Week 35 update and 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.

I put off reading The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham for far too long. Its one of the classic guides to investing. I cannot recall anyone saying that it is outdated or useless even 60 years later.



Weekly Activity
$125 deposit into Savings
$35.80 deposit into Trading
$1.65 dividend from ERF


Model Portfolio Totals

Trading Account: $885.13
Estimated Monthly Income: $0 (Not ready to trade until Phase 1 completed)
Max amount in Forex trade (50% of account): $442
Max loss per trade (1% of account): $8
Portfolio stop (3% account): $26

Investing Account: $1,768.75
Estimated Monthly Income: $6.03 ($0.087 from DRIP shares)
Stock
     WMT: $0.53 income/month
Energy
     ERF: $1.71 income/month ($0.030 from DRIP shares)
REITs
     O: $1.07 income/month ($0.014 from DRIP shares)
Bonds
     JNK: $1.62 income/month ($0.030 from DRIP shares)
     PCY: $1.09 income/month ($0.014 from DRIP shares)
Maneuvering Cash: $500

Savings Account: $900
Emergency: $600
Portfolio Protection
     Trading Account: $50
     Investing Account: $250
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.

Type of Investments: 5 - MLP

The next type of investment an investor might want to consider is both sexy and dangerous at the same time...

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.

At the time of this posting I do not own any MLPs in the Model Portfolio or elsewhere. For me the complexity and risk is too great and I have been reading and following MLPs for years. But that 8%+ yield sure is tempting isn't it? I strongly encourage talking to a tax adviser (which I am definitely not) before investing in MLPs.

On the other hand don't let me paint the picture that investing in master limited partnerships is bad. Its perfectly legal and quite profitable but as I discuss in the video: its more complex then just picking up some shares of JNJ or KO.

IRS coverage of UBTI : http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p598.pdf

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.

Week 34 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.

The ability of the savings account to generate hidden profit by preventing small emergencies from becoming large ones shouldn't be overlooked. Its just another example of how Money Management works outside the portfolio.


Weekly Activity
$175 withdraw out of Emergency Savings for car repair
$100 deposit into Savings
$1.07 dividend from O


Model Portfolio Totals

Trading Account: $849.33
Estimated Monthly Income: $0 (Not ready to trade until Phase 1 completed)
Max amount in Forex trade (50% of account): $424
Max loss per trade (1% of account): $8
Portfolio stop (3% account): $25

Investing Account: $1,739.16
Estimated Monthly Income: $6.02 ($0.077 from DRIP shares)
Stock
     WMT: $0.53 income/month
Energy
     ERF: $1.70 income/month ($0.019 from DRIP shares)
REITs
     O: $1.07 income/month ($0.014 from DRIP shares)
Bonds
     JNK: $1.62 income/month ($0.030 from DRIP shares)
     PCY: $1.09 income/month ($0.014 from DRIP shares)
Maneuvering Cash: $500

Savings Account: $775
Emergency: $475
Portfolio Protection
     Trading Account: $50
     Investing Account: $250
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.

Importance of the Savings Account

Oh yeah that 3rd account of the portfolio that never gets attention. Well its time for it to step forward...

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.

Today really highlights the importance of having a savings account funded and ready to go. Its easy to look at the yield of dividend investing or the gains from forex trading and think that is where the big returns and gains will come from. However the savings can have ninja profits.

What is a ninja profit? One that we never see and never know about. For example, today the tire cost me $125 and the tearing out of the lug nuts was $50 for $175 total. Lets say I didnt have insurance to cover the tow and didn't have savings money ready I might have had to have left my car by the street and try to raise the money by selling a position of stock. It can take 3 days before the money settles before it becomes live in our accounts that we can withdraw it. Oh and today was Friday so really we may not have had access to the money in cash form until potentially Wednesday. 6 days my car could have been on the side of the road. What are the odds that the police would have tagged my car and then towed it as abandoned?

I honestly have no idea how long it would take for that process to play out but I could see having to pay for that tow, and a second one to get the car out of the impounding lot. Plus whatever fees the police want to tack on. $175 total? I still need my tire fixed so the total bill is $350. By having savings money ready I potentially saved double the fees later, a 100% profit! That's not even counting if I had to use a credit card.

Now that was an extreme example I admit but I never want to be even close to that risk.



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.

Psychology of Emotions: 3 - Fear

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself"

Franklin D Roosevelt

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.

Fear is the natural opposite of Greed when it comes to emotions in Forex trading and dividend investing. Anytime money is on the line actually.

Being human, we will succumb to emotions that's just how that is. I see successful traders mention that even after years of being profitable and knowing better that they still have "oops" moments. It is a big encouraging for us starting out to know that its a problem for everyone.





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.

Week 33 Update

Oh youtube. How you love to torment me with your thumbnails you choose.

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.

Managing an investing and forex trading portfolio is going to require a lot of changing between multiple time frames. I like companies that pay a dividend every month. However I need to keep in mind that it will take years to DRIP in a lot of compounding. Then again I am trading on the hourly time frame candlesticks for Forex. Yet its not about one trade but all the trades over months and years.
Its all the time frames together.


Weekly Activity
$100 deposit into Trading
$1.62 dividend from JNK


Model Portfolio Totals

Trading Account: $849.33
Estimated Monthly Income: $0 (Not ready to trade until Phase 1 completed)
Max amount in Forex trade (50% of account): $424
Max loss per trade (1% of account): $8
Portfolio stop (3% account): $25

Investing Account: $1,746.06
Estimated Monthly Income: $6.01 ($0.072 from DRIP shares)
Stock
     WMT: $0.53 income/month
Energy
     ERF: $1.70 income/month ($0.019 from DRIP shares)
REITs
     O: $1.07 income/month ($0.009 from DRIP shares)
Bonds
     JNK: $1.62 income/month ($0.030 from DRIP shares)
     PCY: $1.09 income/month ($0.014 from DRIP shares)
Maneuvering Cash: $500

Savings Account: $850
Emergency: $550
Portfolio Protection
     Trading Account: $50
     Investing Account: $250
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.

Pivot Points

Time to report to you guys about Pivot Points for the Forex...

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.

Pivot Points provide multiple levels of support and resistance that I plan to use for my Forex trading. As I mention in the video, I was pleasantly surprised at how well they worked. I do want to stress that these aren't hard lines. They are more like zones where as price gets close it will start to slow down. Perhaps it will over shoot a little bit. The price action (PA) of the candlesticks just before and the current one are pretty telling. If the candlesticks get shorter and shorter as it approaches one of the lines then things are probably going to congest. At least that's what I've been noticing.

Though most brokers should have it automated, here are the formulas for completeness sake..
Pivot Point: (High + Low + Close) / 3

Resistance 1: (PP + PP) - Low
Support 1: (PP + PP) - High

Resistance 2: PP + (High - Low)
Support 2:  PP - (High - Low)

One parting comment. Pivot points work until they don't. By that I mean these or any tool are not going to be an end all be all of trading. Its one of multiple things to take into consideration.


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 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

Psychology of Emotions: 2 - Greed

The first emotion up is the 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.

As investor and traders, we will encounter greed at nearly every step of our process. It comes up so often that as I mention in the video, we can think we are aware and careful of one type while succumbing to another.

Yet we have to have some amount of greed to make so how does one maintain balance? Whichever argument gets in the last word is a great indicator as to what your mindset is.
"This is really risky but I can make a lot of money. Lets get into this trade."
"I can make a lot of money but this is really risky. Lets get into this trade."
The difference is slight in words but large in mentality. The second thought process is more inclined to be using money management to protect themselves.



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 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

Week 32 Update and Timing your investments

There are lots of different reasons to invest or not invest at a certain time...

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.

This may or may not be the Christmas rally. For me, I want to wait and see. I saw one author last week not only say that this is the Christmas rally but that this is the beginning of a new bull market. Kind of a bold statement what with everything going on in the world right now.


Weekly Activity
$100 deposit into Trading
$1.00 dividend from PCY


Model Portfolio Totals

Trading Account: $749.33
Estimated Monthly Income: $0 (Not ready to trade until Phase 1 completed)
Max amount in Forex trade (50% of account): $374
Max loss per trade (1% of account): $7
Portfolio stop (3% account): $21

Investing Account: $1,738.13
Estimated Monthly Income: $6.00 ($0.062 from DRIP shares)
Stock
     WMT: $0.53 income/month
Energy
     ERF: $1.70 income/month ($0.019 from DRIP shares)
REITs
     O: $1.07 income/month ($0.009 from DRIP shares)
Bonds
     JNK: $1.61 income/month ($0.020 from DRIP shares)
     PCY: $1.09 income/month ($0.014 from DRIP shares)
Maneuvering Cash: $500

Savings Account: $850
Emergency: $550
Portfolio Protection
     Trading Account: $50
     Investing Account: $250
CDs: $0
Precious Metals: $0

Psychology of Trading and Investing: 1 - A curious little box...

So you are all psyched up and ready to start making money by trading and investing. Or are you?

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.

Out of all my videos and ideas for investing, trading in the forex, and becoming self sufficient, this series I feel will be the most important. If there is only one thing I can share and you guys get from me this is it hands down. Of course, I hope there is more utility found but I want to stress this series as #1.

I have seen the topic of psychology and emotion with money come up a lot in the last couple of years so there is progress. But to be honest I have found it lacking. Its usually only given a token acknowledgement with a small chapter of a book. The message given is extremely short, "Control your emotions." Wow great that's wonderful.  Yes clearly its as simple as that given all the examples of history in which mankind has tried to control its emotion. So what is a new comer to the financial markets to do?

There needs to be more discussion on examples of emotion and psychology. When passing on ideas about charting the trading community doesn't say "Go use some technical analysis tools for your trading." No we see countless hours of charting examples going down to minute detail. Why not the same for psychology?

That's what I propose to do here.


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 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

Watch list usage for your investing

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.

Is it really critical to have a watch list and get the best price for your investments? Keep in mind that my time horizon is 15 years to retirement and that only places me in my early 50s I then have another 30 or more years to live after that. Every couple % extra discount in price you get means you will get more shares especially with Sharebuilder allowing for partial share purchases. Compound that over 45 years and yes it will add up just as much as those $0.005 drip raises. So being patient and waiting for a good price is important.

That is all fine and good but what about my purchase of WMT? I bought that in Oct at the end of a 10%-15% rise. Doesn't that conflict with what I just said? No because with WMT I got in based on its historic P/E levels whereas with WM there wasn't a discount of note.

WMT has a 10 year P/E average of 18.79.  Right now they are sitting at a 12.39, a 65% value of their historic norm. Now if they were overvalued in the past or undervalued now is a different topic of debate.
WM would need to be at $22.93 to match that same discount. If WM had that price right now then I would be a lot less choosy about my entry price.



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 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

Week 31 Update and Psychology in Money 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.

Weekly Activity
$136.09 deposit into Trading
$50 deposit into Savings
$1.62 dividend from ERF


Model Portfolio Totals

Trading Account: $649.33
Estimated Monthly Income: $0 (Not ready to trade until Phase 1 completed)
Max amount in Forex trade (50% of account): $324
Max loss per trade (1% of account): $6
Portfolio stop (3% account): $18

Investing Account: $1,697.00
Estimated Monthly Income: $6.00
Stock
     WMT: $0.53 income/month
Energy
     ERF: $1.70 income/month ($0.019 from DRIP shares)
REITs
     O: $1.07 income/month ($0.009 from DRIP shares)
Bonds
     JNK: $1.61 income/month ($0.020 from DRIP shares)
     PCY: $1.09 income/month ($0.009 from DRIP shares)
Maneuvering Cash: $500

Savings Account: $850
Emergency: $550
Portfolio Protection
     Trading Account: $50
     Investing Account: $250
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.

Oscillator with the CoT data

Thanksgiving here in the U.S. has made it for a slow week but I was still able to accomplish my main goal I discussed in the weekly review...

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 yeah... my voice is really canned. I had to buy a new headset as the mic went out on my last one. Still, some good info here I think.  Google docs is nice but it does not yet have the capabilities I was needing with this level of detail.

The main purpose for this entry wasn't to share my oscillator creation skills but more in showing process. What are some of the things to consider when creating a trading strategy. What are some of the things to be aware of but not add into a trading strategy.

For the CoT report itself, I've talked about it a couple times previously.  Everywhere that I had seen it mentioned though was pretty basic and vague. "This is what the CoT report is. Have fun figuring out how to use it." A lot of it will be personal preference and opinion in how to interpret the data. So I came up with the charts I showed in the video to help bring the data out into view. The raw data is over 120 columns for each week. The vast majority is unnecessary for us.

A little bit on my back testing in the Forex. I only looked at one year on 4 currencies. Its not what I would consider to be an exhaustive investigation. But its a start and we have to start somewhere when demo trading. There is a paradox with back testing. We want to test ideas out with data on what we have. Obviously since we do not know the future we have to use the past. However we cannot be sure that what worked in the past will work in the future. So if we find something useful like a 68% accuracy oscillator? Well it will work until it doesn't.

Here is a link to the raw data: http://www.cftc.gov/MarketReports/CommitmentsofTraders/HistoricalCompressed/index.htm
The data I used is in the "Futures Only Reports" in the middle of the page where each year is broken out in a grid.


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.

Week 30 Update

A good week overall and a better one to come...

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 Trading
$1.06 dividend from O


Model Portfolio Totals

Trading Account: $513.24
Estimated Monthly Income: $0 (Not ready to trade until Phase 1 completed)
Max amount in Forex trade (50% of account): $256
Max loss per trade (1% of account): $5
Portfolio stop (3% account): $15

Investing Account: $1,735.25
Estimated Monthly Income: $5.99
Stock
     WMT: $0.53 income/month
Energy
     ERF: $1.69 income/month ($0.009 from DRIP shares)
REITs
     O: $1.07 income/month ($0.009 from DRIP shares)
Bonds
     JNK: $1.61 income/month ($0.020 from DRIP shares)
     PCY: $1.09 income/month ($0.009 from DRIP shares)
Maneuvering Cash: $500

Savings Account: $800
Emergency: $500
Portfolio Protection
     Trading Account: $50
     Investing Account: $250
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.

Releasing private information

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 seen it too many times online. Someone is just being open and honest and social offering some tidbits of their life when someone comes along and turns it into a game. Trying to find out who and where they are offline and releasing that knowledge to embarrass or harass them. That's the milder version of what I have seen. It doesn't matter what type of community it is because the person doing the outting? They feel they themselves are anonymous.

I made this video not only as an explanation for why I won't give out personal info but as a partial warning to others. Once its on the internet its out there permanently.  I'd rather not have to close things down because someone is harassing me.  At this time I'll say nobody is and I honestly don't foresee a time when someone would. But its better to be safe then sorry.


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.

Garden Project: Final 2011 results

As winter has set in and thus my garden has run its course, its time I take a look at this year's garden and determine if it can save a family money that could be applied towards building income.

I didn't get much more produce out of the garden as we had some nights of frost. For all the talk of how tomatoes die quickly in the frost they survived more then everything else apart from the pumpkin. That didn't turn orange for me.

As with demo trading the Forex, my gains in the beginning are all about knowledge and experience. I had lots of setbacks that I would consider newbie mistakes. My seedlings didn't get a lot of direct sunlight. I left them out in the heavy wind and they blew over drying out forcing me to buy potted plants. I found out pumpkins are A-holes. Seriously. I had to keep cutting vines off because the vines would grow towards the other plants. The leaves would grow up and over other plants stealing their sun. Worse, they would grow vines wrapping around the stalks of other plants trying to kill them! I didn't even get a pumpkin out of the deal though come to think of it the pumpkin plant probably did it out of spite and revenge.

What I did manage to grow with the time I had and the space I used? I have no doubt this can easily help out a family's budget and for those truly struggling this may be their only chance for fresh vegetables and vitamins. I already have plans for improvement next year. Starting earlier, getting some grow lights, better positioning for sunlight exposure and making use of the 2nd raised bed. I'll carry over my costs to the next year before I apply any profits towards the . I would feel like I was "cooking my books" if I didn't.

One last comment on this Garden Project. The rewards here go beyond the dollar amounts that can be saved and applied to investing and trading though that was the main goal. After spending all day working on excel spreadsheets, office meetings, and sorting through a hundred emails to come home and sort through technical analysis of Forex charts.... there is something to be said for the zen like simplicity of the sound of hose water striking the leaves on my garden.

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: $15.50 from 5 lbs of tomatoes ($2.50/lb), 2 green bell peppers ($1 each), 1 yellow bell pepper ($1.50 each), and a lot of experience.

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

Week 29 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.

Weekly Activity
$100 deposit into Savings
$1.57 dividend from JNK


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
Portfolio stop (3% account): $12

Investing Account: $1,759.35
Estimated Monthly Income: $5.98
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: $1.61 income/month ($0.020 from DRIP shares)
     PCY: $1.09 income/month ($0.009 from DRIP shares)
Maneuvering Cash: $500

Savings Account: $800
Emergency: $500
Portfolio Protection
     Trading Account: $50
     Investing Account: $250
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.

Re-researching your investments

Another earning season is underway. What does a dividend investor need to do...

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 main point I wanted to bring up is a comparison to my initial investing research on O. In my initial research I am super picky. I start with the Dividend Champions and Dividend Contenders lists. Out of the ten thousand plus of publicly traded companies out there only 250 make this cut but that is still not good enough for me.  Not even a third of those are. Some hedge fund manager might think so but this is my own money I had to save and work for.

The trap of complacency is a real thing. I see lots of investors that think they know their company talk to me about it and since they haven't kept up with their due diligence they are invested in a different company then what they think. For example a Pepsi investor talking about the virtues of Pepsi Cola for being one of the two top carbonated beverage in the world! Nope sorry. Pepsi Cola is actually 3rd now. Coke and Diet Coke are the top two. Additionally, Pepsi made more money with their snacks since they own Frito Lay (Doritos, Ruffles, Lays, Rold Gold, Tostitos and more) then they do with soda so one might not even call them a beverage company anymore. If an investor missed that then perhaps they missed other things and their reason for being invested in their company has changed.


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 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

Week 28 Update and Trading thoughts

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.

As I mention in the video, I've added in a Portfolio stop below based upon what I discussed in the Portfolio stop video. Its easy to just multiply the Max loss per trade by 3 but I want it up front and out in the open so I can keep an eye on it.  Why? That number is part of what I'll need to balance my Portfolio Protection money from the Savings account on.


Weekly Activity
$100 deposit into Savings


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
Portfolio stop (3% account): $12

Investing Account: $1,770.72
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: $1.60 income/month ($0.010 from DRIP shares)
     PCY: $1.09 income/month ($0.009 from DRIP shares)
Maneuvering Cash: $500

Savings Account: $700
Emergency: $500
Portfolio Protection
     Trading Account: $50
     Investing Account: $150
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.

Portfolio Stop

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.

Portfolio stops combined with Trades stops, trailing stops, or more commonly called just stops; gives us a more complete risk management system for our trading account. It lets us "see the forest from the trees" that focusing on each trade can make more difficult.


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.

Coupons and their impact on 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.

I've found that I only spend about 30 minutes extra a week clipping coupons and looking through sales ads  Unless your job has you working Sunday morning do you have anything else you could be doing with that time to make you money?  I saved $195 in one month before costs of the membership and the coupon book which were a yearly fee. Even if I spent 2 hours a week between clipping coupons and going to Costco in addition to only going to a grocery store.. 8 hours month... that's $24/hour. I shop weekly but many families shop twice a month or monthly. $48/hour sounds even better.

If you have the cooking ability, only buy what is a bargain for that week. Buy a couple extra of each item too. Then when you get home plan your menus around what you have. In a coupon shopping trips you will have built up a good sized stockpile of ingredients. Then when you do want to cook a specific recipe you will have that ingredient that you bought 50% off a couple weeks back. That style of shopping as much as the actual coupons themselves have lowered my grocery bill. Though to be honest I am only counting the actual coupon value as bonus towards the Model Portfolio at the end of each month.

I want to expand on the Costco numbers a bit. I had price compared 80+ items and found that Costco on average was 56% cheaper. Now that won't mean that the $800 average grocery bill will turn into $400. Costco doesn't have everything that a family would need. Additionally, is a family going to really go through a gallon of mayonnaise before it expires? Some perhaps but not if you are single or just a couple. There are plenty of things though that won't expire. Will even a single person use 36 rolls of toilet paper in their lifetime? Will you use that gallon of dishwasher detergent eventually? Yeah probably. Since I had to pay for the Costco membership I am taking the difference in price saved from the Costco purchases vs the local grocery store price.

You can free quite a bit more cash flow in your budget then you might think. If you are only able to get a little extra out of your groceries at least its something and can be combined with other cost saving strategies that you might use. It might be the difference between being able to build a portfolio at all.

October Coupon and Savings Results
Coupons: Cost $7.50 (newspaper). Savings: $30.90
Costco: Cost: $50 (1 time yearly membership). Savings: $143.81
Entertainment: Cost: $35 (1 time yearly purchase). Savings: $21
Future month's savings will be rolled into the last weekly deposit of each month.

Here are the sites I talked about...
Entertainment Book. These are targeted to towns and suburbs of large cities. You should be able to buy them at Walgreens and flip through them to see if it would be worth it for you. They list additional coupons on the website not listed in the book for additional savings.
Harbor Freight. Located in 45 states hopefully there is one close to you.


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 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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Listing out the Goals of the Trading Account. Phase 2

While I do not have solid data to estimate how I will do in the future I have to start with as close a guess as I can and then as trades and data come in I can refine my future profit estimates...

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.

Wow. So yeah there you have it. The Model Portfolio will "fail". My current estimates show that I cannot meet my goal of generating income to cover bills for the Model Family, with my current level of contributions, within 15 years. I placed the word fail in quotes because as I discussed in the video, is it really failure? I am not only talking about dollar goals either.

There is something to be said for how one lives their life. I'm a big believer in motivational thinking. I could go off on entire blog and video series on the topic... and I probably will. For now though think about this...
As we grow up to becoming an adult we have teachers, guides, and lessons that we learn to shape who we are as a person. These impact our lives and shape our personalities and who we are as a child changing into a teenager into an adult.
Why do some believe that process stops when you become an adult? The process or how our thoughts and focus and what we spend our time doing altering and defining who we are as people.

More specifically to how this relates to the Model Portfolio: when we allow ourselves to slip into a mindset of life being...
1: Go to work.
2: Work.
3: Come home and get ready for step 1 tomorrow.
Then of course our personality and belief system will eventually shift towards that. It eventually becomes automatic. Sub-conscious. We then fall into what I describe in the video where 15 years from now I ask myself what would have happened if I tried... then get back to work.

The Model Portfolio will bring in benefits to my life beyond what cannot be measured in numbers with % or $.


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

Listing out the Goals of the Trading Account. Phase 1

With the goals of the Investing account defined we can focus on the Trading account...

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 more on Time as a resource for the trader and investor. As I mention in the video, we can add more money through deposits.  We can also start our record for successful trades and numbers for trading.We can read new books and watch new videos and learn from past mistakes. What we cannot do is get back the one natural resource that every person has. Time.

I spent a year stuck in "Analysis Paralysis". Planning how I would trade and invest. I thought I had to get all of my money first before I could start but funnily enough never had $10,000 lying around. I found myself worried that I might be missing something when in the end I did. I missed out on opportunity by inaction.

The advice given out in the financial world seems contradictory at times. Don't over trade, but if you never trade you never make profits. Learn and understand money management and risk management, but again you have to trade and make mistakes to learn some of it. I've even done it several times in my videos to you guys. When everything is said and done though at some point you have to roll up your sleeves and jump in. Hopefully my videos and blog entries help in that.


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

Week 22 Deposit

When investing and trading your own money even with a lot of experience you need to recheck your risk 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.

Up until now I placed emphasis on building up investing so I could start getting some base income started. Mostly for psychological reasons at this stage of funding. My mind automatically went towards Trading. I noticed though that my eyes would not drift on lower down to poor neglected savings. Neglected being a joke but with a lot of truth. Too often having that backup money that isn't actively doing something gets overlooked. But that is the same argument for not getting insurance.

When looking at the odds of an emergency happening its easy to look at them individually. What are the odds I will have a car accident? Pretty low. What are they odds the furnace goes out? They last 18+ years so pretty low. But get enough "pretty low" occurring events and its just a matter of time before something happens.

Given enough time, some sort of one off emergency will happen. That has to be calculated into our portfolio.
When making a budget do you have a category for "one time" expenses? Do you tell yourself that you won't really budget in an oil change because its a one off things that only comes up every 3 months? Or 6 if you are like most people. But do you have at least one "one time" expense? At that point shouldn't it be figured into the portfolio? That's the realization I came up with this week and why that savings needs to be higher over making more money.

There will always be another trade tomorrow.
There will always be a dividend stock to invest in tomorrow.
but...
There will always be some emergency in the future.



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: $1314.13
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: $500
Emergency: $400
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.

Listing out the Goals of the Investing Account, Phase 2

With Phase 1 of the investing account for the Model Portfolio done I move on to Phase 2.

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.

25 positions for a 4% portfolio risk is important for me. Yes the solid Dividend Aristocrats have paid and raised dividends for 25+ years. Who knows what will happen in the future. Look at bank stocks. They used to be the cornerstone of many dividend income accounts. Not only did they cut their dividends after 2008 but their share price was devastated.  If you were going to move your money to something else... you might as well have to start over you would have easily lost 50% or more of your position.

The 25 stock and ETF for the Investing Account phase 2 are going to be across multiple sectors. Consumer staples, restaurants, real estate, health care. I have read too many horror stories of people who went "all in" with a couple of companies. 1 or 2 don't work and they lost everything.



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.

Listing out the goals of the Investing account, Phase 1

If I am going to manage a dividend growth investing account for 15+ years I need to set out my goals...

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 that getting paid weekly was important for the dividend investing account. I want to talk a bit more about that. When selecting stock and ETFs it was the last thing on the list of important things I needed. Safety, stability, a good yield, strong potential for future growth and the other topics I discuss in my other videos take priority. ERF was the final piece of getting paid in week 3 of each month. But if I didnt feel that it was a good income source with stability and everything else I look for in an investment? I wouldn't have picked it up. To be honest, I got lucky that it pays during week 3.

I'm pretty pleased with how Phase 1 of the Investing account turned out. I do not have TLT yet but its just a matter of being patient and controlling emotions in buying when it's the right time. The move to Sharebuilder in the long run maybe a good thing as now I can DRIP and let compounding take over.


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.

Investment: ERF Enerplus

Enerplus is a good addition to my dividend investing account...

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.

You can learn a lot when researching a new company as a possible investment and I'm not talking about learning about the company. Before ERF, I didn't know about tight gas or waterflood oil. Investing isnt all about making money.

Something I didn't mention in my video that is a big plus for me with ERF... they spend a lot of time and money hedging with calls and puts on their oil and natural gas. This will help them maintain their dividend and stabilize losses. Its something they do openly talk about. It can give some exposure to trading in the markets without actually doing the trading ourselves.  Most companies will do this but its interesting to see them talk about it so openly in their reports.


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.

Week 21 Deposit

Quite a bit going on 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.

As I mentioned, there is a lot going on. I sit here waiting for my Investing Goals video to compile and I will have to split it into two videos. Windows Movie Maker is not liking the 16 minutes I have so far. I have another video on entrepreneurship that occurred to me today while at lunch. That's pushing others I had planned back to next week. Its an exciting time and things are starting to move that I want to share.

The Investing account numbers are income per month. If its quarterly they I will average it out per month. If its a bond fund that tends to fluctuate its dividends then I will use the average of the past twelve trailing months. The point here is to compare what each one is paying so that I know where to add more money.

One last note. On the Investing tab I have moved the commissions into the cost basis section. The way Sharebuilder works is that you say how much you want to apply towards an order. They take the commission out of that and then use the rest to buy whatever can be had. That is different from other brokers where you buy X number of shares and whatever it costs is taken out of your account and then afterwards they take more money out for the commission. For free trades on Sharebuilder the cost is still the same it just means that you get a little bit more for your order.
Since it is so different and my cost basis is all nice and neat at an even $250 for each one I felt it important to share that.

Edit: Alright you guys are pretty sharp and observant so I'll mention a slight edit. I changed ERF from a stock to energy classification. The reason? It gets it's profit from commodities: oil and natural gas. This is a different type of income source then those generated from a traditional stock that has a customer base where  they sell a service or finished product.
I'll be talking about ERF this week but since technically I did purchase it last week I needed to record its data.



Weekly Activity
$100 deposit into Trading
$1.16 dividend from O
$1.77 dividend from JNK


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: $1363.43
Estimated Monthly Income: $5.74
Stock
Energy
     ERF: $1.68
REITs
     O: $1.05
Bonds
     JNK: $1.84
     PCY: $1.17
     TLT: $250 reserved for future purchase
Maneuvering Cash: $110.03

Savings Account: $400
Emergency: $300
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.