Stocks

What I’ve Been Up To

Posted by FI Monkey

Hello, hello!

I’m not dead, but I did have some catching up to do with work and such before I could give you guys a decent update here.

First things first, let’s talk about stocks and portfolios. I haven’t made any additional purchases since my last post which was … 9 days ago. Holy wow. Sorry about that huge break in posts. That also reminds me that I didn’t update my portfolio page to reflect my updated portfolio values after my last buys. I’ll do that after this post.

For now, I just want to say — what’s up with the stock market lately? All my stuff is either down or stale. Get it together, stock market. COME ON.

The only thing that has been doing reasonably well is Realty Income Corp (O), but I guess that’s why we diversify, right? Can’t blame the market if I only have seven stocks. Instead of building upward (buying more stocks for my existing portfolio), I think I will build horizontally a bit (buy other companies) for my next set of purchases.

Moving on to business endeavors, I have actually made some progress there! Having narrowed down the product selection to five last week, I ended up making some more business purchases to assist me in my quest and have narrowed the list down to three products. This part of the process has been difficult to say the least. Luckily, I have a buddy I’m partnered with to keep me motivated and keep the wheel rolling forward, however slowly.

That being said, I still have to narrow the list down to that one product to start with and then make a big purchase. Of course, this might seem unrelated to this blog at first glance until you consider the business itself an investment and part of my overall strategy to make up the difference that my new situation has led me into.

While I’m not being frivolous with my spending, I’m certainly trying to be less timid in pushing forward with my FBA business and buying the right tools (after much personal vetting) to get my to my destination. I’m already about $1,000 in and I’m keeping track of every penny.

This is not my first business, but it’s definitely the business I have taken most seriously. There was a time when I started my first business on my own and actually took time off from working in general, but because I didn’t take it seriously enough, I ended up focusing on too many things and the original business idea went cold, then died. Not the end of the world, but it’s good to know myself.

Business-wise, self-management is paramount for success.

Armed with that knowledge, I know it’s best to focus on my main gig while keeping a side focus on my business. On top of that, it’s important to have a partner with similar goals who will keep me focused.

Interestingly, that brief period of joblessness I mentioned reveals something about one way I might retire if I didn’t keep working. For a while, I just played games instead of doing any actual work. That’s not how I want things to go, so a big part of self-management means keeping myself busy with meaningful work. I do want some time to just mess around because I believe that’s just good for the soul, but not like it was.

I’ll keep you posted on the progress on my FBA Business, of course. Meanwhile, I’m looking at my next portfolio purchases. If I can’t find something suitable, I’ll just move more money into my SEP IRA while I can.

As always, let me know if you have any suggestions in that department.

Thanks!

Recent Buys

Posted by FI Monkey

So I’m on vacation, but I’m not dead. Before I go out and swim for a bit, I decided I’d execute some orders (sounds so much cooler than it is) on the stocks I’d been comparing/eyeing this weekend. As usual, I will preface this by saying I am new to this whole thing and if there were a gradient from completely green to Warren Buffett, I would be firmly in the green still.

That being said, I actually did my own analysis on the stocks I did purchase today, albeit nothing too deep or intensive. For example, I’m not to the point where I’m using P/E to determine whether I should invest. I’m sure I’ll get to that point, but for the moment I’m not going out on any crazy limbs by establishing myself with these companies. I’m keeping it simple.

So far, I’m using these metrics (which could be absolutely terrible, I’m sure) which I took largely from David Fish’s CCC list:

  • Reasonable dividend payout (2 – 5% yield)
  • Long history of increased dividends
  • An upward trajectory in stock price over the past 5 years

Feel free to point out my terrible strategy. I am completely open to learning — that’s what this whole thing is about. For now, I’ll get into which stocks I bought!

Realty Income Corp (O)

Realty Income Corporation

I’m sure many of you are quite familiar with this one. I read that it is described as the “Monthly Dividend Company” on its Wikipedia article. Honestly, I didn’t even comprehend that this was a REIT stock until after I purchased it. But hey, it looks strong to me. The company was founded in 1969 and was recently added to the S&P 500. It’s had 22 years of consecutive dividend growth and its current dividend yield is at 4.85% from what I can tell. I bought in at $47.12 with 10 shares. This was my second out of three commission-free trades on Scottrade (yay!).

Target Corporation (TGT)

Target Corporation

Last of my commission-free trades was Target. While I do own Walmart stock, it’s Target my family visits 4-5 times per week. Like Diet Coke, we have a personal stake in the success of this company and based on how it’s done previously, it seems like it will keep going strong for years to come, so by that measure I had no qualms going forward. It’s been around for over 100 years now and is also included in the S&P 500! Although I read that Target Corp’s dividend growth wasn’t so hot in recent years, it has still continued to climb over the last 32 years. The dividend yield is presently 2.46%, which is good enough for me. I bought 6 shares at $84.48.

This brings my total number of stocks owned up to seven (7) for a stock portfolio currently worth about $3,450.00.

Recent Buys

Posted by FI Monkey

Ha! “Recent buys.” Am I doing this right?

So as I mentioned in my last post, I purchased several more stocks after my first one, which was for Coca-cola!

The research behind these was essentially the same, meaning I stood on the shoulders of some of the DGI Giants in our circles and moved forward based on their hard work. I’m thinking that my next stock purchase will take some actual hard work and due diligence on my part, so I’ve already started putting some legwork into that. But meanwhile, I figured I’d update on what I actually got going.

Please excuse the smaller number of shares. I realize some of you have 10X or more what I have here, but remember I’m just getting started:

5X UNP @ $97.5899 for $494.95

5X WMT @ $73.5599 for $374.80

5X MMM @ $156.719 for $790.60

5X PG @ $82.379 for $411.90 (this was a free trade)

So, as you can see on my portfolio page (which I promptly updated after buying up the stock for Proctor & Gamble), I have updated my total stock equity amount to $2,460.35 from $2,048.40. My trades for UNP, WMT and MMM all came with the $7 trade fee from Scottrade, but luckily my referral situation finally got figured out. I had signed up through a referral link but something went wrong in the process. All it took was a quick call to customer service and they were quick to help me out (very nice!). So now I have two more free trades to make within the next 30 days!

I’ve also added another $2,500 to my Vanguard SEP IRA which brings its value to about $15,270!

All these recent moves have pushed me over the $40k mark in combined brokerage + investment accounts, which is … such a good feeling.

I think as I move toward the $50k mark, my goal is to start adjusting my portfolio to include a higher percentage (which currently sits at 0%) of both bonds and international stocks. Most likely, I’ll go with the Vanguard index funds that track both those markets.

What do you guys think of VBMFX and VGTSX? Should I buy into those next? Should I wait until I have $10k for each and go with  VBTLX and VTIAX for a decreased fee?

As always, your input is appreciated!

Learning the Ropes – Starting up my Brokerage Account

Posted by FI Monkey

Hey guys. So I’m still focusing on building my side business this week, but I also don’t want to let my primary goals go either.

Today, I’ve been getting things set up for taxable investing. Last week, I set up a brokerage account with Vanguard for this very purpose and went through the trouble of transferring some money over only to learn that, for an account the size of mine, they only allow $7 trades for the first 25; after that, they become $20 each. So I decided to use Scottrade in the mean time while my Vanguard + Brokerage add up to more than $50,000. After that point, the trades become $7 each with no limit.

Once that happens, my plan is to consolidate everything over to Vanguard so that both my taxable and non-taxable accounts are there. Whether that will actually happen is up to future me and how much it will cost me. Ideally, it would be nothing since I’d want to hold on to the same stocks and such. Worst case, I can keep trading with Scottrade.

On the other hand, the reason I’d like to keep things with Vanguard is that once you have $500,000 with them, all trades become $2! I’m sure there’s something even more amazing out there, but for someone who’s as green as I am to stock trading, that seems like a pretty great deal.

And as some of you are probably paying close attention, you’ll note that I already have a brokerage account through Chase, but my plan is to also consolidate that. I hate having so many accounts all over the place. I’d rather have everything set up simply so there’s less for my simple mind to worry about.

All that being said, my account with Scottrade should be ready for funding this week and I should be ready to get things started with some dividend growth stocks. From what I’ve read recently, Coca Cola isn’t a bad one to start with, so I’ll probably go with that and a few other familiars just to get things rolling. I’m only starting with $2500, so I’ll probably invest in a handful of stocks in addition to KO (most likely borrowed from the amazing Dividend Growth blogs I follow). I’m still trying to come up with my own vetting process which, admittedly, is also largely borrowed from the blogs I read.

For those of you who I’ll be stealing from, please accept it as flattery more than outright theft! I just want to be more like you fine people.

I’ll probably update once things are actually set up and I’m ready to start buying, but while we’re on the subject…

Any recommendations for my first five or so stocks?

Any links to a checklist I should go over to vet each one before buying?

Any general advice?