What am I Buying on September 7, 2021?

 Today is the first day of trading after the Labor Day Holiday.  September is often seen as a bad month to buy stock.  But today I was off to my brokerage accounts and buying quite briskly.

In my M1 account I had several purchases.  Now these were pre-programmed purchases. My cash balance was over $25 and so the brokerage account went out to buy some of the stocks at the bottom of my various pies.

In my Thirty Share fund I bought both Visa and Mastercard. I hold both of these stocks because they are the powerhouse stocks as suppliers of credit and debit cards.  Between them they have over 85% of the market.  They are not the greatest dividend payers, instead putting a lot of their free cash back into their business.  But they do pay small dividends which will never make me rich but I do get a respectable return which I do not see being cut any time soon.

Another automated purchase was for shares of stock in Medtronic.  This stock had lagged a little, possibly due to the reduction in elective surgeries in hospitals over the past eighteen months. Now as I believe corona virus cases will soon fall to more balanced levels, thee virus is with us now and we will have to live with it forever.  But heart and circulatory surgery will come back and this is where Medtronic earns its daily bread.  I personally have a Medtronic pacemaker and have for eight years now.

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I also took a wander to see my Fidelity account.  Now this brokerage has had no additional cash added for a while now.  All my spare cash goes  to my M1 account.  But the Fidelity account does have some dividend paying stocks.

To my surprise I had built up almost $56 in cash.  I saw that my account there, at Fidelity, has the ability to buy fractional shares for free.  Last time I looked this was only available on the iPhone app.  Not wanting to put more cash in the stocks I already hold there I thought a while and decided to buy VOO, the Vanguard S&P 500 exchange traded fund (ETF ).

I already own SPY, the State Street version of this ETF in my Roth IRA account. So didn't want to own that again.  The VOO will add more stock to my Fidelity account, much of it is based in California Tax Free  Municipal Bonds. In the form of CMF.

As VOO was over $450 this morning and I only bought $54.88, I get only a small fraction, a little over 10% of a share, so only 10% of the dividend later this month.  That is okay with me.  It's an opening position and now I know that I can buy those fractional shares at Fidelity as well I will certainly be back.

Scared of Heights? Stock Market at New Highs

 Over the years, I have often been scared in the market.

You see I don't like heights. Both in the real sense, standing near a sheer drop makes me sick, and stock market highs make me  frustrated as the number of stocks that I am willing to buy dwindle.

Now is a time when I just look at the market and weep. 

I can't really buy very much.

I am happy that my stock portfolio is increasing in value. An 11 percent rise in the S&P this year is good, one of my portfolios has increased by 10per cent, another by 12 per cent and my M1 portfolio has grown 18 percent.

See my M1 portfolio here.

If you like M1 why not open an account using the link above. When you open an account and fund it with $100 you will receive a $30 cash bonus to invest from M1. That is a 30% boost to your portfolio, straight away. Just for using my link.  I will also receive a small introductory fee from M1 at no cost to you.

The one truth that I continue to hold in my mind right now is this is a cycle. We are on the up trend. Sometime we will level out and come to a down trend.

I am not talking of a stock market crash.

The stock market will go up. Economies grow. 

Think of the wheel of a bicycle. Put a mark on the wheel rim. As the mark goes around it appears to rise and fall. The mark is the stock market. Now ride the bicycle along a road, the road may go up and down too. The road is the world economy.  If the road goes in an upward trend, then even though the mark on the wheel is going down, it will continue to go up relative to the last point on the road where it was at its lowest point.

So while it may be scary to invest in individual companies right now. I am moving to invest in mutual funds and Exchange Traded  Funds.

These stocks and funds spread the risk a little more and give me some diversification. I am going with VYM the Vanguard Dividend ETF  and PREMX the T. Rowe Price Emerging Market Fund.

Both give a decent return, monthly income from PREMX and quarterly distributions from VYM.

I believe before the end of the year we will see less of the lock step rise in individual stock prices. Stock rising and falling at varying rates across the market is more the norm. More to my liking too as individual stock volatility brings more opportunity to make more profits for us as investors.

Till that time comes. Maybe take a look at M1. It is a simple way to invest.

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by Shirtoe