I feel so dirty

So, how's my little paper experiment with short-term trading working out, then? Not so bad, as it happens. A little rundown ...

TSCO - Tesco - which I also hold in real life at 327p, is down a little bit at 321p, but I'm pretty confident on this one. If it's good enough for Buffett. Looks like patience is required. It still looks cheap on a historic basis,

IDH - Immunodiag - the company slumped after fears of competition on some of its tests. I banked  profits of about 18% on those over a period of a week. Too bad, because so far I left plenty of dough on the table.

CRE - Creston - the media company that warned on profits recently. Kudos to ExpectingValue for highlighting this share in the first place. It is one a PER of 3.4, PBV 0.32, PFCF 4.8. The number of shares has ballooned nearly sixfold in the last decade, and general consensus appears to be that the directors are "generously" compensated. I'm up over 5% since purchasing earlier this week.

RGM - Regency Mines - minnow miner on a PE of 3.7. The seem to have various virtuous bits-and-bobs to look forward to. Share price is now recovering from the doldrums at the end of the year. It has made a strong recovery since then, so maybe it's not an ideal share for short-term trading. 2012 forecasts are for an EPS of 0.70p, against a share price of 1.98p, which still seems plenty cheap. I'm down fractionally on this one so far, but I'll treat this as early days.

CRND - Central Rand Gold - junior gold miner which fell to about 0.2p in October 2011, since recovered to 1.08p. It has had all sorts of difficulties and intrigues, but seems to be sorting them out. Looks cheap compared to the resources it owns. I'm slightly down on this one so far. Maybe it is taking a breather after its recent runup.

IAE - Ithacca Energy - £480m North Sea oil producer. I've got resource stocks coming out the yin-yang. No doubt there are plenty more out there that are worthwhile that I don't know about. My apologies if I missed your favourite. Anyway, back on topic. IAE has had an amazing run up since mid-January on the back of a takeover approach. I'm up on this share, although it looks overbought (unsurprisingly) and is pulling back today. I'm still going with the theory that there should be a healthy takeover premium. Maybe a safer way to have played it is to hope that the bid doesn't go through, and sends the share price crashing. IAE seems to have net cash of over £100m, and earnings are set to skyrocket next year. It is much cheaper than its peers on an EV/Sales basis, although its PE is 13.

So, let's see how this stuff all works out. So far, so good. I'm actually quite encouraged by how things are going.