WW Eeee, Face Booked, Underarm Charm

Hello all,

It's been a kind of bleak couple of weeks.  WWE took a recent hit but we're still holding, if only for international subscriptions to WWE, TWO is down a little (which is fine because it's a dividend stock anyway), and we traded out 9 shares of FB for 10 of UA.  Profitability continues to elude PLUG.

Coulda shoulda wouldas:

We would have liked to have held ISIS longer, traded FB for TWTR, and traded WWE for RAD, which has been on a nice upswing from the 4s and will probably reach 5+ soon.

For now we continue to hold, with our penny stocks dormant and/or worthless.  BRGO did a 1000-1 reverse split, making our 300,000 shares worth a cup of coffee, LQMT languishes in the teens, and nothing else - TGRO, PVSP, FLST - is worth even mentioning.  The strategy going into the new year will be holding onto corporate stocks long-term and selling what carnage we have left in pennies.

Hopefully there'll be some good news, but for now our missed profits are in Rite Aid, Isis Pharmaceuticals, and even Facebook.  With Lockheed Martin's fusion discovery, we hope to get in eventually.  Stay tuned.

Stock Portfolio Update, August 18: Stoppin' the Hoppin', Long Everything (FB, PLUG, BRGO, LQMT)

Lionel's Stock Portfolio: What's New?

It's been a precarious couple of months.  Holding in some positions has cost me momentum, but there are a few trades I'm glad I made.  Here's my wrapup of present and recent stocks:

FB: Long, long.  The money's coming in and I'm not budging, even in a personal catastrophe, until 90 a share.  18 shares.

PLUG: Also long.  The company finally turned a profit and I'm holding in expectation that companies like Wal-Mart will provide more business in the long run.  Plus, I bought my second batch at 9 a share.  Boo to that, especially in light of recent severe dips.  Still, bought around 4 in a second batch trading off a small RAD position. 130 shares.

LQMT: A sleeper.  Haven't bothered tracking it since dips under 30 cents. 600 shares.

FLST:  A fun curiosity last year.   The potential's still there but with revenue under six figures, I'm just holding. 500 shares.

PVSP: Supposed to be a penny stock hit.  ZZZ. 1K shares.

BRGO: With a brick and mortar location coming eventually (love the cautiously optimistic PR). 300K shares.

Don't regret selling: 

RAD While still a promising long-term stock to me, short-term events pushed things well down below 8.62.  If I ever get some extra investing money I may pick up again in the mid sixes before it slowly accumulates value again.

NENE The Cheap Investor's pick's supposed to be around $10 "soon".  Glad to have sold from around 2.50 before it started scumming at 1.80.  Nothing against his long-term track record, but a sour start investing in his recommendation.

Do regret selling:

ISIS Beautiful long-term stock and far down from a high of 62.66.  Even a jump to 40 could still turn a large-scale investor a decent profit.

TWO: Just a gorgeous dividend, 10%. I miss it.

Wishlist:

AAPL It split again! Its price is within range of the common man too.  Kicking myself for missing a buy-in opportunity at 92.

WWE Even with a rise to half its previous price of $31.98, I'd be happy buying in today.  The 4.10% dividend isn't bad either.

AWP: A quiet but nicely performing stock.  With automated dividend reinvestment in an account like
BuyandHold, 6.60% paid off 12 times really adds up.

Thanks for reading! What stocks are you watching lately? Feel free to leave a comment!

Recent Trades: Facebook, Rite Aid, Plug Power, Isis Pharmaceuticals

Hey all,

Thought I'd update this blog while Blogger's open.

Been hopping RAD and FB while they fluctuate, made a small flip so I turned 10 shares of FB into 183 shares of RAD into 45 shares of ISIS & 83 RAD into 23 ISIS and 100 RAD, for a 17-share gain.  Fortunately I sold out at 7.30 before RAD tumbled to mid 6es and am back into 18 shares of FB instead of my original 10.  Recent FB gains from 75 from 60s have been painful to buy back but with good targets FB will be a mid-range hold at least.  PLUG power is a longer-range hold.

Current holdings:

~18 shares FB, bought from consolidated RAD & ISIS position
130 shares PLUG, long-term hold, bought 1/2 at mid-4s but hoping to recoup a supplemental purchase at 9.
600 shares LQMT (ZZZ...)
500 shares FLST, 1/2 sold at $0.38 so I made my profit at 10 cents a share.
1500 shares PVSP, negligible.
300,000 shares BRGO, regretting not selling for a 300% profit.

Basically these are all long purchases.  Twitter was a consideration a while back but my money's going with a stock recently valued more than Coke.

My wife's been really sick and time is at a premium.  Feel free to read more at lifenotlyme.org.  I will try to keep writing here.  Perhaps I will have a newsletter if you are interested.  Please let me know in a comment.  I see a few pageviews a day and am happy people come to visit.

Thank you,

Lionel

Portfolio Update: CNI Gaining Steam? DDDelicious Returns, Not Yet For NENE

Just a quick update on the portfolio. 

DDD continues to perform stellarly, jumping today to around $86.50 a share.  This has been our best investment, with big thanks to Jim Cramer for recommending this stock months ago.

CNI's split, and slowly growing back a little, bouncing between $56 and $57.  Such is the pain of diversification: you'll often feel a little remorse seeing the slower half of your stocks perform.  Considering it's the dead of winter in Canada, I'm grateful for any growth in this railroad stock.  This is definitely a hold.

TWO is due for a dividend at month's end and has edged up to around $9.50.  This is another example of putting extra leftover money into a small, high-yield position so it adds up.  Without the ability to perform unlimited trades, acquisitions like this aren't worth it, but with a great service like BuyAndHold, which we've used for years, you get more financial control for less overall money.

Our penny stock holdings have yet to mature, though for FLST we should say mature again.  After a small spike to around $2.84, NENE has slumped between our purchase prices of $2.25 and $2.50.  Our position of 600 shares of LQMT is being held through the beginning of a stock purchasing program, and our share of 500 shares of FLST, leveled out at .035 cents a share today, is being held after the main profit taking we did at 500@$0.38, original purchase price of $0.10.

To recap our positions:

DDD 4.5
CNI 10.4
TWO 6
NENE 255
LQMT 600
FLST 500

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Disclaimer: We do not endorse buying any stocks.  Do so at your own risk.

Daily Post #2: 10.4, Good Buddy! Sitting Back and Watching (DDD, CNI), Splits Discussion

Well, today's the day and my shares of CNI are in and ready for a split. Turns out I was able to purchase an extra fifth of a share, which will turn into 2/5ths down the road (hence the 10.4 in the title). Having grown up in the 80s, I'm always grateful for the extra bits of bean-counting that have been brought online.  Getting fractional shares during splits never used to happen for me.

Afternoon Action 

I'm already feeling a pang from DDD's relatively small jump today of 1.28/share as of this writing -- now I'm making 4.5 times that instead of 9 times since I traded half my shares toward CNI.  Speaking of pangs, seeing Voxeljet's insane recent price boost reminds me of my brother's laments about seeing BitCoins escalate daily. The stock was around $28 when I first noticed it, and it's zooming around $60 today. CNI is pretty much unchanged, but it's locked in and I'll be happy to see the split happen November 29th.

My fond nickname for NCT and NRZ used to be "Dumb & Dumber", because no matter how the stocks would flail about they'd almost always total $13 (in fact as of this moment they are at $13.01).  Nothing against them -- they're still constant with the dividends regardless of stock price. Lately another similarly nicknamed pairing is LQMT and FLST, which do act independently of each other but haven't done that much yet.  Patience.

I see Zynga's up past $4, ALU continues to crawl up to new highs, SIRI is coming close to where I sold it at $3.97 (ha).   Apple's on the sunny side of $500 again, Google's a third of the way to $1100.  Some regret for not having held OMI that long -- up to $37 from $28, along with dividends.  Yelp edging up again, Pandora a mind-blowing $31.70, up from $9 recently and supposedly giving iTunes Radio a serious run for its money.  WAVX, my friend Andrew's sentimental favorite, treading water at $1.19 -- PCs won't ever have the market share they did -- and perennial nickel-generating stock AWP up .13 to $7.26.  That's over 2 months of dividends worth of difference.  Jack Henry (JKHY) is up $6 since recent discovery of it and dividends were disbursed yesterday.  Groupon (GRPN) is edging back from disastrous management, WWE is climbing to the top rope at $13.32 a share, 5 cents down from a 52-week high.  Skilled Healthcare (SKH) back up from a wobble in the low 4s to $4.94.  Twitter's still in nesting phase in the low 40s, and looking back at TSLA is showing a stalled valuation as scrutiny mounts.  3D printing darling SSYS is continuing its upward trend with +$1.28 for a total valuation of $125.13/share.

Splitsville?

A great banana split.  Courtesy of Cyclonebill from Wikimedia Commons.

 

Those who haven't taken advantage of splits may be wondering why owning an extra share of something is worth it.

There's some controversy about it, for sure.

This view is neutral at best:

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/01/072501.asp

While this one is more in line with my attitudes:

http://www.rightline.net/stocksplits/stock-splits-work.html

That's about it for today.  Thanks for reading and stay tuned to see how CNI vs. DDD works out!


Disclaimer: I do not advocate buying (or not buying) any of the above stocks; please buy at your own discretion.

If my advice helps you make money down the road, I'm gladly accepting tips.

Even $1 will help me grow my portfolio.  Comments are very welcome too!  Thanks for reading!

Daily Post #1: Train-Hopping: From DDD, FB to CNI

With apologies to Harold Lloyd.

I've come to see not just the value of stocks, but stock dividends and splits.  Pinching and scraping fractional shares of DDD together to shore up a 4-share position into six $40 shares, which ultimately became nine shares that climbed to over $75 each, has been one of the best portfolio moves I've made.

I'm thrilled with DDD's groundbreaking technology and stock performance, and pretty happy with FB's recent climb, but it's time for me to spin them off into a company that's about (or should I say aboot) as different as possible: CNI, Canadian National Railway.  Shareholders who own the stock by end of day tomorrow will receive an extra share for each one held by November 29th.  There is already one share of CNI in my portfolio, so I plan on having ten shares of CNI and 4.5 of DDD soon.

Intended portfolio as of Nov. 15:

CNI 5
DDD 4.5
TWO 6
FLST 500
LQMT 600

Without an unlimited-transaction account, transaction fees would have eaten me alive, so if you're thinking of doing the same with an equally small number of shares, I recommend not using a per-transaction company. 

Disclaimer: I do not advocate buying any of the above stocks; please buy at your own discretion.

If you like my advice, I'm gladly accepting tips.

Even $1 will help me grow my portfolio.  Comments are very welcome too!  Thanks for reading!

Portfolio Snapshot #4: Profit Taking, Stock Jumping, and Hanging On (TSLA, CNI, DDD, NCT)

It's been a wild ride, with about a third of my stocks cashed out recently.  I regret exiting instead of reinvesting in cheaper stocks, but it had to happen.

TSLA's been my biggest relative loss recently, but I was able to exit my position yet again with some semblance of profit around $143.  After buying three shares at $95, it could have been a lot worse.  With $135 cashed out after commissions, 500 shares of FLST,  cash from 500 shares of FLST bought with TSLA, and 600 shares of LQMT remaining, there's still a net gain from everything.  It remains to be seen how valuable LQMT's stock buyback program is, but it's enough to keep things at a hold for now.

In light of volatility with TSLA, I've let myself get dinged on commissions, and extra for OTC transactions.  Now that I'm out of TSLA for some time, all I'll be doing is holding the relatively small positions of FLST and LQMT until they pop or fade.  Neither company seems especially troubled to me so I'm just going to hold, likely for the next 2 months.  Even sales at losses will help defray taxes and I'm still ahead unless both companies tank outright.

Commission-per-trade account holdings:

FLST 500
LQMT 600

My unlimited trading account has done much better.  Despite needing to leave some dividend stocks that did me nothing but good behind -- NCT, NRZ, ORI -- this account has held its own and then some in the last few weeks.  2.5 sluggish shares of BEAM were converted to a share of CNI for an upcoming 2-1 split and the remainder put into six shares of TWO, a dividend stock.  Facebook has been treading water in light of Twitter's IPO and it's tempting to swap it out for the new kid, but I'm trying to discipline myself and not keep stock-jumping until I've got at least a 35% gain in a position.

DDD has been doing phenomenally.  Thanks to a 3:2 stock split, patient holding, and a hot stock sector, 3D printing, it's the one stock I've refused to sell to date.  It really is tempting to repeat the success of the previous split and buy more CNI, as anyone who wants the 2-1 split has until November 15th to own shares.  We'll see whether it's better to stay in a new technology or invest in infrastructure...

Unlimited account holdings:

CNI 1
DDD 9
FB 2
TWO 6

Recent sales:

Gains
ORI
NCT
NRZ
BEAM 
EGO
RBS


Unchanged
DX
NTI


Losses
AMD
ALU


Thanks for reading and please check back again during our monthly update!