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%.

Shunning equity?

From Friday's Wall Street Journal:

By KEVIN KINGSBURY And JOHN KELL

Money returned to long-term U.S. mutual funds last month after investors pulled holdings out in May in the wake of the stock market's "flash crash," the Investment Company Institute said in data released Thursday.

In stock funds, more money continued to be pulled than was added, continuing a trend in which investors haven't consistently added to stock funds even since the market bottomed in March 2009. Outflows, or selling, dropped to $5.41 billion in June from $24.76 billion a month earlier as money leaving domestic funds last month more than offset net inflows to those that primarily invest overseas.

Instead, the bulk of cash going to mutual funds since then has been bond funds. In June, they received a net $20.74 billion, said the industry group, up from $14.54 billion in May. They rose 58% for taxable funds to $18.79 billion but dropped 27% for municipal-bond funds.

Money continues to flow from money-market funds as interest rates for such instruments remain near zero. Outflows rose to $24.15 billion from $22.16 billion, putting the first half's total at $509.27 billion, said the ICI. That compares with outflows of $189.37 billion in the first half of 2009.

Meanwhile, for the latest week, assets in money-market funds jumped $3.57 billion as inflows into institutional funds more than offset a decrease in retail funds, according to the ICI.

For the week ended Wednesday, total fund assets grew to $2.802 trillion, according to the ICI. Earlier this year, the total funds tracked by the ICI dropped below $3 trillion for the first time since October 2007.

Retail funds decreased $2.37 billion, to $980.36 billion in the latest week. Taxable government funds saw $990 million of inflows, putting assets at $173.58 billion, while nongovernment funds had $1.86 billion of outflows, lowering the money in them to $597.07 billion. Tax-exempt funds declined $1.5 billion to $209.71 billion.

Assets in the institutional class were up $5.94 billion to $1.821 trillion. Taxable government funds had $10 million of outflows, putting asset levels at $662.88 billion. Nongovernment funds had inflows of $7.56 billion, moving their assets up to $1.025 trillion. Tax-exempt funds had outflows of $1.62 billion, falling to $133.27 billion.

The original article