Monday, October 31, 2011

Week 27 Deposit

A whole lot of activity going on 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 couponing for October brought in $103 after covering my costs. That's about a 20% increase to the funding. If you are only able to afford $20, $30 or cannot afford anything? This could be a way to start your own portfolio. Those $0.50 off coupons can REALLY add up.

I thought more on a couple comments left by some anonymous posters in regards to cost basis. To count the DRIP dividends into cost or not. It seems that if I am to count it for the average in price that it would be fair to count it in for the cost. There was a link post to The Passive Income Earner which describes some of the pros and cons of why you would and would not include the dividend in the cost basis of DRIP. With a many aspects on investing it comes down to how you want to look at and manipulate the data.
Am I a wishy washy flip-flopper? Perhaps but the purpose of that spreadsheet is to show different ideas of what to keep track of a portfolio. I will say that one spreadsheet I have for another portfolio has 7 tabs each with about 25 columns. Yeah I go overboard on the number crunching I admit. So the balance for you guys is in not getting crazy with information overload. Just the right amount is needed here.

WMT brings the first quarterly dividend payer to the portfolio. For simplicity's sake I am just taking the monthly average for the spreadsheet. In the long run when there are 20-25 positions, 15+ of them will be quarterly dividends spread through all 3 months of a quarter. The actual dividends received should be closer to the estimate. Also, its more of a guideline estimate for me to gauge how closely I am getting to the income needed for my Model Family.



Weekly Activity
$89.97 deposit into Investing
$113.24 deposit into Trading
$0.98 dividend from PCY

Model Portfolio Totals

Trading Account: $413.24
Estimated Monthly Income: $0 (Not ready to trade until Phase 1 completed)
Max amount in Forex trade (50% of account): $206
Max loss per trade (1% of account): $4

Investing Account: $1,771.17
Estimated Monthly Income: $5.97
Stock
     WMT: $0.53 income/month
Energy
     ERF: $1.69 income/month ($0.009 from DRIP shares)
REITs
     O: $1.06 income/month ($0.005 from DRIP shares)
Bonds
     JNK: $1.69 income/month ($0.010 from DRIP shares)
     PCY: $1.09 income/month ($0.005 from DRIP shares)
Maneuvering Cash: $500

Savings Account: $600
Emergency: $500
Portfolio Protection: $100
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 adviser. 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, October 29, 2011

Demo Forex Trade

Several of you have requested a video on a demo trade. I figured I would roll it into what I am looking at with a spreadsheet for my forex trading...

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.

Ok first off... with as many times as I said the words "Support" and "Resistance" I am sure I switched the two somewhere. Hopefully though some good meaty ideas were shared here.

I am pretty pleased with this trade overall except for one slight problem... it was a loss. I am not trading to have warm fuzzy feelings that I have my trade setup and trade management under control. I want to make money. This loss is nothing to be discouraged about but it is something to take as a learning experience in the post trade review.

Reviewing a forex trade or any financial move after it has occurred is important. Not so much on the dwelling on were we right or wrong because that can lead to emotionally questioning things.
I want to review how the trade went exactly happened. Even if we were correct in the sense of the market moving in the direction we wanted did we make a profit? Did we make enough of one to make it worth our while? If the market we traded did not move in our direction was there a reason? Sometimes there won't be an answer here. In looking at my EUR/AUD trade after the fact I noticed most of the pairs with AUD in them moved similarly with AUD weakening. Perhaps there was news out that I didnt hear which would have moved the value of AUD but not result in a pullback like a technical analysis reason might. There are all sorts of fundamental aspects that might be involved.

Also of note from the video is that I wasn't using any other tools like moving averages, MACD, etc. Here I was mostly focusing on the size of my trade and making sure the spreadsheet was accurate. I can, and will, incorporate other technical analysis tools later to hopefully get some profitable trades.

Enjoy your Halloween weekend!


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 adviser. 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, October 27, 2011

Stops and Trailing Stops

My testing with demo trading the Forex is going well. I think I've resolved one of the last few issues I am having...

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 listed three ways to set a stop but there are many others. The main thing we want out of a stop is a predetermined point where we exit the trade without making it worse. Stress on the predetermined part. It has to be figured out and set before we get into the trade because once money is on the line emotions take over. When that happens we just justifying and sometimes lying to ourselves about what a good stop would be.


Disclaimer: The investments and trades in my videos and blog entries are not recommendations for others.
I am not a financial planner, financial adviser, 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, October 25, 2011

The first dividend growth stock of the portfolio is...

I ended up placing my order last night with Sharebuilder. It should be going through this morning...

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.


One thing I want to talk a bit more about is the % of time I spent talking about the fundamentals of the dividend vs the future plans of Walmart.  I see a lot of talk about a company's financials and they are certainly important to review. However, I see a lot of people look at the future potential of a company and perhaps look at the forward looking P/E but usually the conversation and research stops there. At the same time these people will say "the past is no guarantee of the future." Fair enough I would agree with that statement, but why isn't there more research on that future?

There are no real solid numbers for the future. Of course because it hasn't happened yet. So the best we can do is make reasonable guesses.
1: Walmart has been successful in the past leveraging their size to offer low priced items people want or need.
2: They are using that in new ways and new markets.
You don't need to write out a 20 page thesis and employ a team of researchers to see the potential value in that.
How confident am I that I am right? 15% confident as that is how much of the Investing money is going into this position. As time goes on and I get more positions, 20-25 total, I'll only be 4%-5% confident


Disclaimer: The investments and trades in my videos and blog entries are not recommendations for others.
I am not a financial planner, financial adviser, 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, October 24, 2011

Week 26 Deposit and Foreign Taxes



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.



Here is a link to IRS Publication 514. Again, I am not a tax adviser and not saying what ERF taxes will qualify as. I will say though that I will be using Turbo Tax and talking with a licensed tax preparer about it. Whatever taxes are due I'll pay, tax credit or not, and it will not change if I keep owning ERF. It has an 8% yield I think a 15% tax is not going to break anything.

Since I shifted my forex trade size and max loss per trade being on Oanda vs ThinkorSwim I have updated the Trading Account's estimates below.



Weekly Activity
$100 deposit into Investing
$1.65 dividend from ERF

Model Portfolio Totals

Trading Account: $300
Estimated Monthly Income: $0 (Not ready to trade until Phase 1 completed)
Max amount in Forex trade (50% of account): $150
Max loss per trade (1% of account): $3

Investing Account: $1,654.72
Estimated Monthly Income: $5.77
Stock
Energy
     ERF: $1.69 income/month ($0.009 from DRIP shares)
REITs
     O: $1.06 income/month ($0.005 from DRIP shares)
Bonds
     JNK: $1.85 income/month ($0.012 from DRIP shares)
     PCY: $1.17 income/month ($0.005 from DRIP shares)
     TLT: $250 reserved for future purchase
Maneuvering Cash: $410.03

Savings Account: $600
Emergency: $500
Portfolio Protection: $100
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 adviser. 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, October 21, 2011

Planning out the Demo Trading in the Forex

"Its about time!"
Tychus, Starcraft II


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 fought against trading platforms that I did not like and tried to trade on them. They are a big distraction emotionally at least for me. By itself its no big deal and for the seasoned professional who has thousands of hours of experience in trading its probably no big deal. But for the new person trying to learn and you are using software you do not like, with some background music, with dual monitors and you are doing something else on the other monitor, and kids or a spouse making noise in another room... it can all add up to too much distraction and you lose focus.

Think to when you first started your current job. Were you able to multitask on day one with your job duties or did you need to really focus in on what the heck was going on. Its often said trading is a business, a job, and should be treated like one.

Another consideration to why you need to be comfortable with your trading platform software... you are potentially going to be using it every day for years. You better be comfortable and happy with it for that sort of commitment. There can be enough stress with losses to not have to deal with software problems. Especially in the early stages of learning if we get too frustrated or have too many problems we run the risk of throwing our hands in the air and giving up to look for something else to try. At that point was the problem with trading or the problem with us? If it is with us won't those same problems follow us to our next money making idea?


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 adviser. 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, October 17, 2011

Week 25 Deposit and Forex Trading Update

Time for another deposit into the Model Portfolio. I also give an update on why there has been no talk of trading.

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'm not too proud to admit that Oanda and Metatrader4 are currently defeating me. I really hadn't expected this many problems because it seems that everyone are using these two. Thusly I have to think the problem lies with myself and its something I have to work through.  I do keep eyeing TDAmeritrade though. They seem to be getting their act together and I may move back to them. Time will tell. Whichever I go with though... its time to get this trading show on the road!

In the video I mention that I am getting an extra $0.02 but only 1 is shown here. O and PCY each have $0.005 and that is being rounded down by Google Docs for each one thusly that $0.01 is "lost" in the total.
Its a display issue only and if I change the columns to 3 decimal points everything adds up.
Keeping track of stats and the math is important but.... its only half a penny.  Since its only a visual issue and the math still holds I plan to leave it.




Weekly Activity
$100 deposit into Investing

Model Portfolio Totals

Trading Account: $300
Estimated Monthly Income: $0 (Not ready to trade until Phase 1 completed)
Max amount in Forex trade (20% of account): $60
Max loss per trade (2% of account): $6

Investing Account: $1,535.65
Estimated Monthly Income: $5.76
Stock
Energy
     ERF: $1.68 income/month
REITs
     O: $1.06 income/month ($0.005 from DRIP shares)
Bonds
     JNK: $1.85 income/month ($0.012 from DRIP shares)
     PCY: $1.17 income/month ($0.005 from DRIP shares)
     TLT: $250 reserved for future purchase
Maneuvering Cash: $310.03

Savings Account: $600
Emergency: $500
Portfolio Protection: $100
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 adviser. 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, October 15, 2011

Portfolio Management: 8 - Time Management

Time has a big impact on a portfolio and should be a part of portfolio management...

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.

Time and the different ways to measure and look at it can be apart of reviewing your portfolio's numbers right up there with accuracy rating, and profit/loss ratios.



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 adviser. 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, October 12, 2011

Dividend Investing: 7 - Dates

Keeping the different dates for dividend investing separate can be confusing at first...

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.


Buying on the ex-dividend date and expecting to get the dividend is a frustrating thing... believe me. Not only do you miss one dividend but you are as far away from the next one as you can get.

Still, once you get the different dividend dates down you can really bring in some timing on your side as I described with the declaration date. Most other investors blow it off as the least important one. But for timing your purchases? It is the most important one if you are familiar with a company's dividend history.

Here is the SEC's info on dividends
http://www.sec.gov/answers/dividen.htm


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 adviser. 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, October 10, 2011

Week 24 Deposit and Seasonality


Seasonality is an important factor for when you want to buy something. Its not talked often enough imo...

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.





Seasonality is just one of the reasons to pick when you want to invest but I didn't talk about trading with it.  For futures there is probably more utility to seasonality then investing.
MRCI has great seasonality charts and tools. The best I have seen. One of the few actually as most others that I have tried looking for only have the S&P500 or the Dow and not in enough detail to be useful. They cover all major contract months  for futures and have a 5 year, 15 year, and 30 year line on each chart. When all 3 are moving in the same direction, with the same strength (steepness of move), and starting around the same time then we know that we have something to work with.
Here are their seasonal charts. They get updated every quarter but really, does the 5,15, and 30 year averages really change that much in a quarter? The charts cover year round.

Are they worth it? $140 is pretty steep for someone starting out. I find them pretty useful but would only buy them once every 2-3 years tops. Since they do cost a fee for these I can't really send copies or post examples but they do have a couple sample pages on the second link I posted. Page 3 of their example PDF is the meat of this product.


Weekly Activity
$100 deposit into Investing

Model Portfolio Totals

Trading Account: $300
Estimated Monthly Income: $0 (Not ready to trade until Phase 1 completed)
Max amount in Forex trade (20% of account): $60
Max loss per trade (2% of account): $6

Investing Account: $1,383.01
Estimated Monthly Income: $5.75
Stock
Energy
     ERF: $1.68 income/month
REITs
     O: $1.05 income/month
Bonds
     JNK: $1.84 income/month
     PCY: $1.17 income/month
     TLT: $250 reserved for future purchase
Maneuvering Cash: $210.03

Savings Account: $600
Emergency: $500
Portfolio Protection: $100
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 adviser. 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, October 8, 2011

Poor Budget Balancing

I mentioned planyspent.org in a previous video and want to talk about it here...

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.


Education and knowledge seems to be the big key here. If one is lacking in these two then they will only see a few choices and they can well be all poor options available. But when one is more aware, it opens up

When presented with a choice we need to keep in mind that not only will it give an immediate answer to whatever problem we are needing to overcome but it can also open and close further choices down the road. This simulation person maxed out their credit cards and made some poor choices while they were middle class. That made their life in the poor class be that much harder.

That carries over into investing and trading too. If you are putting 50% of your account into a trade then you might win big. Or you might lose big and when you do you now have a drastically smaller account and you realize you made a poor choice both figuratively and literally. Your available options and choices of how to proceed in future trades could be changed and reduced. One example is blowing up your account and losing enough so that you cannot meet the margin requirement of whatever you are wanting to trade. For dividend investing it could be having all or too much of your portfolio in one stock. That dividend gets cut, now you have to sell shares and live of capital gains to pay your bills making next month's pressure upon dividend income harder to achieve.


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 adviser. 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, October 6, 2011

Garden Project: September Update

Seeing as I talked about budgeting and freeing up free cash flow for the Model Portfolio, this week seemed like a great time to give an update on the garden. September has passed and its coming down to the wire for my garden.

There was a night of frost in the middle of September. Just light enough to cause some damage. Cucumber plants apparently hate the frost more the other plants as it didn't survive while all the others did. What was odd is it was also browning and drying out. I admit I wasn't watering  as much as I should but for it to die off surprised me. That cost me 6 cucumbers.

The tomato plant is still going nuts. 34 tomatoes on it now and I have picked 6 or so off of it of varying sizes. Something I did not know about tomatoes is they do not have to ripen on the vine. Several fell off while green and I collected them with the debate of making fried green tomatoes. 4-5 days later they were firm tasty red tomatoes having transformed on my kitchen counter.

The main obstacle last month was the sun. Living in a townhome, the only land I have is on the north side of the house. I do not think it gets direct sunlight anymore at all during the day.  In August I noticed the amount of time was decreasing of direct sunlight. Its something I will have to take into consideration next year.

I am pretty hopeful though that next year will work. As with advancing my education and knowledge for the Model Portfolio the same holds true for gardening. Next time will be more profitable. I only used 1 of my 2 raised garden beds this year, I'm more aware of proper placement of which vegetables need to be next to what.

I have 1 pumpkin, 1 squash, 2 green bell peppers, and the 30 or so tomatoes that I might still be able to get this year. I only have 1 more month though and that is if I am lucky.

Total cost of the raised gardens: $154
Total cost of the seedlings: $27
Total cost of the pre-grown plants: $46.50
Total cost: $227.50


Total profit: $6.50 from 2.5 lbs of tomatoes, 2 green bell peppers, 1 yellow bell pepper, and a lot of experience.

Monday, October 3, 2011

Week 23 Deposit, Couponing and Costco

Quite a bit to talk about for the Model Portfolio's weekly update

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.


So what do you guys think about increasing the Weekly Deposits of the Investing and Trading accounts by tweaking the Average American Family's budget? I've been debating on that point a bit. At first I thought it would be breaking the spirit of the Rules of the Portfolio. However a family making tough choices to work towards their goals isn't unreasonable.

The Investing account has received its first DRIP. Yes sirree 0.0404 free shares generating $0.005 extra a month! Ok well its a start at least. In all seriousness, I have added a DRIP section to the spreadsheet. This will record how many free shares I have received through compounding and how much free income it is generating vs if I would take it as cash.


Weekly Activity
$100 deposit into Savings

Model Portfolio Totals

Trading Account: $300
Estimated Monthly Income: $0 (Not ready to trade until Phase 1 completed)
Max amount in Forex trade (20% of account): $60
Max loss per trade (2% of account): $6

Investing Account: $1,299.60
Estimated Monthly Income: $5.74
Stock
Energy
     ERF: $1.68 income/month
REITs
     O: $1.05 income/month
Bonds
     JNK: $1.84 income/month
     PCY: $1.17 income/month
     TLT: $250 reserved for future purchase
Maneuvering Cash: $110.03

Savings Account: $600
Emergency: $500
Portfolio Protection: $100
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 adviser. 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.