Wednesday, November 28, 2018

I Am Still Invested.

Hands up everyone who has found this year tough to call?

After my last post the stock market took a tumble, I was also tied in to a lot of stocks because of uncertainty over a forced move of some of my accounts from 'Sharebuilder' to 'E-Trade'. In the end this movement of my accounts did not take place until the end of October and was not completed entirely until mid November.

IIn the transfer period I had to forgo all my dividend reinvestment plans, also sell fractional shares at not the best time and then learn to use a whole new trading system at possibly the most turbulent period of the markets.

Of course in this I was not alone. Thousands of other Sharebuilder customers were in the same position.

I had never bought into all the FAANG stocks as a group. I owned them in the XLK and XLY exchange traded funds. Buying a few XLC stocks in August with the proceeds of sales of partial shares forced by the selling of my accounts to E-Trade  last Winter.

The only one of the FAANG stocks I owned and still own is Apple (AAPL) despite it's recent fall in October and November from $230 to about $170 I still like the company and as a long term holder I have my average cost at just $100 I am still looking at good long time returns on the stock and I have been here before several times with Apple. I think it will grow back into the Trillion dollar company it was in the late Summer, not overnight of course but in the next few years.

Overall because of the lack of the FAANGs and other volatile stocks, my portfolio has been quite robust. Losing only 0.6% for every 1% fall in the value of the S&P 500 ETF (SPY). I also own  SPY in  in my retirement account as a long term core holding.

Now though I have all my DRIPs back in force and am looking forward to a good December dividend payout adding some good, less expensive stocks to my portfolios.

This month I have also been reading this book. I have found it very informative so if you would like to follow the link and purchase a copy for yourselves I would be grateful as you would be supporting this blog.



Thursday, February 1, 2018

Twenty-three Percent Profits Last Year

Last year was a good year. No I am not talking about tires on the road, though I did go on a 16 state, 6,000 mile roadtrip from California to Illinois and back via the Grand Canyon, the hot and humid Midwest and the Great Salt Lake.

The last year from February 1, until January 31 2018 has seen my portfolio grow by a decent 23%.

This was almost all due to prudent re-balancing at the beginning of the period and then just leaving things alone. No trading for the most part.

Remember trading costs money and that can quickly burn away any profits.

I did take some profits, for instance recently I trimmed back on Starbucks to leave me  holding a small number. This rump of shares  will keep me interested in the company but I have now removed all my original investment.

As you might say, the remaining stock is house money  and I see no harm in letting the house money ride in this case.

I also added a little cash to buy in Boeing (BA) back in August when the stock was hovering around the $100 mark. I liked it because of the name, it is an engineering specialist with a good track record across several core competances, Aerospace and defence to name just two. So that was a nice little punt, which has paid big bucks subsequently.

I also held my favorite bank ETF and utillities. Giving a reasonable return on investmen.

Walt Disney (DIS) also saw some weakness at varying time over the year and allowed me to increase some of my holdings in that company as it fell into the nineties.

Most of the other gains were in the area of re-invested dividends. My average dividend yield last year was 2.15% Enough to give a inflation beating return in cash.