Earlier last week, nearly 3 million unemployed workers applied for benefits last week. This comes as companies continue eliminating jobs in the face of a viral pandemic. This brings the total number of jobless claims to close to 36 million. Some areas of the country are experiencing an unemployment rate of over 30%; similar to … [Read more...]
Dividend Income Safe – For Now
In my last post I discussed how a large chunk of my personal wealth evaporated in weeks. The virus shut down the economy and ravaged all our stock portfolios. Thankfully, there was a rapid, but partial recovery. The Dow seems to have stabilized in the 23-24,000 point range. This is largely due to a “flattening” of the curve … [Read more...]
Standing Ground
CRASH! March by far was the worst month of my investing career. At the bottom I was down nearly $50,000 or approximately 29%. This was a better performance than the broader market, which saw even steeper declines! The energy and travel sectors collapsed. Boeing, one of America’s largest, most important companies lost … [Read more...]
Coronavirus Batters Stocks
Sooner or later we were bound to have a nasty correction. I wasn’t sure what the catalyst would be, but I knew it was coming. We discussed, in subsequent posts, how I thought it might have to do with politics. Instead, a novel virus with origins in Wuhan, China has spread across the world. Thankfully, China now appears to … [Read more...]
Recent Buy: International Business Machines
Towards the end of last year, I added two new positions. With Ameritrade moving to $0 commissions I was able to average in a share or two per week. I eventually built up smaller positions in Honeywell (HON) and Cracker Barrel (CBRL). Honeywell is one of the highest quality industrial companies in the world and thus carries a rich … [Read more...]
Goals for 2020
Around the New Year most of us reflect on what we accomplished over the past 12 months. In my personal life I renovated my house, battled a minor health problem, and navigated a struggling industrial market at work. From a financial standpoint, my portfolio increased by nearly 50% YOY. In January 2019, it was valued at roughly … [Read more...]