Informational Update on Buying Stocks

My great investment adventures in the stock market continues.  I am investing anywhere from $300 to $700 a month.  I consider this my retirement fund.

I really like the Disney stock (DIS).  It has been good to me.  My 14 shares have gained $444 since I starting purchasing them a year ago.  I bought my first 4 shares at $68, and an additional ten when DIS was around $75 a share.  It is currently about $110 and I think it will hover there a while.

I also was surprised how well my Rite Aide stock has done.  I bought it thinking it a good risk, and it has risen and made me a few dollars.  It is still cheap to get in at under $9 a share.  It doesn't pay dividends, but it has potential.

I also just purchased INN and have been happy with it. It is a dividend paying stock and my 40 shares have made me $5 in just 2 days.

I am really disappointed in my Real Goods (RGSE) stocks.  They reverse split, and that is never a good sign. This was a company I really believed in, but then the original company bought itself back out of the bigger company. This was the first stock I bought.  I used to own a 100 shares, but thanks to the reverse split I now own 5.  For me to make my money back, those 5 shares would need to be worth about $65 each. I just don't see that happening, so I am going to sell what I have at a loss and get out.  I figure it will be a good tax deduction.  Thankfully my Disney stock has made more than RGSE has lost me.

Canon Inc. has also be a decent stock to own.

My other investments are just hovering and haven't really cost or gained me anything (though some pay a dividend).

Since I'm not a day trader, but investing long haul for retirement, I have time to see if my so-so's go up.

Happy Investing!

Still learning about Stocks and Market

My learning journey through the land of buying stocks is progressing. I'm finding it is easier to acquire knowledge by "doing" as opposed to reading books. Yet, since cash is involved, that may prove an expensive way to learn.

Since I last posted I have purchased 5 different stocks. I have yet to sell any, as my idea is to go "long" on them and hold them all at least a year to minimize any taxes.

The stock I had the most hope for (rsol) is the only one that has sunk down a $1 a share since I bought it. Two of my stocks (asti and ve) are hovering up and down within about $.25 of what I bought them for. My fourth stock (dis), and I must add the priciest stock in my portfolio and the one I could only afford to buy 4 shares of, is doing the best.  My 5th stock (pets) I just bought today, so at this point it is hard to say what it will do.

I have discovered that the more money you have to invest the better your odds are because you can buy the high cost solid stocks that pay dividends.  This will prove tricky for me, because I can only afford to buy about $200 worth of stocks a month. I have thought of just saving up my money for a couple of months to buy the higher priced stocks, but they are the ones that go up and up and then cost more than when I originally started planning to buy them.

I must wait a year though, to learn if my stock choices are proving worth the investments.

More on Trading

After a month of researching information on complaints and exploring the websites of TradeKing, OptionsXpress, and Scottrade, I ended up settling for Scottrade and have execute my first trade orders as of this evening.

I did find it a very slow, and sometimes frustrating process, to sign up with Scottrade. The first issue was their website isn't too fond of Mozilla Firefox, so I had to drop into Internet Explore to finish the signing up on my account. I had to call the 800 number to figure out this is what the issue was. The good news was, I got a human right away, and one that spoke English, and was intelligent enough to figure out what was wrong in less than 5 minutes.

My second glitch with Scottrade was needing proof of my physical address. When you live in the sticks (being among the trees of the forest)  like I do, you don't receive mail to your house.  Like everyone else in my small town, we all have PO Boxes for mail. Well, due to the Patriot Act you must prove your physical address. That took a bit of time and scanning, especially when someone at Scottrade neglected to tell me the proof need to be less than three months old.

All said and done, I'm on Scottrade now. The real plus is every time I've had to call, I get someone really nice on the phone who is skilled at resolving frustration or calming ruffled feathers. At this point, my experience has been they have great customer service and you don't have to sit through a computerized system to reach a human being, even when it is after 8 p.m. at night.

Now, perhaps, I can settle back into some novel writing.

The Stock Market, Scribophile and Life

I have always liked learning, as well as writing, so finally I have decided to learn about the Stock Market and investing. This has been somewhat of a challenge. I am discovering that almost everyone I know does not own stocks other than what is in their work-established retirement plans. The books available at my local library cover how to pick a good stock, but not the nitty-gritty of how to buy stocks. I've discovered the on-line brokers won't let you into their websites unless you give away you social security number and your bank account. I wouldn't mind that if I was a hundred percent certain their site is the one for me, but I sure would like to look at them first before I sign over all my vital stats.

I pumped the one person I know who has owned and purchased stocks today, but his experience was limited to buying utility companies, and only through a broker many years ago. He has no experience buying over the computer. He did say I need to make sure that when I buy a stock that it is registered in my name with the company and not held in some joint account. That sounds like sound advice. Clearly, I have more research to do.

Meanwhile, I have found a great website for getting my writing edited. The one glitch is I have to edit other people's work before I can post mine. That isn't so bad though, because almost all the stories I read are really decent.

This site is free (though you can pay for the extras). It's called Scribophile and can be found at scribophile.com.