Tuesday, February 12, 2013

First Quarter 2013 Rebalancing

Wow! January was exciting wasn't it?

We had some big days on Wall Street and my main portfolio got out of balance again in no time.

My two main stocks that caused the unbalancing were my old favorite ING Prime Rate Trust (PPR) and a newbire eBay (ENBAY).

I had taken a knife to my PPR stock at the beginning of January lopping a good third of my holding off.

With some of the proceeds of that I jumped into EBAY. Then a nice pick at $50.00. That $50 jumped to $57 last week so looking at the reason for buying to generate a new holding by its own stock increase I am pulling the trigger on EBAY pulling out my original investment. That will leave me with some nice EBAY shares that cost me the equivalent of a few pennies.  Thank you EBAY for your kind gift.

With that cash I am moving back towards some real estate. I like Cohen and Steers Realty Stock (ICF) Before the crash of 2007-8 it traded at over $100 it got hit very badly during the crash and I admit missing seeing its steady crawl back up from the deepest well of despair. Now it is about the $80 mark and getting pretty close to my average cost price so I will round off my holding in that just to add real estate to a major portion of my portfolio.

I also like corporate bonds too. Barccalys Corporate Bond stock (AGG) has given me a good return in dividends every month for several years now. I use AGG to generate cash income for portfolio every month so see little harm building a little more of a holding, though at current prices I see more of a downside risk to the stock than an upward reward.

This risk I have offset with a High Yield Dividend basket (IDV) . Again this is an addition to a long term holding I think dividends are going to steadily increase from this stock as the economy begins to speed up. It is a long term hold and another monthly income generator.

All in all I think that this rebalancing will work out this time.  My policy of using stock rises to give me a free or virtually free stock worked spectacularly with eBay.

Investing is fun when it works out this way.

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