Friday, June 28, 2013

Half Year

As this first hald of the year passes, I am happy with my portfolios.

The gains of 2012 have held strong. The recent fall in the S&P has taken away some of the first five month gains which I had, but over the months I had taken some profits and rebalanced my accounts at least three times.

So now I have some loose change available to invest in stock as we go into the third quarter.

I believe we will have a rough couple of months until September begins. A volatile market with lots of good opportunities.

At the end of the third quarter we will see a rise towards the end of the year maybe up to the same levels we saw in May. That is just my guess, and unless I change my opinion it will be the framework upon which I build my second half of the year financial plans.

Friday, June 21, 2013

Uncertain Times

For the past few days market reporters have been talking of volatility and uncertainty in the markets.

OK so if you are frightened of volatility and uncertainty, if you want certain profits and easy money. What are you doing in the Stock Markets anyway?

You cannot expect certainty at anytime within the stock market. If it were a certain bet it would be no fun.

To paraphrase good old Ben Franklin the "only certainties in life are death and taxes"

Prepare for a nice bumpy ride till at least November as the markets will fluctuate for a few weeks, thensettle to a rise towards the middle of the final quarter and with a final upward bound at Christmas.

Basically the markets have returned to a "normal situation" this year following old patterns of rise and fall. I am still in the market because I see good returns in the next few months.

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Back to the DRIP

With the fall in the market over the last week I am looking to adjust some of my programs.

As markets rose I switched from using DRIP's (Dividend Reinvestment Plans) to taking dividends on my higer paying stocks.

Stock prices were just too high to warrant buying and reducing the dividend yield. So better to take the cash and wait on the sidelines till some of the prices began to come back and dividend yields rose again.

We are now entering the region where many of those dividend yields are coming backto looking very attractive to me again.

Yeilds are coming up on some of my stock to above 6% and so as this month is mid year and both the second quarter dividend for many stocks as well as this week being a paying week for many monthly dividend paying stocks I am putting back Drip plans into force for the month.

We will see if prices rise again at the end of the month if I will continue the strategy for July and August too.

So there will be little cash entering my funds this month. I am going all in on DRIP's for the hugher yields.