Saturday, March 8, 2014

Monthly Update: February 2014

In this day and age where Amazon is working on flying robots to deliver your packages and Google is working on self driving cars, how in the world can Lending Club be so slow? It took over a week to get their monthly statement to me, hence the delay in my monthly update. For a guy who is used to running his monthly numbers the night of the last day of the month, waiting a week felt excruciating. #firstworldproblems to be sure and it is better then #eatingketchupsandwichestillpayday.

Portfolio Activities
     $900 deposits into Investing account

     $100 deposits into Lending Club account     

     Sold SPLS, +8.3% gain
     Bought 3.4936 shares of IBM @ $179.19
     Bought 42 shares of ARCP @ $14.17

Portfolio Income
Dividends

Total: $49.16
     POT: $10.85
     BLV: $2.78
     JNK: $1.43
     AAPL: $3.05
     ARCO: $5.62
     NDRO: $3.66
     PSEC: $7.51
     RKT: $3.10
     STX: 8.31
     PCY: $1.93
     Interest from cash: $0.52
Lending Club
     Interest: $4.86
Rental Income
     Townhouse 1: $855


Lending Club:  I'm also not pleased that they sit on my deposits for one week before releasing it to me to invest. I understand that they want to get some interest and have it in their accounts but come on.

Their fees are much lower then when I was with them in 2009 probably due to then I was buying and selling notes and they take extra money from the sale. I am open to the fact that I could well be wrong on the reasons for those 2009 fees but I'm not worried enough about it to look into it as that's in the past. I'm focusing on the now.
The now includes some great interest rates so I don't have too much to complain about. I'm pretty excited to see how LC turns out for me over the course of the year.

Low deposits: Had lower deposits than I had wanted this month. A positive life event happened that I wanted to take advantage of that needed money. I keep my deposits at a high % of my income so there is little wiggle room in my budget but that means that when something has to give it's my investing money. I know that some people want consistency and to keep it the same with their portfolios so make wiggle room for events. I'd rather plow as much as I can into the portfolio.

Sold SPLS: The problem with investing in a turn around story where a company that has fallen out of favor rises up to its former greatness is... when it doesn't. I wasn't comfortable at all with SPLS progress last year. They were supposed to be expanding in Europe, spending a ton on revamping their online website and expanding into more products. The money was spent but the new business has failed to come.
I had set a mental line in the sand that I cannot take a loss with this position. It got to about my entry level and the dividends were the profit. I wasn't planning on this being a trade but I also hadn't planned on losing money after nearly a year invested with them.

Disclaimer: The investments and trades discussed are not recommendations for others. I am not a financial planner, financial adviser, 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.

7 comments:

  1. Still a pretty good month. The best part about passive income is that it keeps working even if you don't. So while your deposits were lower you still received what looks like about $70-80 between dividends/LC.

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    Replies
    1. Exactly. You know after years of building up the portfolio... its nice to start seeing real income numbers.

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  2. Congrats on the passive income, PMU.

    Best wishes

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  3. Another good month.. Each new investment makes the number climb higher along with the dividend raises...

    I clicked on your portfolio tab, and your spreadsheet comes up saying can't be displayed in a frame... This is the only blog that I have problems with a google spreadsheet. The watchlist shows up though which is on the same tab.

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    Replies
    1. Odd. It was working before but I see it too.
      I stopped publishing and republished and its back for me. Thanks for letting me know

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  4. You said it best in a response to a comment above. The biggest reward is starting to see some real income numbers from those regular investments. A year or two of those Lending Club contributions should really start boosting those numbers! A good start so far, plus you aren't contending with any issuance lag and can get that cash (once it finally clears) to work!

    On that topic cash clearing, it is unbelievable how slow Lending Club is with that. With Prosper, they will let you invest the same day as your transfer. There is no excuse for how long it takes.

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