Patience Is A Virtue - Sitting Tight

I have essentially been sitting tight on my positions (with the exception of being stopped out of my high momo shorts earlier this year) for the better part of a year. If I had held my high momo shorts I would have made a killing (30%-40% returns). I don't feel bad about that because you have to enact a limit loss discipline in the short realm. Fortunately, I didn't panic when the market took its little dive in February. The main reason was that I didn't think my holdings warranted being sold. I put a long mega-cap tech position on last year based on what I considered to be a significant undervaluation for the space (relative to the high growth momos and the rest of the market). That thesis has played out over the period and I expect it to continue to play out (which is likely to provide an upward bias to the indices). In fact, many of those names (INTC, QCOM, MSFT, ORCL, GOOG, AAPL, EMC, CSCO) still look very attractive on a valuation & yield basis relative to alternative investments. I have price targets set for each name and will begin reducing my exposure as those targets get hit. INTC = $36-$38, QCOM = $90-$100, MSFT = $45-$48, ORCL = $48-$52, GOOG = $620-$650, AAPL = $120-$130, EMC = $34-$36, CSCO = $34-$36. I also have a kind of net-net barbell on with KLIC, QLGC, GENC, TST & WSTL. I'm eyeing RELL but expect to pick it up when the market pulls back. I have a stodgy contrarian core with BP, RDSA, CHL, SYT, BEN and JPM, and two contrarian plays in BBRY and SGI and a speculator in ARO.

I think patience is the most important part of investing. At least it is for me. I feel that it is my weakness - my achilles heel. I cannot count the number of times I was in the right position, but failed to hold, either through lack of conviction or pulling the trigger too quick or reacting to macro events. With the market continuing to march higher, I am feeling pressure to take profits and put some money in the bank, even as my thesis hasn't played out. And when those names reach their target levels there is a good chance I'll re-evaluate and decide they are still the best option from a value, yield and alternative valuation perspective. In which case, I may trade around those positions. Right now, I am hitting my one year holding period and so the temptation to lock in long term gains is definitely there.