LVS purchase

I bought shares of Las Vegas Sands at $41.79 with all of my remaining cash. That puts quite a large part of my portfolio in Vegas (and Macau).

I've chatted up my Corporate Finance and Investments professors and found that they're both holding cash. Almost entirely. They're very pessimistic about the future. And both wrong. Hopefully.

End of 2010

Going into the end of the year, I'm holding:

21.68% of my portfolio in shares of PHK at a cost basis of $11.94 a share; 17.89% FEED at $3.99; 28.98% MGM at $10.16; 13.60% BAC at $14.80; and 17.85% in cash.

As of 12/30, I'm down 10.26% on BAC and down 32.55% on FEED. I'm up 5.11% on PHK, although I bought it for the 12% dividend, and I'm up 45.89% on MGM.

Happy New Year!

PHK

Bought 167 shares of PHK at $11.94. It's up 5%+ in a few days, but I'm holding it for the dividends. At $11.94 a share, it's paying 12%+ a share in dividends, annually. And I love that it pays out monthly. PHK is an ETF, the first one I've purchased in my discretionary account, but unless this thing goes to $14 a share in the short-term, I'm a long-term holder.

VMW Sold

I sold my shares of VMWare today at a 90% gain. It'll be a long-term capital gain on my taxes, just barely. I'm holding 40% cash as the market is at a 2 year high and I'm not sure where we're headed in the short-term. There's enough return and risk in my AgFeed, MGM Resorts, and Bank of America.

Verizon Sold

I had originally bought my shares of Verizon for the 7% dividend. I checked the other day (October 5th, the day before ex-dividend date) and I was up more than 20%, so I sold my entire position. I figured it was like getting three years of dividend payments early, so I got out. I'll wait to see if it falls a bit post-dividend (maybe not now that the iPhone is officially coming to Verizon's network).

Financial Accounting & Grad School

I'm applying to MSF programs right now and I'm getting pretty excited about the prospect of going back to school. I've chosen two part-time programs and one full-time program, although my preference is to keep working. I took a look at some of the prerequisite courses for the Carroll School of Management's MSF program and I need to have taken Financial Accounting before I can start. I requested a FA textbook (Weygandt, Kieso & Kimmel, 2nd ed.) from the Minuteman Library Network yesterday. I'll just read through it on my own and then test out of the requirement. I'm actually pretty jazzed about learning financial accounting since I've been trying to read through financial statements for 2 years now without any idea of what I'm doing. I've been piecing it together as I go, but it'll be nice to have some direction.

I'm up 8% YTD 2010. I hit a high for the year at the end of April, when I was up 30%+. Actually, in just the first few days of 2010, I was already up more than 8%. I didn't try to guess at the highs, but I've been putting more money in at the lows. I doubled the amount of money that I've contributed to my portfolio, so being up 8% now, versus 8% at the beginning of 2010, is a much larger number.

More invested -- Aug 27, 2010

I used my remaining cash to buy additional shares of Bank of America at $12.56. It's now 16.17% of my holdings, up from 3.3%.