This surfer/skater clothing company was a purchase back in 2006 at some $35 a share, and then I piled on more as it dropped to $25 and $18.  I sold most when it bounced back up to $38 in 2007, and I just sold the last of it at $20.44.  Mostly a breakeven stock.

I should give them credit for not collapsing during the bad year, like most companies did, but I’m trying to trim my portfolio of companies I don’t really understand, and this is one of them.

I’m sitting on a lot of cash, on the theory that the other shoe of our mortgage crisis hasn’t yet dropped.

Here’s my post from January 2005, when I first bought QLTI:

QLT Phototherapeutics (QLTI) develops eye disease drugs. Down 2% since I bought it. Very high risk, but good upside potential.

I knew nothing about Visudyne, their main drug, or any of the other stuff they were developing.  This was a recommendation from Motley Fool Hidden Gems, which I was experimenting with at the time as a method for finding tiny companies with growth potential.

I originally bought in 10/04 at $16 per share.  Over the next year, as their shares continued to drop, I bought more at $12, and $10, and $8, and $6.  I don’t know why I still liked them.  Looking at their financials, their sales and cash were still going up in 2005, and I didn’t realize that their drug trials were going poorly with new drugs, and that their old Visudyne was about to be superseded by a competitor’s superior product.

Oops.

I sold a fraction of it at $9 in 2006, and bought some more at $5 in 2007.  They started gushing money seriously around then, and I stopped being interested.  Their stock recently bounced back over $5/share, so I dumped the rest of it.  Their financials look less miserable than they did over the last couple of years, but still seem poor.  I’m glad to be rid of this embarrassment.

Over the years, I piled $8336 into this company, and took $4109 out, losing more than half.  Could be worse, I guess, especially for a stock I categorized as “very high risk” when I bought it.  My memory is fuzzy, but I’m guessing the upside potential was if their new drugs had panned out.  They didn’t.  If they had, it’s easy to imagine that this might have been highly profitable.

The worst thing is that this so-called investment was in Mary’s IRA account, so I blew her retirement money. And there’s not even any tax benefit for the loss.  Poo.

I’ve been buying and selling Apple stock since the late 80s, and it’s been good to me.

It feels like almost the only company I’ve purchased in the last couple of years — I bought 50 shares in February 2008 at $121, then it went up (but not quite to my sell price) and then back down again, and I bought another 50 shares at $84.  I sold today at $221.

My logic is that the current stock price already has the iPad priced in as a huge success.  Everybody’s saying they’ll sell maybe 5 million iPads this year, and 10 million next.   And it’s possible.  Apple executes well, and has long gotten over the initial market hump with hype alone.

But it’s also possible this won’t be a giant hit.  It might only be a moderate success, like the iPod Touch, or something of a dud, like the AppleTV.  I’ll leave out the possibility of an embarrassing failure.  But it is a possibility.

Also, Jim Cramer was on TV pushing Apple, always a sign that a stock has peaked.

I like stocks that have a good chance of doubling.  Apple’s great, and will grow for years, but my hunch is that there’s a good chance the stock will drop below $200 before it hits $400.

I originally bought 40 shares of this company, which makes medical robots, back in November 2006 for $97.21.  I sold half In April 2008 at $359.99, and I bought them back six months later at $178.40.  Now I’m dumping all 40 shares at $321.55 — not as good a price as my first dump, but whatever. (We could’ve bought this company for $85 a share back in March 2009, lest you think I have a clue.)

I still like this company.  Revenue growth is still something like 25%, and income 40%, and in this crappy economy.  Still, even with their strong profits and growth, the growth seems to be slowing, and it’s difficult to price this stock as worth much more than $160.  And when a stock sells for double what I think it’s worth, it’s probably time to find something cheaper.

I’ll buy it again if it drops below $200.

So my Wii repair is $75, +$10 shipping, + $8.29 salex tax?!  There’s no sales tax on repairs.  There’s no sales tax on shipping.  And sales tax, outrageously high as it is (8.75% in CA?) isn’t that high (11%).  I’m feeling even more ripped off.

So we’ve been having a great time rocking out with The Beatles on the Wii for a couple of months, but my Wii stopped reading discs.

I’ve always hated CD-based games.  The CDs tend to get scratched over the years (especially if strangers and kids handle them), and they become unreadable, and the players themselves tend to fail after 2-3 years, too.  My 20 year old Super Nintendo still works fine, as do 100% of its carts.  The same could not be said for either of my Gamecubes, my XBox, or my PS2.

Knowing the high failure rate of videogame systems, I actually got the extended warranty on the Wii.  About six months later, sure enough, it failed, and it was nice to just bring it to Best Buy and swap it out.  Those extended warranty things are almost always a giant ripoff, but not this time.

So now it failed again, and it’s still under warranty.  Hooray!  But it turns out that the downloadable content — like all the Beatles songs I paid extra for — is nontransferable to my replacement Wii.  Lame!  If I do the “free” replacement, I have to re-buy all my software?  Yikes!  So I’m going to end up paying $93.29 to repair my old Wii, just so I can keep my data?

Makes me wish I’d just pirated it.

I paid my property taxes today.  (About $2000.)  There was an option to pay it online.  Convenient!

Alas, after going through all the steps (but before actually paying), they note that there will be a “convenience fee” of $56.  They must think licking a stamp is pretty darned inconvenient.  I aborted and paid the $0.44.

Select Comfort is a mattress company that I originally bought on the recommendation of the Motley Fool Hidden Gems.  I bought them in 2004 at $15/share, then sold almost all of it off in 2005 at around $30/share.  It peaked at around $41 in March 2006, then plummeted last year to a price that looked kind of oversold.  I bought 400 shares at $3.51 in April 2008, then 800 more at $2.21 in June 2008.  They bottomed out at $1.16 in July.

Their revenue seems to be decreasing, and it’s been a long time since they made a profit, and their balance sheet looks dismal, so I’m very glad to be able to get out of this one with a profit.  (I sold on Monday for $5.49 — it’s now over $6, so my timing wasn’t great.)

It’s always easy to play the market in the past.  I wish I’d put all of my money into this company in July, and sold today for 600% in a year.  Of course, I would’ve been nervous all year, even if I’d timed it perfectly.

Insurocorp!

The biggest danger to a free market is monopolies.  In most cases, when there are at least six competitors for some business, they’re each forced to provide excellent services at low prices, and still eke out a reasonable profit.  However, left to their own devices, they’ll buy each other until there are only a couple, and then collude to provide barely adequate services at high prices, and eke out a gigantic profit.

Ironically, a free market requires considerable regulation to keep it free.

Gay marriage opponents say that gay marriage would hurt the economy by creating new beneficiary spouses, presumably getting unfair health insurance.

It’s hard for me to get excited about stopping anybody from getting health insurance.

Supporters say that if gay marriage were legalized, it would add $16 billion to the economy by increasing the demand for cakes and invitations.

If everybody went out and bashed in their windshield with a sledgehammer, it would add $60 billion to the economy.  Hooray.

I’m all for gay marriage (or, alternately, for treating straight marriage as a civil union in the eyes of the government), but it’s really not an economics issue.