Best Apps for Investors, Traders and Money Managers

My Christmas Apps For You

Christmas comes but once a year, and if you remember Christmas 2018  it was a bit of a down year.

Happily though this year saw the markets  come back with a vengence and we are looking at a bumper end to the year. Hopefully you are celebrating with us.

I am happy to say that Santa delivered his rally last year, so with fingers crossed and a tummy full of mince pies  I say thank you Santa, and please can we have some more next year.

I don't know about you, but I love playing with apps on my phone and my tablets. I love to see if they can help me generate more cash flow ind income into my Roth IRA and brokerage accounts.

Below I have created five lists of apps for you. There are apps for stock tracking, apps for money management, for fun, for  all sorts of useful stuff.

I hope that you will find an app or two that is useful to you over the next year and that you start the next decade off well. I raise a glass for your fortune and wish you prosperity and wealth in the next decade.

Now to the Lists.

1. Best Stocks and investing Apps

2  Best Personal Finance Apps

3 Best Accounting and  Expenses Apps.

4Best Banking Apps.

5.  Best Games Apps.

6. Best Fashion and Style Apps.

7. Best Astrology Apps.

8. Best Diary and Journal Apps.

 

See the latest new products on amazon here.

 

 

Bully! No More Brokerage Fees. For a Lucky Few

Bully! No More Fees

At the turn of the nineteenth Century, the term "Bully!" was a term of excitement and cheer. Even President Theodore Roosevelt was known to cry "Bully!" at times of excitement. Well the news from some of the low cost brokers on Wall Street that from early October 2019 they would be removing their brokerage fees for many investors on their platforms would have surely raised excitement for the market bulls.

Charles Schwab was the first to announce the cut in fees, almost immediately both TD Ameritrade and E*Trade followed suit.


From October 7, 2019 I will be among those no longer paying brokerage fees on my stock and ETF trades with my broker. This makes me bullish in the short term.

Why? Because I do not trade a lot. Last quarter I did some re-balancing and several stock purchases. In total I spent over $230 in fees. Over two hundred dollars in fees! For someone who doesn't trade a lot of the time.




If those fees are spread out over the course of the past decade say I have probably spent over $10,000 in fees. Bear in mind fees have come down since the early 2000's and so $10,000 is what I consider a minimum cost.

That $10,000 would have made a huge difference to my Roth IRA or other brokerage accounts. What about yours? How might have you managed your brokerage accounts or  your retirement account differently?

Is the move to zero brokerage fees a good one overall? I think our brokers know what they are doing.

I can see that they may increase the spreads on stock and ETF's so they may lose on the fee side, but more than make up on that by the penny or two those traders among us pay per trade. I am sure that for a while I may also buy more often. It is just a product of my now thinking that the price I see will be the price I pay without thinking I have to add a dollar or two to the price to cover fees.

Anyway, from tomorrow I will cheer on the brave low-cost brokers, Schwab, Ameritrade and E*Trade. Bully for you!

What do you think about the new low cost brokerage platforms? Will no fees play out for the benefit of all traders and investors in the long run?

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HowDid I Make My First $250,000

Some people say making the first $250,000 is the hardest.

I can say it took the longest part of my life. Over two decades.

New Opportunity

This week I received an e-mail from my broker.

Wall Street Bull Sculpture.

They wanted me to sign up for their program to lend my stock to other clients who are shorting the stock.

So a little suspicious of the offer. I called my broker by their regular number.

A piece of advice, check such offers are genuine with your broker, opening access to your account is not a good idea, so I wanted to know that this offer was genuine.

Turned out it was a genuine offer.

Read What are the risks of Loaning your stocks to a broker to short?

When I spoke to the representative from my broker on the telephone. He was able to confirm that the offer was genuine. I was very happy to sign up. Loaning stock to your broker to pass on to short sellers can earn you cash.

The process is:

A short seller needs stock to sell.

The Broker finds stock




The broker  Borrows the stock from an account

Places cash equivalent to the stock price, plus  a little extra into an escrow account.

Loans the stock to the short seller.

The short seller drives down the stock if they can.

The broker then either buys back the stock for me as a lender at a new low price or gives me back the stock. Plus I have been given cash in the form of a percentage of the charges made on the short sellers charges.

I am paid a daily rate for the loan of the shorted stock. This can range from pennies to several hundred dollars depending on the value of the stock, its scarcity  and the possible cost of recovery.

The daily rate of payment accrues for the period of the loan and once per month on a set date my broker will pay this cash fee into my brokerage account to re-invest.

At all times the stock remains mine, though I lose voting rights and any dividend payable is paid from the brokers account  not by the company.

At present within opening this account I have two stocks taken into a loan position. They only pay a few cents a day because I only have small positions. But they could make a nice little return since both only pay a dividend in December and January so even the few dollars that will accrue will add nicely to my expected returns for June 2019 and maybe for the rest of the year, if these stocks are favorites of the short sellers.

Thanks for reading. Don't forget to like or share this post and

Take a look at : What are the Risks of Loaning a Stock to your Broker?

Welcome To The "New" Investor Pages

In the last four months I have been a little busy, working my way through two classes at my local community college.

Luckily for me that time has seen a big rise in the stock markets, so my investments have been left well alone.

Hawthorn Blossom AKA May Flower

So here we are now in the month of May. The May Flower is in bloom at home in England and there is some relief from the Fall and Winter gloom of last year.

Except for one little thing I decided to do in December 2018. Remember those days and weeks in the run up to Christmas 2018?

Wow what a few weeks that was. Everyone was looking to Santa Claus for a rally. By Christmas Eve most people had given up on poor old Santa. Except for me that is.

On Christmas Eve I went all in with my accrued cash on the SPY. I bought, doubling my holding in the SPY ETF.

I couldn't resist. Santa Claus comes on Christmas morning and there he was handing me a bundle of stock at New Year Sales prices!




So in I jumped. I am so glad I did. Of course it could have all gone wrong. The nay sayers were all around. The sky was falling and I was gambling. Yes I was gambling. The gamble has paid off. I am not ashamed to say so.  I have called a market low, it happens from time to time with someone. This time I got it right. It will probably never happen again in my lifetime.

But this time I can say I called it.

Good enough for me. Did you call a bottom on Christmas Eve or maybe 10 years ago?

Tell me about it.


 Thank you for reading thus far, Pilgrim. I hope that you will continue to come back and follow my investing  journey.




I also have a book tip for you. Take a look at "Dividend Investing" A new book published in March. The book gets a 4.8 approval rating out of  39 reviews on amazon and most people say that it gives excellent ideas on how to build a dividend paying portfolio from scratch in easy to understand language. Take a look here.

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.

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.