As I prepare to review and design my new strategy for investing, I had to look at the different types of strategies that people have told me about.
- Index Investing
- Dividend Investing
- Value Investment
- Growth Stock Investment
- Speculative investment
- Crypto Investment
- Day Trading
My initial strategy that I was using was the Dividend Investing. I looked for all dividend stocks. But I also wanted to make sure that the stocks were companies that I knew or at least understood their business. My favorite thing to do was to pick companies that I grew up using the products of. That meant that I looked first at the company and then checked if they had dividends.
So, for example, my cell phone carrier is ATT. I checked ATT stock and yes, they had dividends. SOLD! My cardiologist has me taking Eliquis which is sold by Pfizer. Are they a dividend stock? Yes! SOLD! Rather quickly I found out that this style doesn’t exactly work out for the best in all situations. I have to admit though, that it gave me a good feeling to own a part of the companies that I used and liked.
However, I wasn’t looking at the company and how well they were doing, what was happening in the supply chain for them (tariffs were making people nuts), or what the expectations were for the company. I ended up watching several stocks go down right after I bought them.
I also started reading articles about the “best stocks to buy today” and started looking at them, especially if I was aware of them. This lead me to the world of AI and the Information Technology sector. Having been a techie guy for the longest time (40 years or so) I knew the companies or if not, I knew what they did. I understood them. In some cases, I decided that maybe they didn’t have to be a dividend paying stock, so I ended up getting some non-dividend stocks in my portfolio.
However, I was moving pretty fast. I loaded my broker with money and got some of this and some of that, and then had some money left over, and just looked for something to put it in. I think that affected me because now I watch stocks for a long time before buying and that has hurt too, because sometimes I missed the best deals. Some of them, I want to kick myself all the way down main street for missing out on.
So now, I am restructuring and refreshing. However, I am not too excited about selling anything. I really like the stocks I have. It still tickles me when I am in a store and see a product and think “I own that company!”
So I am still interested in dividend stocks mostly. The problem for me is that there are so many interesting stocks. It would probably be better to only have a few stocks and get all my money in them and keep adding to them. However, now I have so many!
I am looking at the list above and to be honest with you, I am not excited at all about Day Trading. I can cross that off my list. I also don’t really understand Crypto so I will avoid that for now. I don’t really understand the idea of buying value stocks. What does that even mean?
I am building an idea of a blended strategy. Mostly dividend stocks, some growth stocks, and a couple of speculative stocks. I am going to review my current positions and try to separate them into those categories.
But I’m going to make another change too. There are so many stocks that I want to get, but I’d be broke if I bought them all. How willing am I to go for broke?
Not really all that willing. Now I have decided that I am going to start looking harder at ETFs. With them, I can get many stocks in one. But I want ETFs that have the ones that I want. I found out that you can get lists of all the holdings in an ETF and see what they have. You can also get ETFs that are specific to certain industries and can limit the choices into certain types of stocks.
I know I want to start getting into small caps, and medium stocks, and find get into a few specific industries. I just have to decide what they are. 1st step however is to categorize what I have and see where I stand, and then I will work on leveling out to the areas that I believe in the most.
