How to use Scottrade Gainskeeper(tm)?

Gainskeeper ™ is a little program keeps tracks of stock cost basis, and the profit and loss. Scottrade provides this service to its customers. This program is not without problems (for me), such as mess up positions and long/short term profit/loss. It seems to me the program improved quite a bit lately, or it could be that now I learned how to use it. Another interesing program (or web site) is cakefinancial, which can keep track of your 401k, IRA and stock brokrage accounts from various financial institutions. Walt Mossberg did a good introduction on this lately.

Back to Gainskeeper. The main thing I pay attention to is: big gainer and big losers. Here is how I used it. Go to Realized Selling Acitivity (Summary), select year (2008). Last year, we all know it’s a terrible market. Here is my big losers (loss > $1,000):

Proud to be a Berkshire Shareholder

My wife used to joked with me: you always tout some stocks when you buy, then after it crashed, you will say it’s a crap (XFML, Heelys, LFT, Crocs).

I think I won’t say that for Mindray, and hopefully no hard feelings for BRK, either.

Sold Mindray MR
I sold my remaining Mindray (MR) shares just now, here are the reasons:

Mindray was doing OK up to this point. But I think it may have overpaid for the DataScope patient monitoring business. It paid 202 million, while the business has revenue of 162 m last year. The unit was not profitable according to one analyst, which I believe because I also did a little research myself. The cost structure of DataScope is higher than Mindray; the US medical device market is tough and will be tougher in the credit crisis. Note the hospitals usually need to borrow from banks to finance the new medical devices.

On other hand, at $31.88, the stock is not cheap (PE ttm of about 45). The company expects to grow revenue and earning by 40% this year.

Bought Berkshire BRK.B
I bought one share of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) at $4349.89. This is Buffett’s company. If you have read my blog for a while, you know I have great respect for the Oracle of Omaha. Its main business (insurance) will be tough in the near term, but Warren has did some smart acquisitions lately (the Israel company, and a domestic diversified company, I could not remember the names but believe it or not, sometimes those unknown companies made a lot more real money than Crocs)…Although he scaled down the equity investing (relative to the big purchase mentioned above), he has continued to make money in stock market, notably the $3 billion profit from PetroChina last year.