The Middle East
Not much has been said on the news about what is happening in Iran. I don’t know if that is good or bad. I know that the president’s negotiators were supposed to meet with Iran’s negotiators last week and that got cancelled. But since then, not a lot has been said. There was the White House Press meeting over the weekend which is usually about making fun of the president and him making fun of himself and the press corps. Our current president has not ever attended even though it is tradition. He doesn’t like people poking fun at him, and he prefers his comments about the press to be nasty and mean. But he was attending this one and there was a man that broke in with a gun, and it was considered an attempt to get the president. A lot of people are saying that it was staged so that the president could get a sympathy vote. They cancelled the meeting and say they are going to reschedule.
The King of England came in yesterday and went to the White House. They are going to have talks today. The president has not been saying nice things about the U.K. but then, he doesn’t say nice things about anybody unless you are a young blonde female that says he is so magnificent. Of course, I would like anyone that was a young blonde female that says I am magnificent too. I guess I can’t talk!
Anyway, I don’t know what will come out of those talks, and I hope we will hear more about the Middle East and the blockades. I’m glad that I bought Chevron and Exxon in December before any of this happened. I was just trying to up my investment in the energy sector. And then all this war stuff took off. My energy stocks only amount to about 5 percent of my stocks, and I was mostly getting into them because AI was supposed to need so much energy.
Split coming up
My one broker alerted me that one of my ETFs was about to split in a 5 to 1 ratio. I had only bought one share at 124.00 but I decided to buy one more at the higher rate of 135 at that time so I have 2 shares now and when it splits (which should be tomorrow) I will have 10 shares at about 25.00 each. I hope that this will work out well.
I was impressed that my Broker (Fidelity) announced it so that I could take advantage. I hadn’t seen that before and I hope that they will continue to do that. A 5 to 1 split is a pretty big deal. Another thing that I am happy about is that I was prepared. I had the money available there to make that purchase without any gymnastics to fund the account. I don’t mind keeping a little extra money in Fidelity because they hold it in a money market account that pays a pretty decent interest rate, so keeping some over there works for me!
Some Extra Money
It seems that my bank didn’t pay out interest on my CDs correctly back in 2022, I guess because of the pandemic, and they suddenly sent me checks to cover what they owed me from then. It was a surprise and I called my bank to make sure that it was real and not some kind of scam. Turns out it was real, so I now had an extra 200 dollars or so that was a surprise. I also got my tax refund, but I haven’t done anything with that yet. In my strategy, I will use the extra funds to add to the positions that I already have rather than finding new stocks to buy. I am dying to buy some new ones, but I am holding myself back. I have been wanting Clorox, Colgate-Palmolive and Church and Dwight for a long time. But I am holding myself back.
I did use a part of the 200.00 to buy a couple of shares of Coke which I already owned 1 share of. It was one of the stocks I had identified that I would try to add to over time. This is (according to my strategy) outside of the 25.00 that I will take from the interest of my emergency fund to rotate through my ETFs. The rest of the 200.00 is being saved for buying more positions in some of my other choice stocks, like Proctor and Gamble and Johnson and Johnson. I keep the money in my emergency fund money market but keep a spreadsheet of where that money is earmarked for. That way, I am earning interest on it while I wait for some more to add to it.
Pretty soon, I will divide up a portion of my tax refund and put that into the mix. I am going to need some of that refund for some upcoming expenses like my property taxes that are due next month. May as well use that instead of my regular spending money. Groceries and Gasoline have really gone up lately and it’s getting more and more expensive to live on my fixed income! I’m trying very hard not to take money out of my retirement funds that my financial advisor is handling.
I hurt my knee
I was working in my downstairs bathroom doing a carpet cleaning and sitting on my knees to scrub it in. Now my left knee is really bothering me. Same one that I hurt when I fell down the stairs a while ago. That’s a pain (literally!) so I will be lazing around today with a heating pad. I know you don’t need to hear about that, but it’s just one of those things that happens in my life.
