Well, look whose portfolio is at all time highs again.  Not even five days after detecting the presence of European invaders and promptly rallying to lay siege to their forces, but I’m sitting atop a glorious horde of plunder, while drinking malt beer and yelling at nearby miscreants.

Truth be told, I’m almost getting tired of the market variance and extremities.  There was a time, as unfathomable as this may sound, when you could at most expect stock valuations to fluctuate by a quarter of a point.  Large swings of two or three percent took diligence and skill to weed out, while earnings reports were carefully balanced against future expectations.

Ah, the grandiose and delicate memories of yester years long past.

Now, you’re almost lucky if your stocks hold within a 10% range.  It’s absurd.  One day, stocks will have to settle down again and day traders will surely need to chill the fuck out.

Until then, however, you need to play the game, if you have any aspirations not to get buried beneath the manipulations of our grimy regulators as they try and cover their misdeeds.

Since going “stupid long”, in a temperamental response to my month long affair with being short, I’ve seen my stakes in GKK, NM, MGM, ASR, and (most importantly) TLP rise up remarkably.  However, since going against my reservations and using large margin to maintain what was only a slightly short bias, covering left me with a very large balance (once again) in borrowed money.  That money is mostly allocated to stocks which I really don’t feel like selling at the moment, since they all seem to be on a run.

However, acknowledging that I need to stay sensible, I took some steps today to rein things in.

I sold half of my NM position, one of my lower dividend stocks, at $7.30 a share, from a $6.39 basis.  A nice gain of just more than 14%, and I’m going to hold the other half indefinitely, since I like the prospects of this Greek shipping company.

I shorted BHI at $54.15, just to ease up my beta posturing a little.  While this technically adds to my margin, I’m fine with it, given the performance of the rest of my fund.  Keep in the back of your mind, if I’m right about Europe’s role in our markets, then a successful outcome to the Greek crisis (or subsequently any other European country) should cause U.S. markets to correct downward.

I want to eliminate my margin, as I’ve been saying for a couple of months now.  However, my time line has been pushed back some, because of a couple of considerations.  Firstly, I thought the Fed would have raised rates by now (more than the pathetic .75% they pushed past).  That they would attempt such an act of impotency when they did tells me the Federal Reserve is stuck between two oncoming forces.  The first is the abysmal debt loads of the institutions they are most concerned with protecting.  The second is the inevitable inflation which recent metrics has suddenly renewed concern about.

Yet, the Fed is an institution which does not like to make tough choices.  I think, stuck between these two locomotive forces, they will opt to lie down on the tracks, grab their ankles, and roll over.  Look for rates to be left where they are through the summer, until oil prices touch $100 and talks renew of replacing the dollar on crude future exchanges, until the most basic of food commodities sees double of where they are today, or until all concerns about foreign currencies abate.

You see, at this point, I think the Fed is even counting on a collapse of the Euro to assist in shoring up the dollar and keep inflation in check.  Don’t put it past the wily folks at our local, unconstitutional, central banking operation.

Hence, I shall hold the course with my positions, which are even now barreling down on any who oppose them.  Reflect, however, that, in the event of a rate hike, my current interest rate has nearly five hundred points of play before my brokerage will feel definitively compelled to raise my margin rates.  On top of that, I have an addition two hundred average points, or so, before the dividends of my stocks fail to pay for the interest of my debts.

Seven hundred points of play.  That is the reality around which I’m basing my present decisions.  That should provide more than enough time to let me restructure my portfolio, should the need arise.

I’m aiming to extinguish all debt by the end of June, and now will look to hold eight names: GKK, MO, NM, MGM, NRP, ASR, VZ, and TLP.  As it stands, my largest position is TLP, followed by a uniform amount of NM, MO, MGM, NRP, ASR, and VZ.  My smallest position is GKK, but in the event of a correction in the name, it could easily catch the rest of my portfolio.  God willing, their bullshit CDO portfolio will play along and not drag one fifth of Gramercy’s operations to hell.

To close, dear friends, many weeks ago I told you of a company named TLP, which I began acquiring at roughly $27 a share.  Then with an 8%+ dividend, I told you that this company is worth $22 a share, has great earnings, and is unprecedentedly cheap.  I told of its non-existent debt, favorable prospects, and relatively unknown status that comes as privilege to the small capital company that it is.

Today, this companies stock rests above $31 a share, meaning even the last round of stock I purchased last week at $29.44 is up already more than 6%.  Altogether, this position, one of my largest, is well worth your time.  If it interests you, make sure you get in soon, because I expect the days of 8% yield and $2 million average daily volume to soon be long past.

This train(s, since that’s their main line of business) is leaving the station.