Model Portfolio athompson:TPSNX

Terra Industries fell today because it was downgraded from Buy to Hold by Citi. Citi analyst Brian Yu said that, "The nitrogen market appears to have hit a short-term peak that could take a couple of months to resolve." I buy stocks for the long-term. I don't see any reason to worry about a drop in the price of nitrogen that could take a couple of months to resolve. Yu also said that, "The risk is that urea prices continue to decline as buyers delay their purchases and draw down inventories deeper than usual in anticipation of even lower prices. The timing and extent of this feedback loop is nearly impossible to predict or quantify, but could take weeks or months to play out." I don't think we should worry about something that is nearly impossible to predict or quantify. In general, there are a lot of factors pushing the price of nitrogen up: a growing global population, growing per capita grain use (because of increased meat consumption), increased use of grains to produce biofuels, a limited amount of arable land and the consequent need to use it more efficiently, and the difficulty of quickly ramping up nitrogen production. I think the overreaction to Citi's rather speculative downgrade provides a good opportunity to acquire this stock, which has excellent long-term potential.