The Brick Group

I like MoneySense Magazine. Its conservative. It's Canadian. It revers Warren Buffett and Benjamin Graham.

Last year they published a list of the top income trusts in Canada. I began buying these early in 2009. My picks included:

• Boralex Power Fund
• PennWest Energy Trust
• The Brick Group
• InnVest REIT

The Brick Group was the most interesting. I bought at 2.07 a share when it was paying well over 20% dividends. As it climbed up during the January market rally, I followed Andrew Horowitz's advice, use sell stops.

I was very aggressive, using a trailing 5% sell stop. This caused me to unload everything at 2.50. Then the stock climbed and climbed and climbed. Fairfax Financial was buying into The Brick big time.

The stock hit $3.00 a share and I was sad.

Then Brick decided to cut all distributions immediately.

Bloody hell! The stock plummeted to $1.30. I would have been killed if it were not for those stops. I expected a distribution cut of maybe 50%, not a blood bath of 100%.

Lessons here:

• Use sell stops
• Individual stocks are fucking risky. Maybe if I had a brain I would be using ETFs
  
• Fairfax Financial isn't as smart as I originally thought
• I hate the market