Month In Review--April 2007

The month of April wasn't too shabby, but with the gains of the market as a whole, I should have expected to do OK. The portfolio made 7.02% this month. That was OK compared to my different screening approaches. Here are the results of four approaches I'm monitoring right now. Each combines the Zweig screen with a "qualifier".

• Zacks #1 stocks--4.08%
• The 5 highest in Relative Strength--14.16%
• The 5 highest in ReturnGrades--8.47%
• Zweig alone (buy & hold for the month)--5.95%

The highest Relative Strength stocks tend to perform very well in bull markets like this one. Since October 2006, the Relative Strength Approach is up 73%. The Zacks #1 stocks are up 38.56% for the same period.

I've beat a couple of my yearly goals so far, so I hope things continue. I wanted to make over 20% this year, so if I can hold on to things for the remaining 8 months, I'll be able to check that off. It looks like I'm on my way to another +60% year, but I'm not going to count my chickens just yet. There's at least one guy saying that everything in the whole world is in a bubble right now. I wish I was smart enough to know. I'm just plugging away with what I do know and we'll see how that turns out.