Last week’s list of UP signals that I was optimistic about really stunk. I guess it shows how tough this market is getting for the longs but it is more than a bit frustrating for me to underperform the S&P over any time period. Here is a summary of the performance of last week’s list as well as the two prior ones I put up. All figures are through yesterday’s close (11/28/06) and based upon an equal-weighted portfolio of buy-and-hold positions.

11/21/06 27% winners out of 108 signals with a portfolio loss of 1.55% vs. S&P 500 loss of 0.98%

11/07/06 62% winners out of 201 signals with a portfolio gain of 1.90% vs. S&P 500 gain of 0.51%

10/24/06 69% winners out of 178 signals with a portfolio gain of 5.35% vs. S&P 500 gain of 0.70%

Transparency is very important to me so you will always get a blunt assessment of my performance on this site. At times, it may seem that I am too proud of myself and at other times, it may seem like I am too tough on myself.  To me, it’s all the same so I leave it up to you to interpret.  Regardless, the older lists did better than the las week’s list and significantly outperformed the S&P 500. That was then (good) and this is now (bad). While it is important to give positions time to turn into winners, it is critical that you don’t tolerate ones that may never make it. I took a look at the charts from last week’s list and still feel confident in most of them, but my patience is already thin. Yesterday I put up a smaller list of 41 stocks and I will update that performance in a week. Hopefully by then, the 11/21/06 list will be in the black.