Intro to My Portfolio and My Personal Financials, and Quick Activity Update
I wanted to add a quick post here to highlight two new features I've added to the page, and comment on some purchase activity from earlier today. As I mentioned in my Welcome post, I want to be absolutely transparent in terms of my financial position and holdings.
On a monthly basis, I will be updating my personal financial statements here, and on more of a transaction by transaction basis, I'll be updating my stock portfolio here. I actually uploaded my portfolio last night, but made a couple purchases today so I made sure to upload the most up to date version after I got home from work.
I further plan to comment on my trading activity going forward to give a bit of insight as to why I made each transaction. Today's activity was pretty small, but below is a summary of each transaction, and the reasoning behind each!
Purchase - International Paper Co. (IP) - 3 Shares - Chase Brokerage (Taxable)
International Paper is a company whose stock I started picking up a few months back, when it was trading around $50. I've built my position up a bit more in the past few weeks, and added 3 more shares today with an average price of $42.44.
The reason this stock had originally caught my eye was that it was approaching its ex-dividend date, and the company had increased the dividend for the last seven years (now eight after November's dividend increase). The company had a pretty low payout ratio (dividend/EPS), and was sitting at a pretty low P/E ratio at the time. The P/E is currently at 5.46 (per Yahoo Finance), which is way below the market average, and has a dividend yield of 4.6%. I figured, if I liked the stock at $50, why not average down my basis and pick up a few more shares at $42? Nothing has really changed fundamentally with the company, and they've actually had a pretty good earnings report since the first time I purchased, so I went ahead and pulled the trigger on the purchase.
By the way, I currently have a number of free trades with my Chase Brokerage account that I opened a few months ago, so it doesn't hurt me to make these small trades as I'm not paying any commissions or fees. After the end of the year, however, I'll probably have to be more patient and try to enter positions in larger quantities at a time, as commissions and fees can really eat into your returns if you aren't careful.
Purchase - Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO) - 2 Shares - Vanguard IRA Brokerage
The second purchase of the day was 2 shares of the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF, with an average price of $235.61. The market opened down today, and I knew I had some cash sitting in my online savings account ready to contribute to my IRA. By the time I set up a transfer into my Vanguard IRA account, the market had went back up to about even for the day. With the way everything's been so up and down lately, I figured I'd set up a limit order to try and catch a little bit better price, and sure enough, it fell right down below my limit price of $236. When all was said and done for the day, I really could have gotten this even lower, as VOO closed right around $233, but I wasn't tryng to get too greedy on the price.
The reasoning behind this purchase is pretty simple - I had $1,700 left to contribute to my IRA for 2018, so I figured I'd get $500 of it out of the way. Vanguard charges pretty high commissions to trade stocks and ETFs normally, but all Vanguard funds and ETFs trade commission fee. Plus their products have expense ratios that are extremely low, so I never feel bad taking the thinking out of investing and just parking in a Vanguard mutual fund or ETF. I personally prefer ETFs, as the mutual funds can have higher minimum investments (VOO and VTI are my favorite, but I also like VYM). With $1,200 still left to contribute to my IRA for the year, this probably won't be my last VOO purchase!
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The purchases above follow my investing strategy as of late. I'm always on the lookout for an undervalued stock with a high yield, history of dividend increases, and good metrics, which I think describes IP pretty well. And on the other hand, I'm never opposed to just letting the market do its thing, and pulling a no-brainer Vanguard fund investment.
With some pretty hefty 401k deductions coming out of last two paychecks for the year, I'm not sure how many more purchases I'll be making in 2018 - but if and when I do, I'll keep you posted!
- FI Anon
On a monthly basis, I will be updating my personal financial statements here, and on more of a transaction by transaction basis, I'll be updating my stock portfolio here. I actually uploaded my portfolio last night, but made a couple purchases today so I made sure to upload the most up to date version after I got home from work.
I further plan to comment on my trading activity going forward to give a bit of insight as to why I made each transaction. Today's activity was pretty small, but below is a summary of each transaction, and the reasoning behind each!
Purchase - International Paper Co. (IP) - 3 Shares - Chase Brokerage (Taxable)
International Paper is a company whose stock I started picking up a few months back, when it was trading around $50. I've built my position up a bit more in the past few weeks, and added 3 more shares today with an average price of $42.44.
The reason this stock had originally caught my eye was that it was approaching its ex-dividend date, and the company had increased the dividend for the last seven years (now eight after November's dividend increase). The company had a pretty low payout ratio (dividend/EPS), and was sitting at a pretty low P/E ratio at the time. The P/E is currently at 5.46 (per Yahoo Finance), which is way below the market average, and has a dividend yield of 4.6%. I figured, if I liked the stock at $50, why not average down my basis and pick up a few more shares at $42? Nothing has really changed fundamentally with the company, and they've actually had a pretty good earnings report since the first time I purchased, so I went ahead and pulled the trigger on the purchase.
By the way, I currently have a number of free trades with my Chase Brokerage account that I opened a few months ago, so it doesn't hurt me to make these small trades as I'm not paying any commissions or fees. After the end of the year, however, I'll probably have to be more patient and try to enter positions in larger quantities at a time, as commissions and fees can really eat into your returns if you aren't careful.
Purchase - Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO) - 2 Shares - Vanguard IRA Brokerage
The second purchase of the day was 2 shares of the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF, with an average price of $235.61. The market opened down today, and I knew I had some cash sitting in my online savings account ready to contribute to my IRA. By the time I set up a transfer into my Vanguard IRA account, the market had went back up to about even for the day. With the way everything's been so up and down lately, I figured I'd set up a limit order to try and catch a little bit better price, and sure enough, it fell right down below my limit price of $236. When all was said and done for the day, I really could have gotten this even lower, as VOO closed right around $233, but I wasn't tryng to get too greedy on the price.
The reasoning behind this purchase is pretty simple - I had $1,700 left to contribute to my IRA for 2018, so I figured I'd get $500 of it out of the way. Vanguard charges pretty high commissions to trade stocks and ETFs normally, but all Vanguard funds and ETFs trade commission fee. Plus their products have expense ratios that are extremely low, so I never feel bad taking the thinking out of investing and just parking in a Vanguard mutual fund or ETF. I personally prefer ETFs, as the mutual funds can have higher minimum investments (VOO and VTI are my favorite, but I also like VYM). With $1,200 still left to contribute to my IRA for the year, this probably won't be my last VOO purchase!
-
The purchases above follow my investing strategy as of late. I'm always on the lookout for an undervalued stock with a high yield, history of dividend increases, and good metrics, which I think describes IP pretty well. And on the other hand, I'm never opposed to just letting the market do its thing, and pulling a no-brainer Vanguard fund investment.
With some pretty hefty 401k deductions coming out of last two paychecks for the year, I'm not sure how many more purchases I'll be making in 2018 - but if and when I do, I'll keep you posted!
- FI Anon
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