Earlier today I sold a portion of my Copart (CPRT) stock after it hit my first assigned appreciation target--that is it had increased in price to a 30% appreciation over my purchase cost. With that event, I sold 1/7th of my holding (and
wrote about it on my blog as well). My own portfolio management strategy depends on the performance of my own stocks to give me the 'signals' to be either buying (on good news events like sales on appreciation) or 'sitting on my hands' which happened yesterday on a bad news event like a sale on a decrease in the stock price as I experienced with my ResMed holding.
The other part of my portfolio management strategy involves dealing with sales at the extremes of my portfolio size. For me, my minimum number of holdings is five and my maximum is twenty. I try to 'float' my portfolio between these two extremes based on the activity of my own stocks. In this case, sitting at five positions, my minimum, the sale of a portion of Copart (CPRT) gave me a signal or 'permission slip' as I sometimes write, to be looking for a new stock to buy. And thus, as I have written before, with that nickel burning a hole in my pocket, I set out to find a new stock to purchase.
Checking the list of top % gainers on the NYSE earlier today, I saw that Visa (V) had made the list. However, the other stocks moved higher and V sold off a bit, so by the end of the day it was no longer on the top % gainers. However, by that time I had already purchased 70 shares at $85.92 for my trading account. Visa (V) closed at $85.25 up $3.33 or 4.06% on the day.
Let's take a closer look at this stock and I will try to explain why I purchased shares and why
VISA (V) IS RATED A BUY
First of all, according to the Yahoo "Profile" on Visa (V), the company
"...through its subsidiaries, operates retail electronic payments network worldwide.
