July was yet another slow month. Good upward movement until the last few days of the month, but gave back a lot at the end. Good progress was made, but still very little turnover.
Only one sale:
- Telecomunicacoes de Sao Paulo - I was happy to close out this position. Although I received my desired gains, this always seemed a bit riskier than my usual holding
My current holdings and unrealized gains/losses are as follows. Note that I also included the gain/loss from both June and July to demonstrate the generally positive progress over the last month.
- Exxon Mobil - Down 10.7% (June 30: Down 14.7%) - Ex-Div in Aug, Div in Sept
- Exelon Corp - Down 7.1% (June 30: Down 15.7%) - Ex-Div in Aug, Div in Sept
- FirstEnergy Corp - Down 0.4% (June 30: Down 6.9%) - Ex-Div in Aug, Div in Sept
- Telecommunications Systems - Down 26.4% (June 30: Down 31.5%) - July was looking like a very good month for TCS until they took a big hit after a disappointing earnings announcement this week.
- National Grid PLC - Down 9.0% (June 30: Down 17.4%) - Ex-Div in July, Div in Aug
- Total SA - Up 6.4% (June 30: Down 6.2%)
- Sempra Energy - Up 5.7% (June 30: Down 0.6%)
- Harsco Corp - Down 10.0% (June 30: Down 8.7%) - Also a victim of bad news, the only holding to move downward over the last month. Ex-Div in July, Div in Aug
- Nokia - Up 1.1% (June 30: Down 13.4%)
Dividends were collected on the following:
It's all about the dividends in June. The market stayed depressed and I only made one sale, but collected significant dividends to the point that the turnover yield is artificially inflated to over 30%. But this is tempered by an good yield on available funds of 1.55% (a respectable 18% when annualized) and the good new is totally overwhelmed by the large unrealized losses.
But I maintain my hold and collect strategy and am looking forward to two maturing CDs. I plan to use these to buy in further if the market remains depressed.
My only sale was:
- Telecomunicacoes de Sao Paulo - Only half of my holdings, kinda wishing I sold 100%.
My current holdings and unrealized gains/losses are as follows:
- Exxon Mobil - Down 14.7%
- Exelon Corp - Down 15.7%
- FirstEnergy Corp - Down 6.9%
- Telecomunicacoes de Sao Paulo - Up 3.6%
- Telecommunications Systems - Down 31.5%
- National Grid PLC - Down 17.4%
- Total SA - Down 6.2%
- Sempra Energy - Down 0.6%
- Harsco Corp - Down 8.7%
- Nokia - Down 13.4%
Dividends were collected on the following:
- FirstEnergy Corp
- Exxon Mobil
- Exelon Corp
- Total SA
- National Grid PLC - Not a dividend, but a Rights sale in excess of 10% of the purchase price of the stock. This certainly helps offset some unrealized losses.
I was quite pleased that that one of my recent comments on Bargaineering.com was the impetus for a post. It was a real revelation to me that Jim would say "everyone implies that your CD ladder is held at a single institution." I've always thought quite that opposite that no one holds their CD ladder at a single institution, especially in the electronic age.
Regardless of the assumption, my personal need to track my CD ladder across multiple banks has led me to develop a tool for keeping up with this. I use it for tracking maturities, yields, beneficiaries and potential exceptions to FDIC insurance limitations (I wish this was a bigger problem for me!).
Given this, I maintain a tracking spreadsheet in google docs. In addition to tracking the particulars of each CD, it also provides a visual representation of the CD ladder that makes the concept a bit easier to follow.
This tool has evolved over the years, It originated as a Lotus123 spreadsheet and later evolved to Excel and eventually google docs. It also grew from simply tracking my CD ladder to covering each of the components of my overall financial strategy.
I use google docs to maintain this spreadsheet and my stock trading spreadsheet. These have become two foundational components of my financial monitoring. Needless to say, since these are on a public server, I don't keep any specific information like account numbers or login info in these docs.
In general, I've been very pleased with the results of my trading. The financial rewards are the primary evidence of this, but also, I've been pleased with my ability to adjust my strategy to be more flexible for dealing with various market conditions. Even though my current holdings are in the tank, I'm convinced that I'm doing the right thing.
However, there is one aspect of my strategy that I'm not comfortable with. I don't feel that I'm doing a good job of adjusting to long term changes in individual stocks. For example, I bought and sold Pfizer (PFE) several times during the first few months of trading. I bought in the $14 range and sold in the $15 dollar range. Given this, I have a hard time with the idea of buying this stock at a higher price. So it's now effectively outside my trading universe even though it still meets all of my trading criteria and if fact has increased it's dividend in the last year.
I'm not sure if it's a good thing or not, but the recent tumble in the market has actually increased my unwillingness to overcome this hurdle. Many stocks under consideration have hit 52 week lows and have fell back into my price range, reinforcing my unwillingness to raise my buy price. And of course, my inherit "thriftiness" is also a factor in my unwillingness to raise my buy prices.
Perhaps more importantly, I'm concerned that I'm missing downward signals. I bought and sold Nokia last year in the $13-14 range, so when it fell within this range this year, I was sorely tempted to by. Fortunately, I overcame my initial temptation, but I eventually bought in when it fell below $10. I knew enough to keep the purchase small. But was even that too much.
I guess awareness is a good first step, but my hope is to analyze my ongoing assessment of stock value to match and improve on my past success.
To start with the good news, May was a good month for accumulation. I processed 10 buy transactions which is the fourth highest month to date. At month end, I'm 97.5% invested and would have been further soaked if not for a need to reserve some cash for an expected need at the end of June. And dividends will begin flowing from these accumulations in June which will have no less than 4 dividend payouts.
However, I made no sales and collected no dividends in June. Thus, no gains were realized for the second month since trading began.
My current holdings and unrealized gains/losses are as follows:
- Exxon Mobil - Down 9.6% - Div payable in June
- Exelon Corp - Down 14.3%- Div payable in June
- FirstEnergy Corp - Down 7.0%- Div payable in June
- Telecomunicacoes de Sao Paulo - Down 2.9%
- Telecommunications Systems - Down 17.1% - Expanded holdings during the month to have a fairly substantial holding, purchased at attractive prices. Unfortunately, the stock is quite depressed at the moment.
- National Grid PLC - Down 9.1% - Goes ex-div in early June
- Total SA - Down 2.1% - Semi-annual dividend payer, took a bit of a dip when it went ex-div in May, but took lots of other market driven dips too. - Div payable in June
- Sempra Energy - Down 2.3%
- Harsco Corp - Up 3.3%
- Nokia - Up 1.1% - Small holding. This one actually scares me a bit. Lots of bad news lately, but the price was too good not to dip a toe in.
