Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Sold some IAU and some covered calls on NKE today. Bought UUP and REET.

Heads up for LTC. They've dropped 6% over the past two days (read the conference call transcript for "why"). If they drop another 3% or so, they'll be in the right range to buy, IMHO.

Thanks. I'll put that on my list.

Just bought some:
1) Global Government Bond ETF and
2) JP Morgan Emerging Markets Bond ETF
These two are parts of my diversified portfolio.

Last week I bought a bit of Glaxo stock.
Since I'm based in Euro currency area, it is for me at the cheapest in 5 years.
They have been going through some kind of a slump in the last two three years, but I am confident they can recover.

Can't find much else to buy

I've had my 401K in a very cheap ( $8/year) S&P 500 index for the past 2 years. I can't count the number of times I've considered switching it out when we break through another tally mark.

Now that I've left my old employer and we've crossed 2500, it seems appropriate to take my gains and run for the hills as this bull certainly can't go on much longer. So I rolled it over and have 70K in cash to invest....and absolutely nothing I'd like to buy.

usually, the best strategy when in doubt is the one you can stick to in moments of turmoil.

Any thoughts on MRK's selloff? All I can see is that they had a cyberattack which impacted results by a couple percentage points and that they withdrew their application for Keytruda from Europe, which is one of their fastest growing items.

Or is it the 2.3 billion charge for the colab with AZN?

They did beat on earnings and raised guidance. Pipeline looks ok.

OHI is having problems with two of their operators, represents 10% of income... stock has been beaten up by 20%. If you need to fill with an income stock, this is a promising entry point as finding replacement operators is fairly easy.

Buying Enbridge. ENB.TO. Canadian pipeliner that pays a 5.2% dividend, large streak of increases. Good for growth as they continue to amalgamate the Spectra Energy assets. Politcal landscape currently positive for pipelines in the U.S.A and they are taking advantage. Recently dipped on an earnings miss. Want to hold and add to this position for a long time.

Bought a bit of Telefonica stock.
I don't have any Telecom stocks (except in my indexes obviosly), they're one of the largest players in the world, they are well diversified geographically, they pay a good dividend and the stock is low relative to the last 5-10 years, seemingly following some big infrastructure investments that negatively impacted the bottom line.

I don't know them very well (haven't owned any, ever), so this is what I call an "explorative" buy: when I buy a large company based on superficial reasons such as the above (I made about three hours of Internet research), so that it gives me the obligation to start following it.

A few items that might be worth a look... constructive criticism welcome, it's a good thing.

I work in banking (a little while longer) and follow this sector.
Fed meeting 12-13th of December
When a Fed hike is expected this generally moves bank stock up 5-7%, and based on the last couple, it generally starts 7-10 days prior to disclosure, and is a hold up until day-of, but not a bad idea to sell just b4 announcement if you are in for the short term. It could be worth looking for a good entry point anytime now. (WFC - 53.75 end of day, but i will not be fully committed until ~ Dec. 4th)

Gov
They purchased properties (REIT) earlier this year (1st Qtr, I believe), cash was out, but the profits did not hit the books until October, 2nd – so earnings were very poor 2nd, 3rd, but next earnings will include new properties revenue. It seems to be on the uptrend now, and the 9+% dividend yield seems to make it a safe buy, hold. (18.69 end of day)

TOFB
They seem to be finally exiting the start-up loss phase, and moving into profits. Valuations look attractive according to earnings and release notes, if they continue the current trend. But warning on very low trade volume, limit orders only. Maybe a more risky buy, but anything under $2 seems like a bargain. (1.75 at the end of the day). This is largely an unknown stock, my hope is that when the P/E (around 43 before earnings) starts to correct, it gets noticed.

Anybody looking at GE?
They are selling a lot of stuff but from a superficial look they seem to be focusing on higher margin activities (jet engines, MRI machines, etc) which doesnt sound all that stupid to me.
they recently cut the dividend and this may have added to the panic-selling?
I normally never sell when I buy*, so any short term fluctuation doesn't bother me at all.

*I have a good 10 years track record so I can say I'm confident I know myself relatively well as an investor

My problem with GE is that they have been (for years now) selling off pieces of their business, then doing a very poor job at reinvesting the proceeds. Their recent big bets (Baker Hughes and half of Alstrom) are borderline boondoggles. And now their talking about "optionality" of Baker Hughes. Buy high sell low?

I'm not sure the dividend cut is big enough. It's unclear -- based on last week's presentation -- how the asset sales will impact cash flow. In two year's time, after the asset sales are complete, is GE going to be back near 100% payout ratio?

Yes, their jet engine business is awesome. But I'd want some more clarity from management before diving in.

Quick anecdote... I work for a Baker-Hughes competitor and we seem to be hiring the best people away from them. I used to be a potential customer of Baker and never came close to using them based on price (obvious from comparing bids) and quality (determined from word of mouth). Definitely no love for them in the Canadian oil patch.

Had no idea GE owned a part of them. My experiences with GE Oil & Gas have been positive.

This is all first-hand gut feeling thought, not empirical data.

I ended up buying a bit of GE at $17.95

we'll see.

I bought:
- ishares Global Corporate Bonds
- ishares JPMorgang Emerging Markets Corporate Bonds
because they both are quite useful with the "Prime Harvesting" combinded with usual Government Bonds.
I plan to use "Prime Harvesting" as my retirement withdrawal strategy. (see alsoviewtopic.php?f=3&t=9462)

https://simplywall.st/stocks/us/diversi ... e-hathaway (example) is a neat tool I recently came across.

Deeper use unfortunately require registration, but you can search individual companies and see their competitors w/o it. The site will also do snowflake diagrams for entire portfolios. I checked and most of my holdings are, not surprisingly, heavy on health[y balance sheet] and dividend.

Nice tool. If the data is reliable it might be worth the cost at 7 a month. Just another 7*300=2100 to your pot of gold to cover the cost.

Interesting article by Zweig
https://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2017/12 ... -rule-you/

The interesting part would be the "own stocks that have been neglected by indexes".
The article talks about microcaps, but I would think that European and emerging market stocks can do also (indexes are a much smaller part of the market over here).
Another good strategy could be to integrate index funds with single stocks of unloved companies (think GE now). Indexing is basically a momentum strategy, so compensating with stocks that have enjoyed negative momentum could be a non-stupid idea (selected with a grain of salt of course, I wouldn't buy coal miners today)