by Doodle Dee. Snickers » Sun Feb 10, 2019 1:01 am
Revived.
Of late, I've finally gotten serious about saving for retirement and become kinda obsessed with investing because I find it fun. Since I'm in that area of working class between working poor and low middle-class, I only have so much skin to put in the game, but I've been making it work. I put 5k in an IRA and 2k in Robinhood (since they allow commission-free trading) and I've been feeding 100 to the IRA bi-monthly and will now also be sending 50 to Robinhood bi-monthly. So far, I'm beating my IRA in terms of percentages (I started both accounts in December, white-knuckled that brutal month, and am now up nearly 5%), though part of that could be because I got in on CGC early and made about eighty bucks off it before jumping out. I day-trade, I should mention (not literally, since I don't want to be marked as a day-trader, but in the general sense).
My strategy thus far for my own self-built IRA goes like this:
1. Only make safe investments in things that really seem like they're about to take off. If there's too much risk, I won't put money into it. This is a marathon, not a sprint, I'm not expecting to make 200k this year, or even 2k. So far, I've only had to cut my losses a few times.
2. When I make a sale, 25% of the take goes to my CEFs (more on that below), 25% goes to ETF future bets (I've got a Cannabis ETF, a Renewable Energy ETF, an AI/Robotics ETF, a Lithium ETF, and a Blockchain ETF, the idea being that I think these sectors will become huge but don't want to risk investing in any single company{Except for Cannabis]), and the rest gets reinvested into growth stocks.
3. Since Robinhood doesn't provide mutual funds (hopefully they will eventually), CEFs are the next best thing. I have four with a sustainability of three or more on Morningstar; two are focused on capital growth, while the other two are income CEFs that spit out monthly dividends at a rate of 10%+. Since Robinhood doesn't yet allow DRIP investing and partial shares(though they intend to eventually), those dividends will merely be added to the amount which will be going right back into the CEFs. When I get to retirement age, those growth CEFs will be sold at the best opportunity and reinvested into the income CEFs.
4. For the growth CEFs, always average down with buy limits if possible and make sure I'm only ever buying when they're at a discount to the NAV rather than a premium. A lot of investors don't care about discounts/premiums, but since I'm working with limited resources, I have to maximize my take everywhere I can. For the income CEFs, I'm obviously not that worried about discounts/premiums to NAV, since I'm far more concerned about the dividends than the actual market value.
5. Don't get greedy. I usually sell my positions at 10% gain unless I strongly suspect there will be more growth in the future. I bought up shares of COTY before the earnings, it shot up 32%, and even though they pay a nice dividend I got rid of them simply because I know better than to let a profit go to waste. There's always another opportunity out there. If I think I've made a mistake on a company, just sit on it until it barely makes it above water, then trade out. IT obviously helps to have Robinhood, where I don't have to also work against trading fees.
6. As I said above, this is a marathon, not a sprint. There will be times I get my ass kicked (such as this week, where I went from battling at 2110 to battling at 2040) and have to just keep my eyes off the topline number while making what idiosyncratic trades I can around the margins. I usually manage to at least make a few bucks a day while I wait for my other stocks to have a good day. Slow and steady. At a rate of 3 dollars every trading day, if it holds, that's still a yearly gain of ~600$ on a principal of 2000, which would be incredible and make more explosive potential for my portfolio.
7. Avoid chasing bubbles. If something's big right now, I consider it too late for me to get into it. This also folds into my rule of: don't buy the hype, and don't allow partisan politics to affect my trading decisions.
8. If I suspect we're in a bear market or headed to recession, start pulling away from growth stocks and look toward more stable dividend stocks--beauty products, gold, infrastructure, waste management--which are very reliable even in a recession.
9. If a stock is speculative and expensive, it damn well better pay a dividend to make me feel secure, else I won't pick it up.
10. If I'm going to pick up an ETF or some stock which hedges against recession, it better also pay a dividend since it's basically going to be dead money until the bad times come.
11. At the end of the day, fundamentals still matter. Though I've been burned on companies with great fundamentals like Nintendo, there's a reason why, when comparing two similar massive companies which had fallen out of grace (Ford and GE, both of which provide a similar dividend and were trading around a similar price), I decided to sink 200 in one and not the other--one of them made a massive recovery seemingly on nothing more than the assumptions of the market that it would survive, while the other is still making money hand over fist.
And finally: 13. NEVER put too much money in one stock. The worst thing to do is to put all your chips )or even 20% of your chips) in one stock, no matter how strongly you believe in it. This folds in with the rule about not being too greedy. Keep the stocks diversified and just hunt day in/day out for more opportunities to earn a couple bucks or more.
My greatest triumph was getting in on CGC with 5 shares--1 when it was 30$ and four more when it was 40$. I traded out around fifty. I pulled out of CRON as well, because after the massive gold rush on Cannabis stocks, I think there's about to be a crash down to Earth when earnings come around this week and people realize that MJ companies are expanding right now instead of making beaucoup bucks. I'm gonna swoop in then and grab up ACB, Cron, and CGC on the cheap. ACB has potential if it decides to do share buybacks, CGC is obviously king at the moment, and CRON is massively overbought for how small a company it actually is yet has a 40% stake put into it by Altria (the company which brought you Marlboro) so it has potential.
My worst stock has been Nintendo. It was trading around its 52-week low, and considering its strong sales I couldn't believe it. I picked up two shares, and when it started to go up, decided to buy another three. It posted great sales but lowered guidance for its next earnings, and so it sunk. Then EA and Take-Two shit the bed, and Nintendo sympathetically sunk with them, so I'm down ~10% on my five shares. I'm still holding--they provide a dividend, and I firmly believe they'll recover (unless my theory down below ends up being true).
Right now, Microsoft, Ford, and Nintendo make up about 1/3 of my portfolio, in order of least to most valuable. Ford I've been particularly bullish about as a very long term stock, since Ford will never die, is cheap, and pays a steady dividend.
At the moment, I've grown a bit conservative. After the recovery in January, this last week brought everyone back down to Erf. Looking at the market over the last six months, it's been volatile, but both the peaks and valleys are getting lower. I'm starting to suspect a lot of stocks are wildly overbought, especially those which have formed a bit of a mountain between Jan '17 and now. I think we might be headed toward a bear market, if not a recession, and so I've started picking my growth stocks more carefully than I would if I thought we were in a bull market.
I'm curious to hear people's thoughts on what I'm doing, because I've only been doing this a month.