Recent Buys

I recently started my new position as a Development Operations Analyst and so far the experience has been very good. This is the first job where we have a kitchen always full of snacks and K-Cups. It's a little hard right now because I am trying to figure out all of the operations and trainings, but I will be working hard to grow with the company for the foreseeable future. The market has been all over the place and it's kind of hard to keep up with the swings. I am just going to focus on adding to my portfolio and block out the noise. I am not good at timing the market, but I can't go wrong adding partial shares in these two staples.

Buys
Company		Amount	Share Price
Pepsi		$10.00	$94.22
Coca-Cola		$10.00	$41.91

A reader (Anonymous) also mentioned a few other stocks (YUM, SBUX, and DNKN) that look very good at the moment. I definitely want to add to my existing position, but am scavenging for the funds to do so. I appreciate the comments and it helps me to stay focused on these crazy market swings. I hope everyone has a great weekend!

How do you feel about my recent buys? What are you looking to buy soon?

Goal Update - Increase Yearly Income

With only a few weeks left of the year I have successfully earned more income this year compared to 2013. My goal was to increase my earned income by 5% which comes out to $34,257. I am hoping to successfully complete another goal by then end of the year. The other thing I will be working on will be to update my goals for 2015.

2014 Goals:

• Increase my yearly income by 5% or $34,257 (Completed 12/16/14)

Stock Purchases for December

 I decided to put some extra capital to work on Friday. Each one of my purchases I made at Motif earlier this month are now selling for less than my cost basis. I wanted to put a little more capital to work but in order to receive a $150.00 bonus I am required to make 5 trades within the next 30 days. This will be my second trade so far and I felt like it was a great time with the slight market correction. I wish I had a little more capital but I am still waiting for a few checks to come in. If stocks continue to fall I may add another trade or two for the month of December. Here are my recent buys:

*Update: Motif just called to inform me my order wasn't able to be executed on Friday. Therefore I was able to get cheaper prices on 9/10 of the stocks listed below. It's always great to get the cheapest price possible.The market continues to trail lower due to the price of oil and possibly people selling off due to consumer spending for the holidays.

Name	Symbol	Action	Price	# Shares	Est. Amount
Baxter International Inc.	BAX	Buy	$71.77	1.01	$72.49
GlaxoSmithKline PLC ADS	GSK	Buy	$42.42	1.56	$66.18
National Grid PLC ADS	NGG	Buy	$68.92	1.01	$69.61
Bank of Nova Scotia	BNS	Buy	$55.04	1.22	$67.15
Diageo PLC ADS	DEO	Buy	$114.09	0.6	$68.45
General Mills Inc.	GIS	Buy	$52.10	1.39	$72.42
Emerson Electric Co.	EMR	Buy	$58.43	1.17	$68.36
BHP Billiton PLC ADS	BBL	Buy	$41.42	1.55	$64.20
Verizon Communications Inc.	VZ	Buy	$45.58	1.49	$67.91
AT&T Inc.	T	Buy	$32.16	2.14	$68.82
TOTAL					$685.59

L3 Frip Purchase

I added .108 Shares of DIS for a Price of $91.75

DISNEY (DIS)

• More growth is anticipated with the Shanghai Park to open before the end of 2015.
• I am cheerful about the latest movie successes thanks to the great deal to acquire Marvel.
• DIS outperformed the S & P and it's peers in the last 12 months. 
• I strongly believe in holding this one for a few decades and quietly watching it help compound my wealth and dividend income.

November L3 Portfolio Progress

Last week I acquired 10 positions over at Motif investing. I received some great feedback on my purchases and I was happy the DGI community signed off on my investment. As some of you already know I have been trying to pursue another career path and was given a great opportunity to work for a fast growing company. I was hired as the Development Operations Specialist and I will be in charge of testing new software and programs developed by the programmers. I will be starting next Wednesday and my main focus will be trying to learn all the job duties as quick as possible. I am definitely excited to be learning new skills that will bring more value to me as an employee.
I noticed that the market was selling off a bit lately and it’s no surprise that energy stocks are becoming more attractive. I will be looking to dollar cost average into all 10 companies in my Motif investing account. The problem is I have to wait to get paid! I am running low on capital at the moment and part of this is due to Christmas shopping. It’s no surprise that December will be my most expensive month of the year because I do like to buy nice things for my family. However I will be holding myself accountable so that I don’t entirely blow my budget and emergency fund. I opened up a Chase Credit card that requires you to spend $500 in order to earn that a $200 bonus. So I decided I would spend the $500 on gifts, but after the bonus I would only be spending $300. Not bad for a Christmas budget! I am sure I will be spending more, but at least I got the bulk of my shopping done with that credit card.
My Loyal 3 portfolio keeps rewarding me and I am glad I picked a healthy bunch of stocks. Here are the Gains/Losses for the L3 portfolio as of 11/30/14

10 New Positions Acquired at Motif Investing

I am happy to announce that I will be finally starting a new I.T. career in two weeks. The job title I was given was Development Operations Specialist. I will basically be testing new products that have been developed by the software programmers. I have to provide quality assurance by preventing mistakes and avoiding problems when delivering solutions to customers or clients. I will also be providing trainings and technical support when needed. Lastly I will also be improving the usability for our Microsoft SharePoint platform in order to keep important data organized and readily accessible. It seems like I have landed a great future with a rapidly growing business.
 Even though I have been extremely busy with getting my career path straight, I did find time to put together 10 buys for the month. It took me a couple of weeks to figure out whether I wanted to go this route but I feel like buying baskets of stocks helps me stay diversified into many sectors. Buying into 10 companies provides more value to me because if one or two companies slump, then I have another eight to carry the rest of my portfolio. It was extremely difficult at first because it is tough to find that many companies in a market that is at an all time high. I could have easily picked a bunch of energy stocks but that sector seems too volatile to me. I want to protect my hard earned capital by investing into the healthcare, utilities, telecom, consumer defensive, consumer cyclical, and industrials sectors. I was able to do this all in one purchase with the help of Motif Investing for the flat rate fee of $9.95. The added bonus was I will be receiving a $150 bonus if I make 5 trades within the next 45 days. I am the first to jump at any free money that will be given to me just by investing into companies that will make me even more money. Now let’s take a look at the companies I started out with in my new portfolio:

My plan was to have an overall dividend yield of at least 3.5% and I ended up with 4%. The overall volatility of this portfolio is fairly low compared to the market as a whole. As you can see I have a beta of 0.77 and an overall P/E of 13.89. I don’t expect to receive a ton of gains here but I also don’t expect to lose much money either if the stock market heads downward. Slow and steady always wins the race! I did add two riskier plays (GSK and BBL) to my portfolio but I don’t feel like this was a bad thing. The dividends for both those stocks are over 5% and I am hoping that I can buy up some more shares in the near future. I realize that I didn’t get the best deals in the market in terms of value (DEO, BAX, and GIS) but I do believe these companies will do fine for the next 20-30 years. I did notice that a few others bought into BNS, BBL, and GIS. I also think that VZ and T are looking good with the recent dip so if these two continue to decline I will be the first to dollar cost average into those positions.

 I would love to hear what the rest of the DGI community thinks about my recent investment. I am open to any suggestions or thoughts going forward.