My euphoria at seeing my portfolio value rise is finally gone. As of closing on 08/05/2016, I had $1,515.60 in cash and my stocks had a total sum of $9,146.77. Overall, my portfolio was $10,662.37.
There have been ups and downs ever since I started this experiment, however this is the first full week where my portfolio's value went down every single day.
On the bright side! My overall gains since I started with $10,000 is 6.27%! Not bad for a little for 2 months. I'll keep crossing my fingers that after a year, I will have a return rate higher than 5%. I may not have a career working in a brokerage firm, but I have know for a long time that I do not have the nerves of steel to go for the riskier, but more rewarding, investments. Any gains is a win in my book!
To you who discovered this post, would you be satisfied with portfolio return rate of 5%? Or would you want the benchmark 10% rate?
Click here to see an overview of my investing experiment.
Previous update: 07/25/2016
Showing posts with label Investing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Investing. Show all posts
Saturday, August 6, 2016
Monday, July 25, 2016
Investing Experiment: 07/25/2016
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
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
Thursday, June 30, 2016
Investing Experiment: 06/30/2016
My choices are doing very well lately. Ever since my ranking bounced up in the middle of June, it has been steadily climbing higher. When I learned that the UK had voted to leave the European Union, I was worried about how the market would be affected. However, since I have very basic knowledge about companies, there was little I could do besides reading random articles about what people predict will happen. I figured this was it, my stock picks are going to go down in value now.
In hindsight, I realize that I did not need to worry as much as I did because my portfolio focuses on companies in the United States so they won't be affected as quickly as stocks overseas. Granted, I still need to worry because businesses and other investors are adjusting themselves as policies and relationships change between countries. I expect my portfolio's value to fluctuate with each new piece of news. Until then, I will treasure the sight of having an account value of $10,423.45 and a rank of 181.
Click here to see an overview of my investing experiment.
Previous update: 06/15/2016
Next update: 07/25/2016
In hindsight, I realize that I did not need to worry as much as I did because my portfolio focuses on companies in the United States so they won't be affected as quickly as stocks overseas. Granted, I still need to worry because businesses and other investors are adjusting themselves as policies and relationships change between countries. I expect my portfolio's value to fluctuate with each new piece of news. Until then, I will treasure the sight of having an account value of $10,423.45 and a rank of 181.
Click here to see an overview of my investing experiment.
Previous update: 06/15/2016
Next update: 07/25/2016
Wednesday, June 15, 2016
Investing Experiment: 06/15/2016
I have been very lucky this week. My ranking has remained high thanks to the market going up lately, so I am now at 293. I am enjoying each day of this, but will feel better when the market goes down because I feel like I haven't done much to actually increase the value of my portfolio.
On a more lighter note, I got another batch of dividend payments today: $12.47!! I am so close to earning back the money used on one of the commission fees. If the payouts are consistent with what happened this month, then it appears each month will pay off almost one commission fee. Therefore, it will take about 8-10 months before I get enough cash to recoup the losses caused by these commissions.
Click here to see an overview of my investing experiment.
Previous update: 06/09/2016
Next update: 06/30/2016
On a more lighter note, I got another batch of dividend payments today: $12.47!! I am so close to earning back the money used on one of the commission fees. If the payouts are consistent with what happened this month, then it appears each month will pay off almost one commission fee. Therefore, it will take about 8-10 months before I get enough cash to recoup the losses caused by these commissions.
Click here to see an overview of my investing experiment.
Previous update: 06/09/2016
Next update: 06/30/2016
Thursday, June 9, 2016
Investing Experiment: 06/09/2016
Woohoo! Yesterday was a lucky day! The stock market is up, which bumped up my portfolio value. As of closing yesterday, my total account value was $10,051.75. This pushed my ranking up to 320! Obviously this rank is going to dive like a bird once the market goes down again, but I'll enjoy every good outcome that I can get.
Another highlight is that dividends are coming in. After purchasing all my stocks, I had $1,467.63 in cash. As of yesterday, I now have $1,477.63. Ten dollars! It will take a long while before I recoup my losses from commission fees alone, but it is still exciting for a beginner like me to see the portfolio value rise.
Click here to see an overview of my investing experiment.
Previous update: 05/24/2016
Next update: 06/15/2016
Tuesday, May 24, 2016
Investing Experiment: 05/24/2016
I just remembered there was another stock I wanted to try out, Simon Property Group, Inc. (SPG). I live near a mall owned by this group and there are always a good number of people there whenever I stop by. During the last year's Christmas shopping, I had to go to multiple places to get gifts for everyone. Each shopping district was packed. Granted this was Christmas season, so obviously there would be many shoppers, but I happened to visit a few of them again and still saw numerous shoppers. This captured my interest, so I did a little online review and discovered that some of them belonged to the Simon Property Group. Seeing how well their stock has performed, lead to me adding this stock to my possible investment list.
Since I still had some left over cash in the Investopedia Stock Simulator, I thought, "Why not?" and decided to purchase a few shares.
So now I have $1,467.63 left in cash on this simulator. Since I follow the "Buy and Hold" strategy, it will take a while for the dividends to bring back what I lost in commission fees alone. I also discovered that this simulator does not have an automatic dividend reinvestment option. I find the DRIP option very useful in slowly growing my portfolio since I can get partial shares without incurring more fees. Considering that Investopedia has a quick post about DRIP, I had hoped they would include it in their simulator. Oh well. That just means I will have to wait longer before buying more stocks or I adjust my strategy to do more trades to offset all the commission charges.
Click here to see an overview of my investing experiment.
Previous update: 05/18/2016
Next update: 06/09/2016
Since I still had some left over cash in the Investopedia Stock Simulator, I thought, "Why not?" and decided to purchase a few shares.
| Stock | # of Shares | Purchase Price |
| SPG | 5 | 196.57 |
So now I have $1,467.63 left in cash on this simulator. Since I follow the "Buy and Hold" strategy, it will take a while for the dividends to bring back what I lost in commission fees alone. I also discovered that this simulator does not have an automatic dividend reinvestment option. I find the DRIP option very useful in slowly growing my portfolio since I can get partial shares without incurring more fees. Considering that Investopedia has a quick post about DRIP, I had hoped they would include it in their simulator. Oh well. That just means I will have to wait longer before buying more stocks or I adjust my strategy to do more trades to offset all the commission charges.
Click here to see an overview of my investing experiment.
Previous update: 05/18/2016
Next update: 06/09/2016
Wednesday, May 18, 2016
Investing Experiment: 05/18/2016
My orders were fulfilled this morning with the following purchases:
The rankings were calculated this morning before the market opened, thus my ranking was based on my $10,000 starting point. So, yay! My rank is 611. Considering I lost $239.60 from commission fees, my rank is probably going to drop about 100-150 points depending on how well everyone else performs. I might get lucky and all my stocks rise in price, which will bring me back into the 600 range. However, I prefer to be pessimistic when it comes to money, so I'm going to presume that I will hang around the 700s ranks until dividends start to come in.
Click here to see an overview of my investing experiment.
Previous update: 05/17/2016
Next update: 05/24/2016
| Stock | # of Shares | Purchase Price |
| MMM | 5 | 166.33 |
| PG | 11 | 79.84 |
| JNJ | 8 | 113.40 |
| DIV | 38 | 24.58 |
| O | 15 | 60.91 |
| EPR | 13 | 69.95 |
| LTC | 20 | 46.85 |
| STAG | 46 | 20.81 |
The rankings were calculated this morning before the market opened, thus my ranking was based on my $10,000 starting point. So, yay! My rank is 611. Considering I lost $239.60 from commission fees, my rank is probably going to drop about 100-150 points depending on how well everyone else performs. I might get lucky and all my stocks rise in price, which will bring me back into the 600 range. However, I prefer to be pessimistic when it comes to money, so I'm going to presume that I will hang around the 700s ranks until dividends start to come in.
Click here to see an overview of my investing experiment.
Previous update: 05/17/2016
Next update: 05/24/2016
Tuesday, May 17, 2016
Investing Experiment: 05/17/2016
I joined the "Start with $10,000" game in Investopdia's Stock Simulator.
The market was already closed, so I put in the order for the stocks I wanted in my simulator portfolio. I pretended I only have $1,000 for each stock and orders the following number of shares:
There's an overall ranking system in this game. I applaud today's #1 person, who managed to earn $51,935.05 using just $10,000.
Since I placed 8 orders and the commission is $29.95 for each trade (expensive! I am so glad in real life my broker doesn't have this steep of a fee), then I just lost $239.60. Whelp, that will knock my ranking down right off the bat. Let's hope one or both of my strategies will eventually help recoup my losses.
Click here to see an overview of my investing experiment.
Next update: 05/18/2016
The market was already closed, so I put in the order for the stocks I wanted in my simulator portfolio. I pretended I only have $1,000 for each stock and orders the following number of shares:
| Stock | # of Shares |
| MMM | 5 |
| PG | 11 |
| JNJ | 8 |
| DIV | 38 |
| O | 15 |
| EPR | 13 |
| LTC | 20 |
| STAG | 46 |
There's an overall ranking system in this game. I applaud today's #1 person, who managed to earn $51,935.05 using just $10,000.
Since I placed 8 orders and the commission is $29.95 for each trade (expensive! I am so glad in real life my broker doesn't have this steep of a fee), then I just lost $239.60. Whelp, that will knock my ranking down right off the bat. Let's hope one or both of my strategies will eventually help recoup my losses.
Click here to see an overview of my investing experiment.
Next update: 05/18/2016
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