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Stock portfolio update

I hope to increase my stock portfolio and P2P lending amount. Right now, doing that depends on selling RP#4, which should net me about €10,000. That will be used to pay for RP#3 renovation, which means that all the money I save from November on can be used towards the stock market and P2P lending.

For now, I am assuming I don’t have any extra cash, and so I can only play with my stock wallet. As I had about €1,000 free, I decided to look around for hot stocks and buy them. These are temporary, small purchases that will enable me to mark a few stocks. Hopefully, if I flip RP#4 until the end of the year, I can increase my stock portfolio to €10,000 this year alone.

How I am picking stocks

I have written before about assessing the stock market as a whole.

For single stocks, I follow a free cash flow model, which essentially means that I pick cash flow over appreciation. In stocks, that is no different. I look for stocks with high yields and moderate appreciation prospects. This means that I sadly discard companies I really believe in, such as Tesla Motors. Plus, I don’t do mining stocks, which have been a great way to FIRE for some.

Based on this, I look for high dividend stocks, but this can be quite tricky sometimes. Many high dividend stocks are not sustainable over the long run. One company may distribute more in dividends than what it has made in the past calendar year. If that happens, it is certainly not a very sustainable decision. In my opinion, there is a variety of factors that make a company sustainable, and I typically look at:

Dividend yield: even if one company is highly sustainable, I only look at dividend yields that are higher than 8%. Anything below that is definitely not interesting for me.
Payout ratio: I typically look at payout ratios between 10 and 30, which means that a company pays between 10% and 30% of the earnings of the previous year in dividends.
P/E: The price over earnings is a very important indicator for me. It basically tells me the performance of a given stock in comparison to its price. Ideally, I pick stocks with P/E <= 6.

This being said, keep in mind that this is merely a set of filters to select the best stocks. I personally wrote an algorithm that finds these stocks and sends me a message whenever they are found. Then, I look closely… and I end up buying whenever I like the company. Sadly, I haven’t been investing much over the last months, but I hope to change that in 2018!

Many people ask me where they can find good stocks for free. I think that this guide together with Ben’s Sure Dividend site cover most of the deal.

The transactions

Based on my criteria (along with a few good hours of work), I decided to add the following stocks to my portfolio:

Armour Residential REIT (ARR). This REIT has been paying monthly dividends of $0.19 in 2017 ($2.28/yr). I bought shares at $25,76, which means a yield of roughly 9%.
Concurrent Computer Corp (CCUR). This is a software/solutions company that develops applications and being a software guy, I see the merits of it. I bought shares at $5.84. If the dividends are $0.12 per quarter (meaning $0.48/yr), the yield will be above 8%.
Oxford Lane Capital (OXLC). This is essentially a financing company, that finances growth, and acquisitions, among others. It was recommended to me by a Canadian friend, who knows the company inside out. With quarterly dividends of $0.4 ($1.60 per year), I expect a dividend of 16%, as I bought shares at $10.
Big 5 Sporting Goods Corporation (BGFV). Big 5 Sporting is a sporting goods retailer with 420 stores across the US. I like to be exposed to retail as well, so this will be a minor position yet a long one. With quarterly dividends of $0.15 ($0.60 per year) and a buy in price of $7.45, this stock will yield a little over 8%.

I’ve got some more purchase orders following similar logic, but I will only post about those companies if the orders go through.

How my stock portfolio looks like now vs the future

Adding these stocks to my previous portfolio, here is my current portfolio:

I have built my portfolio with relatively balanced positions among the stocks by purpose. My goal is to continue to grow it buying different stocks such that the portfolio is not too imbalanced. Over time, the positions may become imbalanced again, due to appreciation or depreciation, but in the long run, they should be fairly balanced. Right now, RENE is very big in value but that is due to my expectation of appreciation, and so I bought a decent amount of stock so that I can sell when the moment presents itself.

What the future will bring…

I use DeGiro as the broker, and quite honestly I am not quite sure it is entirely reliable, so I will be opening accounts on other brokers eventually. When I hit my first goal in terms of net worth (€680,000), I will have about €100,000 of that on dividend-paying stocks. This should generate about €6,500 net a year. Although 6.5% net a year is not that easy to get, I will be choosing high dividend, low appreciation stocks, so it should be very attainable. If I do it right, it enough to pay for my fixed expenses, including property taxes on my primary property, condo fees, utilities, and groceries.

In the near future, I hope to double my portfolio and increase my positions in energy and retail. Ideally, I want to have a high dividend portfolio, with moderate exposure to Portugal (for tax purposes) and the US.

If you have any comment, let me know down below.

Stock Market,

Investing: Dividends or Index?

I am pleased to bring you a guest post by a blogger who is an expert on the stock market, Ten Factorial Rocks. I follow a free cash flow model (which roughly means that I need to see extra cash at the end of the month) but this may not be ideal for every one of you. Take it away TFR…

Investing: Dividends or Index?

In acquiring an education, we graduate through various stages, from primary school, middle school, high school and then, to college and graduate school. Life and personal finance are the same way as well. We mature through every experience that prepares us to take on higher order challenges and improve our ‘qualifications’, ultimately leading to financial independence.

In this article, I will be talking about one such ‘higher order’ topic in investing. It assumes that the readers have mastered the basics of personal finance. Like spending less than they earn (primary school), having a 3-6 month emergency fund (middle school), have no debt or have manageable cash flow/debt ratio (high school), and have invested in or believe in cash flow generating (or) appreciating assets like stocks or investment real estate for their long-term future (college level).

There are excellent resources available about the long-term benefits of investing in equities and specifically, equity index funds. Separately, there are resources available about dividend investing that a DIY investor can pursue. I wrote a detailed investing series comparing Dividends vs. Index because nobody truly compared the two investing philosophies from multiple perspectives without the bias of a blind advocate of the method they believe in.

Investing Philosophy Reflects Your Personality

Just like we can choose from multiple majors in college, in ‘higher order’ investing, we can take multiple paths to a secure retirement. One way is investment real estate, which Ben Davis believes in, and another way is equities that I believe in. If you choose the equities path, it becomes necessary to have the lowest costs of investment, in other words, invest efficiently. Even within low-cost equity investment universe, we can choose either very low cost index funds (some as low as 0.05% for US total market funds, and below 0.3% for international index funds) or create a diversified portfolio of higher quality stocks across multiple sectors that pay periodic (and often increasing) dividends.

It is the last point where there are divergent points of view. There are no absolute right or wrong answers once you reach this stage of personal finance – it’s like deciding which graduate school to select. You are already a winner and way ahead of millions of people in the journey to financial independence.

If you are a dividend investor with investment portfolio of $250,000 or more who makes, say, 20 trades a year, low trading costs will actually make your annual investment expenses lower than passive index investors. This is because index fund fees of 0.1% on $250K is still $250 per year, which is equivalent to 31 trades at $8/trade! These days, trading costs have declined so much it most online brokerages offer $2-5 per trade, or even less. On the other hand, the index fund fees in absolute dollars will only increase as your account size grows each year.

What is the right investment strategy here?

I am a strong believer in indexing as a strategy to build assets, that is, if you are in accumulation stage of life. You can continue to be an index investor for life, there is nothing wrong with that approach. However, if you are willing to understand how indexes are constructed, you will realize that a vanilla index fund, while it is diverse in terms of number of holdings, can expose you to more sectoral risks than you realize or are willing to tolerate. For example, S&P 500 index fund has 21% allocation to Information Technology sector and nearly 15% to Financials sector. These are sectors that do well when the economy is growing but have sharper declines during recessions than other sectors, like Utilities, for example. Utilities are only 3.2% of S&P 500 and they generally lag during raging bull markets but shine during declining markets due to their relative safety. Utilities and Health care, along with some REITs (not all), are considered ‘defensive’ sectors.

Better get comfortable with Beta

Collectively, all the market sectors, based on marked-weighted capitalizations, give total market volatility. This volatility is defined by the term beta. It can range from a low of zero (no volatility) to any number based on how volatile a stock’s price movement is. Cash has beta of zero, because its value is completely independent of the market.

By definition, since all volatility is calculated relative to the broader market, the S&P 500 index has a beta of 1.0. So, if your stock portfolio has a beta of 0.9, you should have 10% less volatility than S&P 500. Similarly, if your stock portfolio has a beta of 1.2, you are likely to experience 20% more volatility than the index. According to Modern Portfolio Theory, it doesn’t matter if the 0.9 beta is achieved by owning slightly less volatile stocks or by owning a portfolio of 90% S&P index and 10% cash (which has a beta of 0). The latter portfolio also has a weighted average beta of 0.9, and thus, theoretically, no different than the former portfolio of 100% stocks having a portfolio beta of 0.9.

But the reality that many investors face is different.

Stocks are the best asset class to own in the long run to achieve the highest possible return – on this, there is no dispute. But once you build a sizable portfolio, your focus may shift from wanting to bear the full market volatility. Also, you may choose to allocate different weightages to sectors. For example, you could decide to own dividend paying stocks across sectors such that you have say, 15% allocation to Utilities and a correspondingly lower allocation to Financials and Technology than what S&P 500 has. Doing so will cause your portfolio volatility (beta) to be 0.8-0.9 range, that is, 10-20% less volatile than the market. Similarly, you may choose to select high quality dividend paying stocks across the sectors in such a proportion to give you a dividend yield that roughly corresponds to your withdrawal rate. If you wish to live only on dividends, you can construct your investment portfolio of say, $1 million to deliver $35,000 in annual dividends. In this example, you can engineer your dividend portfolio to deliver a 3.5% starting portfolio yield, with an expected annual dividend growth rate of 5%. This takes care of both your current spending needs with a cushion for inflationary adjustments in the future.

Dividend investing is just a subset of equity investing, and it is not a different asset class that some assume. Dividends are more stable than capital gains, a fact that has been proven over 80 years (Ibbotson study). Also, dividend payers and growers, as a sub-class, have generated better overall returns than the index over the past few decades (Ned Davis Research).

My Dividend Investing vs. Indexing series examines the issue from the vantage point of an individual investor without any of the filters and biases of either camp that has its share of advocates. The individual investor is often a victim of the financial industry. I care about the individual investor because that’s who I am. Hope this series helps you in your thinking about an appropriate investment strategy for your FIRE journey. To understand this topic in greater detail, it would be useful to study my Indexing vs. Dividend Investing Series in detail. They are linked below for easy reference.

Part 1: This sets the background context and frames the debate from the context of passive income.

Part 2: This examines the flexibility of passive income in DGI using three investors in different stages of their lives with different objectives.

Part 3: This evaluates the role of dividend income in total returns regardless of which strategy you like to pursue.

Part 4: Choosing Indexing vs DGI is not an either/or strategy. What makes better sense depends on you and where you are in your investing journey.

Part 5: What about the risk of lagging the index in total returns? We examine this risk of DGI and the impact from both financial and life perspectives.

Part 6: Can you get the best of both indexing and dividend investing? Yes, you can. I share portfolio examples here on how to execute this strategy.

I would appreciate your comments either here or on my website.

BIO: Ten Factorial Rocks (TFR) owner is a 45-year-young corporate manager who values financial independence. Ten Factorial Rocks (TFR) was created to chronicle my journey towards retirement while sharing my learning’s, absurdities and pitfalls along the way towards my search for a more meaningful life. Wall Street finance and stock option riches have one thing in common – they never passed through my life! TFR is not just about financial independence. TFR is also about self-empowerment while getting to financial independence, and our search for a better, meaningful life (of which early retirement is just one milestone). We aim to educate, entertain, share life stories and analyze the oddities of the world around us. TFR – why the strange name?

Stock Market,

Why I will set up a trident and a 3 fund portfolio after the next stock market correction

If you follow the blog, you know that I’ve been selling out my stocks. While I plan to invest heavily in the stock market as part of my strategy to retire early, I expect a market correction soon. I know exactly what I will buy when the correction happens. That would be a set of simple portfolios including the trident portfolio, a 3 fund portfolio, and Portuguese stocks for tax reasons. The first two portfolios are lazy portfolios, while the latter is a much more actively managed portfolio.

Trident portfolio

The trident portfolio, which I learned from Milos Baljozovic, is composed of US small-cap value stocks, gold and long term US treasuries. The trident portfolio has consistently outperformed many other portfolios. This includes the 3 fund portfolio between 1972 and 2015, as shown here. Some argue that this is mainly due to gold and long term treasuries, which have grown a lot in the past. Long term treasuries are particularly low at the moment, so we should be careful when assessing this data.

The same source, reports the following, based on the portfolio visualizer:

This portfolio is specialized on capital gains; Gold doesn’t pay dividends and US small-cap value stocks barely do. The most interest of the portfolio comes from long term US treasuries.

3 fund portfolio

The 3 fund portfolio is composed of a domestic and international total market funds, and a bond total market fund. There are multiple advantages to this portfolio, including its simplicity and tax efficiency (depending on the funds you choose and where you live). Although I don’t plan to move from Portugal anytime soon, I will use the US as the reference for the domestic fund and the world for the international fun. You can check out another more detailed definition of the 3 fund portfolio here.

Most likely, I will go with a vanguard 3 fund portfolio. I think the term “vanguard 3 fund portfolio” is given to the three fund portfolio when it is composed of vanguard funds. The best option for me is, I believe, to go with the “Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund”, “Vanguard Total Bond Market Index Fund” and the “Vanguard Total International Stock Index Fund”. I will choose their ETF versions, i.e. the funds with the tickers VTI (total market vanguard ETF fund), BND (Total Bond vanguard ETF) and VXUS (total international market ETF) in equal value proportions. Note that these funds trade at different values, so adjustments are needed if you want to have equal proportions (33%) of each one of them.

Reasons

The primary reason to go with these two lazy portfolios is the lack of time. On top of that, their past yields have been interesting. I don’t really have time to keep myself updated of the Portuguese and the US market to make active decisions. I will do an active management of my Portuguese stocks as I like to keep myself well informed with respect to the local market and I will be a customer of many of the companies I will hold shares of.

More details

As a Portuguese tax resident, I have to pay attention to a variety of factors, as the Portuguese tax code is considerably different from the US tax code. First, and more importantly, you cannot defer paying taxes on dividends to the future. This means that if some dividends clear on your account, you must pay taxes on them, even if you reinvest them. As a result, I must pick funds that automatically reinvest dividends so that I don’t pay as much on taxes. If you recall correctly, I follow a free cash flow investing model, which, at first glance, does not match well with this strategy. This means that I have to know upfront that I would reinvest dividends on the same fund even if they cleared on my account.

The trident portfolio doesn’t generate significant dividends (for the reason that small-cap stocks do not pay significant dividends themselves). Long term bonds do pay recurrent interest, but I am not that much concerned with paying taxes on that. The most susceptible tax for both the trident and the 3 fund portfolios would be paid on capital gains during the rebalancing (which is commonly a small part of the portfolio).

I will most likely not buy REITs because although they match my investment model, I already have enough exposure to it. 🙂

Stock Market,

The metrics and signs I use to assess the stock market

metrics to assess the stock market

I was recently asked two things: how do I pick stocks and how do I determine whether the stocks I want to buy (and the stock market as a whole) is over-valuated. It is the latest question I want to cover today. This may help beginners investing in the stock market. I bring you an extensive, yet simple (but profound) article, with metrics to assess the stock market. You simply have to connect when did stock market crash and what were the metrics telling you and you’ll probably find yourself making grounded stock market predictions.

Stock Market,

Why am I happy that Trump won?

I will also share a somewhat unpopular opinion. Please proceed to read my answer with that in mind.

I am clearly for Trump (especially if the opponent is Hillary). I mean, its not necessarily that I like the person, but I like the policies he intends to apply. The fundamental difference between them, in my view, are the economic policies of each other.

Trump proposes to use what is called trickle down economy policies, lowering taxes aggressively, which will dramatically help the economy. Trump proposed the biggest tax cuts since Reagan’s presidency. Reaganomics, as they went on to be known as, ended the 1980 recession in the US. Trump’s idea is to reduce corporate tax to 15%, to start off.

Hillary, on the other hand, wanted to increase the taxes on the wealthy (and use the extra money to invest in infrastructure, thus stimulating the economy). She emphasized this a lot in the debates, if you followed them. She proposed a 5% increase on whoever earns over $5 million, to start off.

Stock Market,

Revitalizing my stock portfolio!

(image from businessdayonline.com)

During the past days, I have been working on revitalizing my stock portfolio. My strategy is clear: I am a conservative investor who cares about wealth preservation and increasing income. Therefore, I only buy stocks that pay dividends. Buying a stock that doesn’t pay a dividend is insane to me. It doesn’t make sense in my head. Why would you do that? If a stock doesn’t pay dividends, it is speculation. Maybe you recall these words being said by somebody else. That is possible, because Kevin O’Leary says this day in day out. And when it comes to the stock market, I second Mr Wonderful all the way up: I only buy dividend paying stocks, and in particular, solid companies which have the ability to consistently pay dividends and increase them over time. I also allocate up to 5% in anyone’s name, and 20% per sector (if possible, low volatility is desired). As I am European, I need to apply market limits as well, and currency hedges. To achieve this, I could simply go out there and buy a wallet of aristocrat stocks in different markets, right? Well, I personally want high yields too!