Lessons learned? Like the naive investor I was, I didn’t use a stop-loss so had a wild ride down, hoping and wishing for recovery. I am now wiser. I learned that “hoping and wishing” doesn’t work in markets, neither does believing everything you read. Maybe, though, patience does.
From this point forward, my plan is clear. I am going to buy one of those ultra short ETFs and the next time the market plunges sell and plow all the proceeds into more ATPG Maybe, just maybe, all my money and then some will come back when all Paulson’s dollars find a home in real assets. With the money the government is pumping into the economy we should soon have hyper-inflation and all “real” assets such as oil (and ATPG) will sky rocket. Seriously, I really do plan on doing this, and then I will finally love ATPG
Maybe next I should write about how one can make 200% on ATPG. It gets even better, though. Here is an article claiming ATPG may have more than $15 billion oil and gas reserves and could be a takeover target for Exxon. December 9’s market cap is $255 million. So, you see, I really do love ATPG. Thank you Dr. Strangelove! … err, I mean Mr. Paulson!
Disclosure: Long ATPG
Posts
This was the first article I had published on SeekingAlpha (www.seekingalpha.com)
ReplyDelete