I started this investing experiment on 5/18/2016, but I did not finish making more portfolio until 5/25/2016. Therefore, I consider today to be the 2-month mark of my investing experiment. Let's see how well I have been doing!
On 5/25/2016, I finished the day with $1,467.63 in cash. The sum of my stocks was $8,264.65. This meant that after starting with $10,000, I had a total account value of $9,732.28. At this point, I was very concerned that it would take a long time to get back to $10,000 even with half of my stock picks giving out monthly dividends.
As the month went on, my account started to pull in dividends - a few dollars one day, another dollar the following week. Those small gains did not help much with the fluctuating market and my total account value went down every time my stock picks went down.
By 6/25/2016, I was amazed. The total value of my portfolio was $10,217.31! My account had $1,490.10 in cash. This meant in one month, I had earned $22.47 in dividends. Not bad, that was almost the amount spent on the commission fee for one of my stock purchases. If I could keep this pace, in 8 more months, I will have recouped my losses from those expensive commissions. Of course, it would not be possible because 4 of the 9 stocks give out quarterly dividends and it just so happened that their payout date was in May/June, so I would not be seeing such a gain until the August/September months. The real reason behind my sudden gain was the market. All of my stock picks were doing very well, reaching a total of $8,727.21.
The day before my 1-month mark, the results of the Brexit vote was revealed and the world learned that UK would be leaving the United Nations. I started to notice many UK-based stocks were dropping and many others were bouncing up and down with each piece of news. And here I was, sitting in front of my computer, just waiting for my portfolio value to plummet.
It is now 7/25/2016. I cannot believe my luck. I have $1,509.17 in cash and my stocks are at $9,287.21, which means the total portfolio value is $10,796.38. Wahoo! Choosing stocks that have performed well over the years or have been relatively stable has paid off. My rank in the "Start with $10,000" game will probably in the 140s. This is amazing considering just two months ago, my rank was in the 600-700s. Kudos to the top ten players who have managed to get 20k and above.
Click here to see an overview of my investing experiment.
Previous update: 06/30/2016
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