Pettit Funds

   The good news: I have three picks for you today.

   The bad news: I’m not quite as confident of these picks as I have been in the past.  The reason is that I am using a slightly different “screen” to filter out my best picks.  You may say, “But if it wasn’t broke, why did you fix it?”, and I agree–problem is, my screener is broke.  More on that in a minute.

First the picks, in no particular order: Alliance Resources Partners LP (ARLP), a coal company; Teck Cominco Ltd (TCK), a big Canadian metals mining company; and FirstService Corp. (FSRV), a property management company.   I’m going to take smaller positions in all three rather than a larger position in any one of them–again, because of some loss of confidence in my whole “screening” situation.  

Here’s the story on that:

Back in the Fall of 2000, I had read some book on computer-aided investing and had zeroed in on a program called ”Telescan”, now defunct, and which had ended up somehow putting its database and screening process in the hands of a website called WallStreetCity. I went there and they had a 90-day free trial, so I signed up and experimented with their screener.   I selected 25 stocks on paper and left them alone. (more…)