Late out of the gates. Tue Sep 8

The US was closed for a public holiday but European markets bounced close to 2% as Kraft made a bid for Cadbury's. At 10.15 am, we're up 27 points and it's looking like the Australian market might have overdone the caution with the UK just missing out on a new intraday high but easily making a new closing high. The chart for the German Dax is more like that for our Xjo index but the gist is that the sell off that has been anticipated seems a lot less of a sure thing.

10.25 Lyc is still running - I should have gritted my teeth and bought more on the close! Still, Lnc is also performing well, up 9 at 159 and Mah is up 3 at 64.5. I've bought some Emeco holdings, another mining services company like MacMahon.

Long at 82.5 as it has traded through that price which was the last swing high and has been up to 84. It has a similar chart to Mah but is not so far along. I'm half wondering whether I should be diversifying like this or just buying more Mah. I guess the key thing is that I have no obvious point to buy more Mah - I got in at the breakout yesterday - whereas in Emeco I can use the same signal as I took for Mah and have the confidence that another stock in the sector is confirming the price action. 12 It's midday and the market is doing well, up nearly 1%, with most of my positions performing well. I'm now long - deep breath - ehl, ifn, lnc, mah, mpo, sbm, tpi and a few gns rights. There are more positions than I'm usually comfortable with but I don't have an immediate problem with any of them. Tpi could be cut but I want to wait until the end of the day because the stock could still accelerate away.

The key issue is not whether I think the stocks are going up because it's still a bull market and most things are rising. What I need to focus on is what stocks I think are going to outperform the market - ideally, today or in the next couple of days. On that criterion, the best for me are Ifn, Mah, Mpo and Sbm.

1.20 Stopped out of Tpi at 151.5 (v 157).

3.01 Having been fretting about too many positions, I've added a new one in Gindalbie at 86. The correction in August held support at 80 and the stock has just made a buy signal with a trade at 86.5. I'm generally trying to focus on stocks which are already running rather than ones which look likely to run so I may have been hasty here. The overall market is still firm, up 64 points now and not far away from recent highs.

3.55 We've outperformed the other markets in the region today although it's probably only catch up. US overnight indices are up over 1/2 a percent which is a solid lead and may help us to hold most of the gains into the close. I'm selling out small amounts here and there where the stocks are showing signs of having a pullback eg Ehl and Lnc.

4.10 It looks like we've done the same as the FTSE last night on the Xjo index. The market has closed near its highs at 4524 which is a new closing high (for this year), while not quite making a new high on an intraday basis. I was a bit timid and sold out some Mah at an average of 68 (v 60.5) and Mpo at 130 (v 118.5) along with a very small amount of Gbg at the positive closing level of 87.5 (v 86). Because we haven't quite made a new closing high and the book is up 6% today I couldn't resist the temptation to take something off the table.