Portfolio Update: Selling Rollins, Buying Walgreen

As is my policy, I try to share with you my own actions in my Trading Account as soon as possible as part of my own 'trading transparency'. On Friday I sold my 350 shares in Rollins (ROL) at $16.054. These shares had been purchased 10/16/08 at a cost basis of $14.69/share; thus, I had a gain of $1.364/share or 9.3% since purchase.

In general I have a very defined program for buying and selling shares based on the underlying performance of the stock in question. But simply put, Rollins represented an over-weighted position in my trading account and I didn't like the way it was trading. In many ways, this is exactly the type of transaction I try to avoid, this gestalt approach to investing, but I have always reserved the right to make small adjustments to my account, including replacing a position, when it simply didn't seem to be trading well. For instance, the stock has been trading down when the market has been otherwise strong, and the chart looks vulnerable to a correction from my amateur perspective.