From time to time I will get emails from folks asking if I have any stock tips. I rarely respond with actual ticker symbols as I hate the thought of sharing information with somebody and then seeing lose money if the stock did not do what I thought it would.

Hindsight is 20-20 with stock investing and when you provide a good tip, you are cheered. Provide a bad tip and you are skewered. Just the nature of the business.

I do come across tips from friends, colleagues, and business associates from time to time. I call it networking and some call it something else, but in the end information is key to reducing the risk when investing. With the Internet a lot of information is available, but that poses risks too as the time to make decisions based on information has been reduced to hours, and in some cases minutes.

There have been a few stocks I have recommended on the boards in the past. All but one jumped 25% to 400% within a week to a month. The problem is that the time to buy was limited, and many who bought the next day bought at prices whereby the profit was negligible or worse, negative as the stock levelled off to level lower than their purchase price.

So even though the initial tip was good, the timing was critical to making money or losing money.

The first four months of 2009 have been the most enjoyable in my investing career, with the exception of September 2007 and the Noront takeoff. While everybody was predicting the end of the world, I kept a smile on my face and thought of the sale that was going on. Yes, I lost a lot of money in equity between September and November 2008, just like everybody else. But unlike those who bailed on the advice of the doom and gloomers like the Mad Money Kramer guy and every CNN analyst, I continued to monitor my investments closer than ever. Not out of fear, but out of an opportunity to buy up stock in companies whose shares only dropped due to people overselling. Sometimes to ridiculous levels.

My average for my Noront purchases from August to October was around $2.25. I sold many of these shares in November at below $1.00 in order to lock in some tax losses to apply against the nice capital gains I had to declare from the Noront run in 2007. An excellent benefit provided to investors who make money one year and lose money another year.

Anyway, I am no longer giving tips, but will share some of my own investment strategy. Some use TA which is useful in understanding where a market may move due to blackbox selling, some rely on rumours and boards, while others rely on luck and false hope.

If you were to ask me I would say I do well with a combination of diligent DD, patience, being willing to sell a stock at a loss in order to buy another at a sale price, and of course, some gut feel.

Here are a few examples of where I made some $$ this year outside of Noront and this board. Please do not go out and buy these stocks tomorrow as I have held them and no longer hold them. They are good ones to reseach but I only use them as examples of where I have made money on weakness over the past four months:

Here are a few I have made money on during the past three months:

NOA - North American Construction - bought at $2.16 and sold at $3.50 (too early but I met my target. Today it is at $7.50)

OYL - Oil company operating of off Guyana. Bought at .55 cents on weakness and sold at $1.12.

GAX (formerly PMM) - Bought at .05 and sold at .10 earlier this year.

FWR - bought at .19 and sold at .28

RCT - bought on weakness at .21 and sold at .285 a week later.

I am no stock guru but I look into stocks that get referred to me, research them, and watch them for a long period of time and monitor their price. When a sell off occurs in the market which has happened a number of times this year alone, any strange fall in a stock on my watchlist for which there is no known reason outside of a massive TSX slide is when I buy in. For instance, Noront at .64 cents a few weeks ago on the one-day sale.

It am finding it is actually easier to make money in this market than when the market is in a full bull as there is not much room for stock to fall and the increases have been as high as 50 to 100% +. This is mostly in the penny stock area, but is not limited to that (as is the case with GE when it was recommended to me in the $6 range a few months ago. I do not buy US stocks so I let it go).

An old saying goes that the market is all about timing, and this is true. When a sale happens you have to buy based on the DD you have done and the faith you have in the company. Stocks will fall for many reasons such as bad results, rumours of bad results, manipulation due to shorting, forced margin covers, or overall market fear such as a 400 point drop in the TSX.

I find that most sales last a couple of hours and sometimes a day. An hour can make all the difference between a good buy and a buy whereby one just breaks even. This is one reason I do not post tips anymore. If I post something and somebody buys the stock a day later, they may be buying too high.

For those without a system, the best advice I can give is to find 50 stocks that you are familiar with DD the heck out of them. Get to know their strengths and weaknesses. Argue both sides of the pumper basher argument with them and add them to your watchlist. Then watch these stocks daily for news, rumours, and low volume price weakness - and buy when you see an opportunity to make a quick 25%+ on the return up.

I have watched some stocks for over three years now, so patience is needed. Every month I will prune the list by a couple of stocks when newer stocks are added after I receive a hint and after I research them. But it really is a waiting game. I call it year trading, though the time I hold most of the stocks can be a couple of days to a couple of months.

I set profit targets as I do not have a crystal ball or complete insider information. 25 to 50% is a good number. I will try to lock in 25% if I start to see the stock decline back. The multi bagger stocks take luck as great news is needed to send them to these heights. They are not as rare as people think if looked at over a longer time period such as two years. Especially in this market.

My original Noront investment was a 1000% return. You would not believe how many times I kicked myself for selling at $4 after the stock hit $5 in October 2007, only to see it go to $7 twice months later. But one has to get out in order to make a profit. My friend at work who owned Noront since the day after the Windfall news broke in late 2006 owned his shares until this January, when he sold them for .75 cents. He paid .75 for them two years ago so he broke even. But in a sense he lost 90% as he held the stock when it was over $7. His money is now in Gold which has done him well of late.

My advice to him was to not look back at the past but to learn from it. Here is a tip I use for myself: When I am looking at the screen determining whether to buy or sell a stock, I remind myself of the reason I am selling or buying that day. Did a better opporunity appear? Do I have a feeling something is going to go down? I then lock in that thinking into my memory and recall that moment in the future should a stock I owned suddenly jump to new heights. It is human nature to think about what could have been, but I find if I go back to the thinking process for the day I sold the stock, I realize I would not have made a different choice do to the limited information I had at the time.

Another tip I have learned is to learn to sell at a loss. If you can make money on two stocks and take an equivalent loss on one stock, you are still ahead. We as investors tend to focus more on losses than gains, especially in this market, or as we take money out of our portfolios after gains. I typically will take between 10% and 25% on a loss. I am actually better at saving money by getting out of a stock at a loss at the right time, then I am at getting out after a stock takes off. Learn to use losses to your advantage and defeat the pride that says you will not sell until you break even. The old saying that you can't lose until you sell is a lie. The stock is worth what the bid on the stock is for that day. The potential may be there for it to achieve its true value in the long term, but the current day price is the value you should use when balacing your portfolio. If you can sell one stock at a 15% loss in order to buy another that dropped 30%, you could be up 15% the next day and still be able to get back into your original stock at the price you sold the stock for.

Finally, use a good stock program that takes into account all of your trades and commission and interest costs (if borrowing from a LOC or CC to buy stocks). I use QuickTax's program that comes with their Platinum edition which provides an excellent tool for $80 and that makes it easy to upload the transactions into your tax filing. Additionally, CIBC Investor Edge is an excellent package for those who make more than 50 trades a year. You pay $399 for the first 50 trades (lump sum prorated down depending on how many months are left in the year) and then any trade after that is $6.95. It makes selling on your terms a whole lot easier my previous broker forced me to make a certain amount of trades each quarter or lose my $9.99 trading priviledge.

In the end it is all about timing and leaving room for somebody else to make a profit (selling when you hit a target rather than waiting for every last penny to be put into your pocket)

Good luck everyone. Things are getting better out there. That is why I am frustrated with this stock at the moment. It is not following the market's lead.

M1.