October Performance

October was certainly a wild month and I didn’t expect the market to take off like this at month end. This month turned out well as several of my large holdings contributed positively to my performance. VISA (Ticker: V), MasterCard (Ticker: MA), Apple (Ticker: AAPL) and Constellation Brands (Ticker: STZ) moved up nicely on positive earnings. I also made a little bit in trading some merger arb plays such as Covidien (Ticker: COV), Multi Media Games (Ticker: MGAM) and Montage Technology (Ticker: MONT). The merger arb plays I am playing right now are Safeway (Ticker: SWY) (sold Puts), Lorillard (Ticker: LO) (long common) and Bally Technologies (Ticker: BYI) (long common).

This has been a difficult year to generate positive returns. I’ve had several merger arb / special situation plays that didn’t work out, but fortunately the damage was not severe as I positioned these holdings to a smaller position as compared to the previous years where I would have gone in big. I’ve learned my lesson where one or two blowups can ruin your year.

Performance Year to Date = +21.77% with the running monthly returns as follows:

January -0.67%
February +6.50%
March -2.69%
April -1.51%
May +7.30%
June +2.59%
July -1.46%
August +4.57%
September +2.02%
October + 5.12%