Buy & Sell

Sold Ford (F) down to just 100 shares. Up 40% on the ones I sold.

Bought some Sara Lee (SLE) @ 9.94. Solid, dividend food stock (4.49% yield) with a trailing Price/Earnings ratio of 18.99 (hardly frothy). I like this for $12-$14 in a few years.

Writing Puts

I know, I know. Before the plunge. But I like the prices I got:

Yumana Gold (AUY) Oct 9 Put @ 0.65
Coca-Cola (KO) Nov 45 Put @ .78
Wal-Mart (WMT) Dec 47.5 Put @ 1

More yield

Bought Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) 2042 (yes 2042) 8.25% bonds in my IRA. If you can beat that yield with the explicit government guarantee, be my guest.

Bought 2012 1.7% US Treasury Bonds in another IRA.

Buying yield

Bought some ultra-safe MSFT bonds @ 2.95% and some EXELEON @ 3.45%. Zero chance of default on MSFT, and in the utility space, recoveries are high in any potential bankruptcy (which I compute at nearly a 0.02% chance of occuring). I hedged my inflation/interest rate risk using LINE, a great master limited oil partnership.

Closing some "Other Picks"

UNP - recommended buy on 11-26-08 for $50.74, recommended sell today @ $61.51 for a $10.77 profit or 21.2% (still own it in one my accounts, though)
EP - recommended buy on 1-3-09 for $8.31, recommended sell today @ $9.97 for a $1.66 profit or 19.9% (no ownership now)
DXO - recommended buy on 1-3-09 for $3.13, recommended sell today @ $4.88 for a $1.75 profit or 55.9% (no ownership now)
DE - recommended buy on 1-3-09 at $41.61, recommended sell today @ $45.63 for a $4.02 gain or 9.6% profit (no ownership now)

Coca-Cola

Bought a couple hundred Coke (KO) shares today @ 47.89. It's only 15% above its 5 year low, has a 3.5% dividend yield and is depression "safe".

Rotated out of CHK and into PG

Rotated out of CHK (Chesepeake Energy - natural gas producer) for a 44% profit and into Procter & Gamble (PG) at $52.10. Still very bearish at these levels, but PG is near its 5-year low so it seemed like the risk/reward was good.