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What Did I Sell and Buy In My M1 Portfolio October 12th, 2021?

 Last night I came to the decision to sell out of my Astra Zeneca (AZN )  holding in my M1 portfolio.

I had about $30 worth of fractional shares to sell and as the dividend was not the best I decided that even though I used to own a lot of the stock when I lived in the U.K.  My family had worked for Imperial Chemical Industries Plc (ICI ) for generations it is time to let go.  So this morning I sold all of my holding of AZN from my M1 account.

I do still hold a couple of the American Depository Receipts (ADR ) in my small fun money account with E*Trade.

So with the cash burning a hole in my browser, where did I put it?

The answer is still in a pharmaceutical company.  I put the $33 that I had spare into Abvie Inc. ( ABBV ).

The new ABBV holding will eventually be around 13% of my Pharma pie.  To see my Pharma pie holdings Click here.

If you want to open a new account with M1 you can use the link to start you off, plus you will receive a bonus. $30 extra in your account when you fund your new account with $100. I will receive $30 too.

So there you are fund your new M1 Account with $100 and we both get $30 as a thank you from M1.

See my M1 Pharma Pie, and open a new M1 account for yourself here.

I chose to swap Astra Zeneca for Abbvie Inc, simply because I think Abvie is a growing company. It has a good dividend payout, it doesn't pay out a lot of its cash in dividends but it does pay over $4.00 per year in dividends per share and has grown its dividend for 11 years now.

The stock is not cheap by any means, but quality costs. I think this is a quality stock.

The company is the daughter of Abbott Labs ( ABB ) I also own that stock in my M1 portfolio too, but Abbott specialises in medical products aimed at the diabetes market.  I personally use the  Freestyle Libre 14 Day Continuous Glucose Monitoring System.  It's good, easy to use and comfortable to wear on the upper arm.  It is not quite as accurate as a blood test, but using a traditional finger prick to test blood glucose four or five times everyday was painful, awkward and caused lots of problems for me.

Abvie has quite a nice stable of products itself and an expanding road of new products in its pipeline.

So that was my shopping list for today.  I hope you enjoyed reading.

 

While  you are here, Why not take a look at our Amazon Gift Store?

 

 

Stock Exchange Shares Market Bear Bull Prices Coffee Mug
by Dalukey

Columbus Day 2021

 So here we are, October 11, 2021.  What a year!

Today is Columbus Day in the United States.  Monday, I have lots of cash transfers from my bank to various brokerages and of course, though the markets are open no bank transfers will take place until tomorrow.

Sadly, the markets are going up this morning. That means that I will not be buying some of the stock that I was hoping to buy, because my cash is in limbo. Waiting in that no-man's land between bank account and delivery to brokerTheage.

The Columbus Day holiday is possibly the most confusing in the repetoire of Federal Holidays in the U.S.

In some ways it is a holiday, in others it isn't.  Some public organizations take the day off. The Bond markets and some banks for instance.  The stock market, well no to hell with looking to have a break, let's make money.

It is not a problem for me.  I don't mind people having a day off, but what is annoying that even computer systems in the U.S. get the day off too.  If all of my banking information is held on computer and all of my brokerage information is held on computer, how come those two computers cannot talk to each other on a Federal Holiday?

It makes no sense.

Well possibly it does make sense to American legislators, who take a break at the drop of a hat.

I always wondered in my time working in a public library here in California, the end of March has a Cesar Chavez day.  Famed agricultural workers leader, his name now marked as a state holiday for state and local government employees.  Who can drive into the mountains or drive to the beach, passing all those farms, orchards, vineyards and fields bustling with migrant farm labor working hard on a day set out to celebrate their deceased leader, a holiday which means only a day off for people who hardly know the difference between a lettuce and a cabbage.

Plus of course the computers get that day off too. When contacting anyone in California.

W

What am I Wanting to Buy Tomorrow?

I am hoping to buy a new stock, it is Horizon Financial (HRZN ). Horizon specialize in lending to technology businesses in the first stages of growth.

They pay a monthly dividend of just 10cents as of October 11, 2021.  A stock which changes hands around $17.00.

I am only going to look at buying a small portion of my holding right now. Analysts are looking at a future price more in the region of $14.00, presumably as interest rates rise that will put a squeeze on this stock.

I like the look of the stock for cash flow.  10 cents in my pocket every month per share is going to add nicely to my monthly cash flow for general stock purchases.

Another stock I am looking to add to in my portfolio is Community Heathcare Trust ( CHCT ) this is a quarterly paying REIT.  Over the past five years the stock has moved very little price wise, staying stubbornly around $40  but it has thrown off some nice cash flow with regular dividends.

I like this one because people will always need hospitals and doctors offices.  Exactly what this REIT owns all across the U.S.

That is all for today.  See you again soon.

 

 

 

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by Bretsuki

What has Experience Investing In The Stock Market Taught You?

 With over forty years of investing in the stock market behind me there are lots of things that I have learned.

Maybe not how to dress well. The one key to investing is to know yourself.

I know that I am not the best dressed, but I love my Black Lab, Leif and this shirt is pretty comfortable.

But  anyway.  Investing.

Well investing requires self knowledge.

Why?  I tell you in this video.

Beside all the information in the video.  I have learned that you need to consider investing as a long term plan for wealth creation.  There are hundreds of people a day who will tell you that they have the answer to get you rich overnight.  Well generally their get rich quick schemes mean you give them your money to learn something that you could have got for free.  No one looks after your money as well as you do.

Always look for quality stocks, they pay well in the long run.

Feel free to set aside some play money, but don't play with your main investment accounts.

Play only with money that you can afford to lose.  Protect your core accounts.

 

 

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I have created a core brokerage savings account with M1 Finance. This account is for doing fun stuff.

 

M1 allows me to buy fractional shares, so I can afford to buy high priced stock like Amazon (AMZN ), Alphabet (GOOG ) and others.  I built a core account of just over thirty stocks in January 2020 starting with just $100, plus a $30 bonus because I followed an affiliate link like this one.  Now that core holding is worth in excess of  $1,400 and is paying me regular dividend income.  I invest just $17 per week and everything is invested automatically. Simple

 

You too can open an M1 account and earn a $30 bonus when you use this link. 

 

 

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.

Take a look at the bestselling investing books at my Amazon Store ( Click Here ).

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.

Should I as a New Investor Buy Cheap Stocks?

 Should a new investor buy cheap stock?

 The straightforward answer is no. It is just a false economy to think of cheap stocks as a good investment.

I want to have lots of stock quickly. So I make lots of profit!

Believe me, it is normal to want lots of stock quickly. I have been in your shoes, not much cash to buy stock, so buying cheap stocks, also known as "Penny Stocks" looks like the right thing to do. They are cheap, you don't have much money, and buying them gives you lots of stock, quickly so you can say that you own dozens of shares in Junk Corporation.

Who wants to own Just one share of Amazon or Tesla?

Ok just owning one stock of a good company may not seem impressive.

But you are just beginning to own stock. Time is on your side and what you want to do is to use time to accumulate good stocks not waste valuable time and money  on buying cheap worthless stocks that will take you nowhere.

Today you don't have to invest a lot of money. Consider Fractional Shares.

 

When you buy fractional shares you get all the benefits of owning a stock. When the price goes up and down, so does the price of your fractional shares. You can put in as little as $1.00, and use dollar cost averaging to build a position.

 

I have used M1 Finance to build some high value positions over the last year or so. I began with an initial investment of just $100 in January 2020. Now in June 2021 my portfolio is worth over $3,000.

 

 

You can open an account with M1 Finance with just $100 yourself and when you fund your account for the first time you will receive an additional $30, just for opening a new account. here.

 

 

Claim your  $30 for a new M1 Account Today. Click Here.

 

When you open your new account with M1 Finance, you will be able to choose to buy fractional shares in hundreds of different, top notch companies, exchange traded funds (ETF) and Fund companies like Vanguard and iShares.

I personally own a mixture of growth stocks Apple, Amazon and Google. Vanguard funds like their total stockmarket fund and also steady dividend payers like Johnson & Johnson, Verizon and Union Pacific Railroad.

M1 allows me to build my position a few hundredths of a share at a time. Collect the dividends and re-invest those dividends in other stocks over time.

I add just $15 per week, which re-invests when my cash balance goes over $25. All invested in preset proportions across my whole portfolio.

Let's have a coffee together.

Say Thank you for this article.

Buy me a Coffee

Read as much as you can about investing. 

Nothing pays you back as much as learning from books. Books on investing will teach you about how to read financial pages. How to read a profit and loss statement.

Read about financial crashes of the past. Read about how top ranked investors have invested their and other peoples money.

If you want to learn about Foreign Exchange markets, read about those. If you want to learn about options trading, read about them. Learn the language of those markets.

Gather all of the knowledge you can. It will pay you dividends later.

The more you know now the better.

Take a look at Amazon for some books to start with.

Always Buy Quality Stocks.

Always follow the rule to buy quality stocks.

If you buy quality, you will prosper. 

Learn to find quality stocks, you can learning by reading lots of books. 

Cheap stocks are not neccessarily bad stocks, they may just be out of favor with Wall Street. But as a beginner, you need to recognize your limitations. Beginning with fractional shares, lets you buy quality stock for a lower price, a price that you can afford.

Take advantage of the power of fractional shares to build a quality portfolio.

Take care. 

I wish you all the best with your investing.

Be sure to like and share this post with your friends on your favorite social media.

Thank you.

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What Can I Do About New Tax Legislation?

 Lately there is a great deal of talk about new tax legislation, increasing Capital Gains Tax and taxes on corporations possibly rising to 28% thereby reducing profits and so starting a bleak period for stock market investors.

What can I do as an investor?

First don't Panic. 

At the moment it is just talk. As we know talk is cheap and the politicians are merely grandstanding for their supporters. This is just throwing some fear into the market and causing some selling of perfectly good stocks, actually making them more attractive for long term buy and hold investors, like me.

So not to look a gift horse in the mouth I am going out with a shopping list this week to buy in some good stock.

Changes in tax legislation will take months of negotiation so there is no immediate cause for alarm.

When the politicians finish with their  pontification to their base, there will be some adjustment to their promises as the Bill writers come on the scene, then lobbyists will get the politicians to change a little here and there. Scrap a pork belly from the barrel in one or two places. Then the whole plan will have to go through committees and votes.

If we only knew how that would go.  

Then finally in a year or two, a new tax Bill may be signed into law, heralded as a triumph of fairness over greed.

Then the company accountants get to play with the loopholes.

In the end we will all adapt to the new legislation.

All the worry will have been for nought.

So don't worry until the legislation has passed. But even then what we know will be less fearful than all of the talk we are hearing now.

This is not tax advice. I am an individual investor not a tax expert. This is merely my own opinion and you should consult your own tax advisor or financial planner before acting on any item in this blog post.

All the best.