Telecom Tales - Part 2

Almost 6 months ago in April, I was contemplating contemplating the purchase of three telecom stocks; Telecomunicacoes de Sao Paulo (TSP), Telecommunications  Systems (TSYS) and Nokia (NOK).  I eventually bought into all three stocks.  In each case, I suffered months in the red, but I'm happy to say that I'm now above water with all three.

I found Telecomunicacoes de Sao Paulo to be the least comfortable holding of the three.  I held a standard size lot, but got out of this position as soon as I was able to show a reasonable 6.5% profit in June.  I did not collect the annual dividend and did not wish to hold long enough to do so.

At the time of my initial writing, I had not bought in on Nokia, but the price continued to drop and I soon found the temptation too great.  I bought in with a half sized lot in May, then watch it drop some more and bought in with another half in June.  Although the price dropped even further, I resisted the urge to throw good money after bad. After holding until October, I was finally able to discard for a tidy 12% gain.  As with TSP, I had no desire to hold long enough to collect the annual dividend.

Telecommunications Systems has proven to be the scariest ride of all.  I have bought in with a total of eight lots of increasing size to date.  I was significantly underwater with these until earlier this week despite an absence of news that should justify the continued low price.  On Wednesday and Friday, there were announcements of military contracts that have significantly buoyed the stock price and have left me with a current 16% unrealized gain.  But I still am significantly below my initial buy-in price, so I feel that there is still a lot of upside to this holding.  So I'm now faced with the best strategy for vacating my position.  The next quarterly report is at the end of October, so I'd like to close out before then....but then again, I don't want to leave money on the table if it can be helped. 

So the TSYS story and the overall success of my telecom ventures remains undetermined at this time.