Thursday, July 28, 2011

Possible US Debt limit plays

Disclaimer: NONE of the following is advice for anyone. Its merely an exercise in different choices and available options for current events and theorizing what ifs. I currently have no plans to initiate any of the following.

I'm getting hard wood floors put into my home this week. Everything is moved and out of place and life has been tossed into the air. My time to make videos has been limited but I did want to talk more on the U.S. debt limit as a few commentors requested updates as things develop.

So here we are Thursday 7-28-11. 3 work days before the U.S. debt limit is reached. Everyone seems to have an opinion and plan as to the future of the entire world economy if the limit is not raised. Is this the doomsday event that sends us all into the dark ages again? Is this just much ado about nothing?
As I mentioned I don't want to make predictions but I do want to have plans for what ifs.

If the limit is raised then the Model Portfolio will proceed as normal.
The $150 in the trading account would be re-allocated $50 back to Savings and the $100 to Investing as was planned to continue Phase 1. No harm no foul in the long run with the portfolio.

If the limit is not raised on August 2 what is the likely event that would happen? Well its not like all payments are due on August 3rd.  Bonds are paid monthly and some government organizations get budgets front funded so they have time to keep operating.  There would be few people not getting paid and the federal government would have a bit more time to make a deal.
The impact will be to the image of the stability of the U.S. ability to pay its debts.

U.S. Treasury bonds would more then likely take a hit as people sell to get away from bonds that might not get paid on. Where would they put their money?
There are 4 main categories where your average person has their money: Cash, Bonds, Stock, Precious Metals. There are a lot more but I am talking about generalities and massive amounts of money in overall markets.

Cash
If people sell bonds and just sit on cash there isn't much of a play open to me to take advantage of short term other then the Forex but I am not ready to place money into that. It will be interesting to keep an eye on the EUR/USD pair though as this all unfolds. Even in extraordinary times I do not want to take on the risk of my own inexperience and lack of knowledge. I could be right and do something wrong and lose money. That is a very real risk that many do not think about.

Bonds
The theory so far is people are leaving U.S. Bonds so we'd want some put options on those bonds. These put options would increase in value as whatever they are tied to drops in value. Lets use the TLT etf which covers 20 year US Treasuries. Options expire on the third Friday of the month. We could go with August options but would only have about 2 weeks before they expire. Before that time, their value drops pretty sharply because of this deadline limit. Would any move in the markets move that fast? The markets perhaps but the government no. I want to look at Sept options

TLT Sept 92 PUT @ $1.22
I know I haven't covered options yet and I said I would try not to bring up topics without talking about them but time is a bit short. I will cover options more in the future.
If I were to buy this option it would give me the right, but not obligation to sell (because its a PUT option) 100 shares (the number of shares in 1 option contract) of the TLT etf for $92 each to whomever sold me this option. The $1.22 price is per share in the contract so to buy 1 option it would cost my account $122, almost all the trading money. I'm not sure if I like that part.
Since I do not have 100 shares of TLT to sell I need to sell this option in the future but since this would be a trade that is fine.

TLT is nearly at $96 right now and hasn't been under $92 since April. In June we have some support around $93-$94 range so we have that fighting against this trade.
The "open interest" of an option is how many option contracts are out there. For this Sep 92 PUT, there are 2,300 contracts owned out there by others. With lower open interest there are less investors and less money involved which would make it harder for me to get out of the trade if I were to get in it. Perhaps there is something else that I can get into with more liquidity. I ALWAYS want to be able to get out of a trade when I want to. Believe me, its rough being in a trade trying to get out and nobody is taking the other side.

TBT Sep 34 CALL @ $0.9
TBT Sep 35 CALL @ $0.84
TBT is a x2 ultra short version of TLT. These means that it will move in the opposite direction that long term US treasuries move. I could buy a CALL option which increases in value to whatever its tied to.
In this case people sell bonds, TLT drops in value, TBT increase in value by double that amount, a call option of TBT would also increase in value.
Its a bit cheaper and wouldn't take all my trading money. The open interest is 15,000 for the 34 and 34,000 for the 35 option. That's a better open interest level but bonds usually don't move far very fast and I have a time limit here.

Precious Metals
There is another play available to me. If people sell bonds where would they place their money? Precious metals is a good play when fear is high. Not many things are more fearful then the U.S. collapsing. Note I do not think the U.S. is going to collapse but the markets could think so temporarily.

I do not want to buy actual gold for a trade because it would take weeks for delivery. Then when I sell I have to find someone that wants to take a pile of metal from me. So I will need to stick with ETFs here.
GLD is a gold etf but its options are going to be way too expensive for the amount of money I have currently available. I could buy options that are really far away from the current price of GLD but the further you go out the less likely you have of the share price getting to your point.

Silver is a good alternative...
SLV Aug 40 CALL @ $1.26
SLV Sep 42 CALL @ $1.33
The interest here is only 2,500 for the Sep option. Aug has 37,000 but that is getting close to expiration. Everything else is getting pricey.

ZSL Sep 12 PUT @ $0.9
ZSL is a x3 short of silver. Remember how I mentioned in my video that I don't want a lot of complex moving parts to a trade? For this trade to work people sell US treasury bonds, then put their money into silver, silver rises in price so ZSL drops by x3 that amount, since this is a put option the option increases in value.
If you are confused don't worry, this is just a ridiculous trade. The fact there are only 200 options in open interest should tell us that the rest of the world thinks this is a bit silly too

Stock
What about the stock market? The S&P500 has tried 3 times recently to break above 1350 how much more effort can it have left? The US government fears could easily push it on down. It seems the stock market freaks out over anything.


SDS Sep 22 CALL @ $0.86
SDS is a x2 short of the S&P500. I like that price and Sept gives us an extra month to see what develops. $22 was the price back in June and appears to be the resistance level. Open interest is over 11,000 so lots of liquidity there. This also helps hedge my O investment if that were to fall in price with stocks in general.

The SDS play probably is what I would consider. In all honesty though guys I see maybe a 10% chance of me actually doing this. Something major would have to happen like all negotiations stop or they keep trying to work on multiple plans on Monday Aug 1st. They could make an agreement at 11:59 pm Monday when markets are closed. I would be stuck in a trade I made on Monday. That is some very big risk to consider.

I am perfectly happy sitting back. At this early stage of the Model Portfolio I want to build up the account through deposits and my rules state my account must grow each month.
A month ago I wouldn't have even seriously considered these trades but the government seems to be messing around on this topic. If nothing else we can look back on this entry and see what happened with the option values. The research and experience gained from this exercise in theory could be more valuable then any actual dollar gains.


Disclaimer: The investments and trades in my videos and blog entries are not recommendations for others.
I am not a financial planner, financial advisor, accountant, or tax advisor. The financial actions I talk about are for my own portfolio and money and only suited for my own risk tolerance, strategy, and ideas. Copying another person's financial moves can lead to large losses. Each person needs to do their due diligence in researching and planning their own actions in the financial markets

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Week 13 Deposit and being prepared

As I started my blog and model portfolio I laid out how and where I would make my weekly deposits. Current events necessitated me to change those plans...

EDIT: At the time this blog entry was posted I had a Youtube video here. That has been removed but I want the rest of my content to be remain. Nothing hidden no past mistakes ignored. All out in the open.

In the video I mention wanting to keep things simple and avoid lots of moving parts. I want to expand on that a bit.
On one hand it seems simple: if Congress doesn't raise the limit people will sell bonds. If they raise it everything is fine. But is it really that simple and is that even accurate? A lot of people are saying this.  The "moving parts" of this theory is in the details.
1: The Democrats, Republicans, House, Senate, President of the United States, "Gang of Six" all have their own ideas. That's potentially 6 different ways this could play out let alone what form any compromises will take. Even if they get a compromise in place before August 2nd...
2: How will the world react? The credit agencies have stated that they might lower U.S. credit rating even with the debt ceiling being raised. So whatever compromise that might or might not take place may not even be enough...
3: After a deal is or is not made and after the credit agencies react how will foreign countries act? Will China dump their bonds or will they stand firm? Japan has a lot too can they afford to lose the interest income with all their own economic problems? These and other countries have enough bonds that their actions could move the markets.

See what I mean about moving parts? For me, there are way to many "what ifs" and unanswered questions. We do not know what will or will not be done nor at what time this might occur let alone be able to guess the chain of events that will come later.

The thing is there will always be a crisis to worry about that an investor could be locked in permanent inactivity. They could also get stuck into a mentality of jumping in with money to beat the crowd and get rich.
I'll just sit back and watch for a bit. There will always be another trade tomorrow but if I am not careful I may not have a portfolio left for that tomorrow.


Weekly Activity
$100 deposit into Trading
$50 transfer from Savings to Trading
Purchase 8 shares of O @ $34.12

Model Portfolio Totals

Trading Account: $150

Investing Account: $895.03
Stock: $0
REITs: $276.32
     O: 8 shares
Bonds: $554.78
     JNK: 7 shares. ($1.78 total dividends)
     PCY: 10 shares. ($1.26 total dividends)
Maneuvering: $63.93

Savings Account: $250
Emergency: $250
Portfolio Protection: $0
CDs: $0
Precious Metals: $0



Disclaimer: The investments and trades in my videos and blog entries are not recommendations for others.
I am not a financial planner, financial advisor, accountant, or tax advisor. The financial actions I talk about are for my own portfolio and money and only suited for my own risk tolerance, strategy, and ideas. Copying another person's financial moves can lead to large losses. Each person needs to do their due diligence in researching and planning their own actions in the financial markets

Monday, July 25, 2011

Investment: O - Realty Income Corp

Had a busy weekend manning a booth at a local festival for Heifer.org and spending time with family I didnt do my blog entry for the video...

EDIT: At the time this blog entry was posted I had a Youtube video here. That has been removed but I want the rest of my content to be remain. Nothing hidden no past mistakes ignored. All out in the open.

I've been invested with O for several years now and want to share some insight on that. The years where there was no growth in the dividend was rough to get through. Other companies were growing while O's dividend was lagging. Ok technically it grew but when it goes from $0.1445625 a month to $0.144875 its not really a raise its a gimmick to keep their streak.

Normally that is a concern for me but in O's case in handling the debt its understandable and it was reasons for protecting the investor (paying off debt before a credit liquidity crisis) and not something stupid like management messed up. My patience and faith is starting to be rewarded.

That is something that every investor will need to do. When do you bail out of a stock and sell and under what conditions. If we sell on every mistake made we wouldn't have any companies left.


Disclaimer: The investments and trades in my videos and blog entries are not recommendations for others.
I am not a financial planner, financial advisor, accountant, or tax advisor. The financial actions I talk about are for my own portfolio and money and only suited for my own risk tolerance, strategy, and ideas. Copying another person's financial moves can lead to large losses. Each person needs to do their due diligence in researching and planning their own actions in the financial markets.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Blog format update

Just some quick notes as I have some sharp eyed readers...

In my other portfolios I have rather complex and... well odd Excel spreadsheets. I haven't found a good way to share Excel on Blogger so I am having to use Google Spreadsheets. I suppose I could screenshot Excel and then post that but that is a bit more work then needs to be.
And really its probably for the best. My Excel spreadsheets were easy to follow only because I was the one to make it. Looking at it from anyone else's perspective I had to ask myself.... "What the @$#% is all this?"

So I am converting everything over to Google Spreadsheets but not all of the bookkeeping numbers are yet needed for the Model Portfolio. As they come up I will need to re-edit and alter the formatting of my existing formats. Note these will only be in the spreadsheets themselves not in the overall blog format.

For the Investing account I added a dividend tab. I wanted it to be in the same format as the main account summary page but Google Spreadsheets has a problem I didn't find out until yesterday. It does not handle a large amount of columns nearly as well as Excel. Eventually in a couple years I will have too many month columns and it will bog down and potentially crash. I figured I would save time and just start off with it having the rows as months.

Why bother tracking dividends on a monthly basis? Couldn't I just save time and columns some other way? As this is an income portfolio I need a "raw data" page where all the other calculations can take place. This will also make it easier to compare my numbers with my monthly broker statements so I can avoid as many mistakes as I can that I referenced in a previous post. As the goal of the Model Portfolio is to generate monthly income to live off of, keeping track of income on a monthly basis will show all sorts of things that a running total would not.

Lastly, I added a dividend calendar spreadsheet.  The first tab is the estimated ex-dividend dates to show me when I can no longer make an investment for a particular dividend. The second tab is the estimated payment date when I can expect to get the dividends into my accounts. Note these are estimated dates. Companies can and will fluctuate them.

I like to keep an eye on what companies have up and coming dividends to help me decide where to add to positions.  Let me tell you, there are few things more frustrating in dividend investing then buying a 20% yield stock on the ex-div date because you thought you had some more time. Now I can see what is coming up in the next week or two and research exact dates.
And if nothing else.... I am a man who likes numbers and graphs lol.


Disclaimer: The investments and trades in my videos and blog entries are not recommendations for others.
I am not a financial planner, financial advisor, accountant, or tax advisor. The financial actions I talk about are for my own portfolio and money and only suited for my own risk tolerance, strategy, and ideas. Copying another person's financial moves can lead to large losses. Each person needs to do their due diligence in researching and planning their own actions in the financial markets

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Type of Investments: 3 - REITs

REITs, Real estate investment trusts, act in many ways as a standard company however the few key differences can be important...

EDIT: At the time this blog entry was posted I had a Youtube video here. That has been removed but I want the rest of my content to be remain. Nothing hidden no past mistakes ignored. All out in the open.

REITs can bring in stability to a portfolio as far as income. The leases that are signed can last several years or 10+. These leases will spell out how much is owed and if the rate adjusts during the leases life. Unless a tenant walks out on a REIT, the REIT will have a known quantity on its income.

Most REITs will specialize in one sector. A retirement community REIT will have the vast majority of its real estate in buildings to cater to the needs of the elderly with perhaps some overlap in assisted leaving or medical office buildings. The main theme here would be health care.



Disclaimer: The investments and trades in my videos and blog entries are not recommendations for others.
I am not a financial planner, financial advisor, accountant, or tax advisor. The financial actions I talk about are for my own portfolio and money and only suited for my own risk tolerance, strategy, and ideas. Copying another person's financial moves can lead to large losses. Each person needs to do their due diligence in researching and planning their own actions in the financial markets.

Monday, July 18, 2011

Week 12 Deposit and Politics

Its important to keep up with politics and current events without becoming sucked into personal bias.

EDIT: At the time this blog entry was posted I had a Youtube video here. That has been removed but I want the rest of my content to be remain. Nothing hidden no past mistakes ignored. All out in the open.

Well I see that youtube chose another great image for the thumbnail. Why do I never see other youtubers with this problem?

A little edit. With all the math and numbers that fly around with a portfolio mistakes will happen there isn't a way to get around that. Novels have multiple drafts and multiple editing passes to try to catch the mistakes. For financial books there are entire teams and departments to check and recheck things.

For me, I had the wrong dividend typed in here for PCY though my spreadsheet was correct. Just a good example to recheck your numbers each time between what you have vs what your broker has.

Its also a good way to make sure your broker is correct because not all of your bookkeeping errors will be with you. PCY always pays on the last business day of the month. That was Thursday June 30th. I checked that day but there was no payment. I waited until the morning of Friday July 1st and still nothing. I contacted their help desk chat and they cleared it up.

The deposit goes through their clearing company, Penson. Then it gets passed on to me. So in a few more  hours (about 9:00 am eastern) it will show up. It did but being in July I looked at the July time period of activity. I received the dividend because my cash was higher but it didn't list it in the activity section. I just magically got more money. I checked June's statement and they show that I received the dividend at 11:00pm.
It may just be me but if I don't have the money in my account until July, don't show record of it until July, and do not have access to said money until July; then I did not receive it in June. Its not a big deal its only one day, but the point here is that we have to adjust our expectations to match how our broker does things.

If I hadn't found both of these bookkeeping errors it would not have impacted my actual account dollar totals. However the longer it takes to find the harder it gets to actually find it. Months down the road where there have been lots of payments it could make it hard to spot.

I'm going to go back and edit past entries to make it match but I wanted to make mention of it. I'm not trying to hide anything or trick anyone here. Things like this will happen with just about everyone and its something that needs to be accepted and dealt with. If anyone is expecting this to be flawless then you will be disappointed.


Weekly Activity
$100 deposit into Investing
$1.78 dividend from JNK

Model Portfolio Totals


Trading Account: $0

Investing Account: $893.56
Stock: $0
REITs: $0
Bonds: $551.67
     JNK: 7 shares. ($1.78 total dividends)
     PCY: 10 shares. ($1.26 total dividends)
Maneuvering: $341.89

Savings Account: $300
Emergency: $250
Portfolio Protection: $50
CDs: $0
Precious Metals: $0


Disclaimer: The investments and trades in my videos and blog entries are not recommendations for others.
I am not a financial planner, financial advisor, accountant, or tax advisor. The financial actions I talk about are for my own portfolio and money and only suited for my own risk tolerance, strategy, and ideas. Copying another person's financial moves can lead to large losses. Each person needs to do their due diligence in researching and planning their own actions in the financial markets

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Dividend Investing: 4 - Consecutive Years of Dividend Raises

I continue my series on dividend investing by looking at something I have talked a lot about in other videos, the consecutive years of dividend raises...

EDIT: At the time this blog entry was posted I had a Youtube video here. That has been removed but I want the rest of my content to be remain. Nothing hidden no past mistakes ignored. All out in the open.


I want to expand and clear up something I mentioned in the video. That was how a dividend company vs a non dividend company grows and expands their business.
Now I am not saying that non dividend companies expand recklessly. But when they choose to grow they are not restricted by having to increase the dividend the next year. So their moves can be longer term or if their expansion is not as profitable as they thought then no big deal, they will work it out later.

The dividend paying company though has to be sure it will start generating income to pay for the higher dividend. It could take a few years before any growth will see increased income from any one expansion of buying another company or building a new factory. This forces the company to plan out more so they have several projects in the pipe. They also have to really be sure that they are on target because if there are delays then they will not have enough growth to increase the dividend and investors could become concerned or start to sell.


Disclaimer: The investments and trades in my videos and blog entries are not recommendations for others.
I am not a financial planner, financial advisor, accountant, or tax advisor. The financial actions I talk about are for my own portfolio and money and only suited for my own risk tolerance, strategy, and ideas. Copying another person's financial moves can lead to large losses. Each person needs to do their due diligence in researching and planning their own actions in the financial markets.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Expected Returns in the Financial Markets

Making money is the goal when you are in the financial markets for whatever you are needing it for. How much can you make is the question...

EDIT: At the time this blog entry was posted I had a Youtube video here. That has been removed but I want the rest of my content to be remain. Nothing hidden no past mistakes ignored. All out in the open.

I didn't give a direct answer to the question. I really prefer to play devil's advocate and throw out varying ideas and viewpoints for each person to make up their mind. And in all honesty as I mentioned in the video, its going to vary by a lot between each person.

On one hand that may seem obvious but the person just starting out really needs to dwell on it for a bit. The 80%-90% of the people that fail are probably not going to have many veterans that have been trading for a lot of years. The beginning time for anyone in any trade skill, including trading, should be focused on education and getting experience. The money will come as an afterthought.



Disclaimer: The investments and trades in my videos and blog entries are not recommendations for others.
I am not a financial planner, financial advisor, accountant, or tax advisor. The financial actions I talk about are for my own portfolio and money and only suited for my own risk tolerance, strategy, and ideas. Copying another person's financial moves can lead to large losses. Each person needs to do their due diligence in researching and planning their own actions in the financial markets.

Monday, July 11, 2011

Week 11 Deposit

This week in addition to the deposit I have some updates on brokers and various websites I have been testing.

EDIT: At the time this blog entry was posted I had a Youtube video here. That has been removed but I want the rest of my content to be remain. Nothing hidden no past mistakes ignored. All out in the open.

Weekly Activity
$100 deposit into Investing

Model Portfolio Totals
Trading Account: $0

Investing Account: $794.36
Stock: $0
REITs: $0
Bonds: $554.25
     JNK: 7 shares.
     PCY: 10 shares. ($1.26 total dividends)
Manuevering: $240.11

Savings Account: $300
Emergency: $250
Portfolio Protection: $50
CDs: $0
Precious Metals: $0

Disclaimer: The investments and trades in my videos and blog entries are not recommendations for others.
I am not a financial planner, financial advisor, accountant, or tax advisor. The financial actions I talk about are for my own portfolio and money and only suited for my own risk tolerance, strategy, and ideas. Copying another person's financial moves can lead to large losses. Each person needs to do their due diligence in researching and planning their own actions in the financial markets.

Earning Season

Its that time of quarter again when the new investor looks at stock options and starts seeing big (potential) profit in the Earning Season jumps in prices...

EDIT: At the time this blog entry was posted I had a Youtube video here. That has been removed but I want the rest of my content to be remain. Nothing hidden no past mistakes ignored. All out in the open.

I wish that  the Microsoft (MSFT) option trade that made me x7 my money had not been one of my first trades. Since it was it gave me a false sense of what the markets would be like. I even told myself "Oh this is easy!" It spurned me on to keep trying to duplicate it again and again.

Something I didnt go into detail about in the video but that makes a big impact to trading are the previous quarters estimates of this quarter. Companies will guess at how much they will make. Investors will then try to jump on that and beat other investors to the punch and the stock price will balance out to what that future news is going to be. This is called having the news "priced in".
Not only that but analyst "experts" will make their educated, and sometimes not so educated, guesses. If a company beats these guesses the stock will generally move up because it beat earnings. If they miss earnings then it will usually drop.

This really confused me when I started out. A company would grow their profit by 10% and the stock drops by 5%. How? Because everyone guessed they would grow by 15% so somehow this is a big terrible thing. The trader can get burned and its one more thing they have to research around earning season time.

To me the power of analysts is frustrating. Someone from Goldman Sachs or Citibank makes an announcement downgrading a company on fear of risk of potential difficulties, nothing even substantial, and a stock drops 5%-10%.


Disclaimer: The investments and trades in my videos and blog entries are not recommendations for others.
I am not a financial planner, financial advisor, accountant, or tax advisor. The financial actions I talk about are for my own portfolio and money and only suited for my own risk tolerance, strategy, and ideas. Copying another person's financial moves can lead to large losses. Each person needs to do their due diligence in researching and planning their own actions in the financial markets.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Dividend Investing: 3 - Yield and Yield on Cost

Yield and Yield on Cost are pretty similar in how they are calculated but the one difference is a big one...

EDIT: At the time this blog entry was posted I had a Youtube video here. That has been removed but I want the rest of my content to be remain. Nothing hidden no past mistakes ignored. All out in the open.

In the video I ended with saying that I don't want to pay someone $20 to get $0.66 a year back which is what happened with AOD. That's a 3.3% yield on cost but isnt that what I am doing now if I were to buy a JNJ or KO?

I am not buying today's dividend dollar payout I am buying the 15 year in the future one.
I want to stress this point because its THE #1 cornerstone of dividend investing. Its something I will be repeating over and over and over again probably to the point of beating it to death. I see too many investors missing this point that they don't even consider dividend investing. If it doesnt fit for a person's strategy that is perfectly fine but at least understand it enough to be able to make that decision.

Let's break down the math of my Coca-Cola comment in the video.
KO in June 1989 was around $4.80 with a $0.0375 quarterly payment (adjusted for splits). That's a 3.1% yield.
Today it goes for $68.48 and has a $0.47 quarterly payment, $1.88 a year. That's a 2.7% yield. A person only thinking about yield would probably have skipped it. Maybe even returned to KO and thought its still not paying much.
Yield on cost? That $4.80 spent is making $1.88 a year.... 39% yield on cost. Don't even get me started on if they had reinvested the dividends all those years.

So when I say I do not want to give someone $20 to get $0.66 back a year what I really mean is I want to give someone $20 and get $7.52 back a year (having bought 4 shares of KO).

Whose to say what will become of funds like AOD 20 years from now. All I know is that has cut its payment twice while KO and other companies have raised their payment. When I am jobless I don't want the worry of having to rebalance my bills after having took a paycut.


Disclaimer: The investments and trades in my videos and blog entries are not recommendations for others.
I am not a financial planner, financial advisor, accountant, or tax advisor. The financial actions I talk about are for my own portfolio and money and only suited for my own risk tolerance, strategy, and ideas. Copying another person's financial moves can lead to large losses. Each person needs to do their due diligence in researching and planning their own actions in the financial markets

Monday, July 4, 2011

Week 10 Deposit and the first dividend

We hit some nice milestones with the model portfolio...

EDIT: At the time this blog entry was posted I had a Youtube video here. That has been removed but I want the rest of my content to be remain. Nothing hidden no past mistakes ignored. All out in the open.



On the weekly deposit and review entries I'll also be changing the format as time goes on and new activity starts to talk about. Since I have the investing tab at the top I didn't see a need really to list out each investment's dollar value.

This changing of data shows a bonus of sharing a blog with others. It makes me keep in mind that I am talking about this with others so I need to show whats important. It also makes me keep in mind to pass on the less important stuff. Otherwise this would turn into a daily blog and you guys would get drowned out with too much info.

Just like investing is a marathon, I am finding out blogging is too. Since this portfolio will take years to complete there is no need for me to stampede out a herd of videos and entries at full speed. I can see how people go too fast and get burned out and quit a blog. Then that leaves everyone hanging.
I still want to be here and share with you all the "I hit my goal and quit my job!" video.


Weekly Activity
$100 deposit into Investing
$1.26 PCY dividend received

Model Portfolio Totals

Trading Account: $0

Investing Account: $693.87
Stock: $0
REITs: $0
Bonds: $553.76
     JNK: 7 shares.
     PCY: 10 shares. ($1.26 total dividends)
Manuevering: $140.11

Savings Account: $300
Emergency: $250
Portfolio Protection: $50
CDs: $0
Precious Metals: $0



Disclaimer: The investments and trades in my videos and blog entries are not recommendations for others.
I am not a financial planner, financial advisor, accountant, or tax advisor. The financial actions I talk about are for my own portfolio and money and only suited for my own risk tolerance, strategy, and ideas. Copying another person's financial moves can lead to large losses. Each person needs to do their due diligence in researching and planning their own actions in the financial markets.

Saturday, July 2, 2011

Investment Purchase: JNK

I made my second investment for the model portfolio this week...

EDIT: At the time this blog entry was posted I had a Youtube video here. That has been removed but I want the rest of my content to be remain. Nothing hidden no past mistakes ignored. All out in the open.


The blog entry is coming up a bit later then the video was published. It was a rather crazy week in redoing videos and learning how to edit. Plus I wanted to space out the blog entries and not do multiple ones a day.

At any rate, JNK. It has a nice high yield for a bond fund so why not put all my money there? Why waste my time with PCY that has a noticeably lower yield? Financial instruments have a high yield for a purpose. JNK trades 3.8 million shares a day so this isnt some hush hush secret investment that people don't know about. This yield is the yield because thats what the market has determined will pay enough for the risk. Or that the share price is high enough to risk because the higher that goes the more money per share is risked. If the market didn't think the yield was too high or the share price too high then it would be pushed up, plain and simple.

Here are the links to the funds discussed in this entry
JNK: Spdrs
HYG: iShares
PHB: Powershares


Disclaimer: The investments and trades in my videos and blog entries are not recommendations for others.
I am not a financial planner, financial advisor, accountant, or tax advisor. The financial actions I talk about are for my own portfolio and money and only suited for my own risk tolerance, strategy, and ideas. Copying another person's financial moves can lead to large losses. Each person needs to do their due diligence in researching and planning their own actions in the financial markets.

Friday, July 1, 2011

Dividend Investing: 2 - Research

Starting out with investing has enough obstacles for the new investor that finding information to start the research process shouldn't be one of them...

EDIT: At the time this blog entry was posted I had a Youtube video here. That has been removed but I want the rest of my content to be remain. Nothing hidden no past mistakes ignored. All out in the open.

I was hoping to get this entry and video out on Wednesday but all that editing derailed that plan.
The duration in how long of a video it captures leaves something to be desired. At about the 8-10 minute mark it creates a file too big to handle and doesn't save. The screen capturing part of the video alone took me about an hour of redoing it trying to figure things out. The editing? Yeah for some reason 1 minute of screen capturing resulted in 100MB of file size!

In the end though I am really pleased how it turned out. The clarity turned out nice and when reformatting the data it compiles down to a very reasonable size. It's definitely something I have been meaning to do so I can share what I am looking at with you guys. Learning video editing isn't unlile learning investing and trading. You just have to roll up your sleeves and jump in to reading, learning, and testing.

As to the research process itself, I use all of these tools. Each shows different aspects of a company with some overlap but some uniqueness. The important thing is to get a real deep understanding of the company we might be investing in. This way there will be less chances of an "Oopps I didn't think of that before losing 50% of my money" moments.


Disclaimer: The investments and trades in my videos and blog entries are not recommendations for others.
I am not a financial planner, financial advisor, accountant, or tax advisor. The financial actions I talk about are for my own portfolio and money and only suited for my own risk tolerance, strategy, and ideas. Copying another person's financial moves can lead to large losses. Each person needs to do their due diligence in researching and planning their own actions in the financial markets.