Here’s how the Newmont (NEM) Gold trade is working out.

You’ll recall that I sold a gold stock for 125% gain because it wasn’t paying a dividend.  And I looked for another gold stock that was paying a dividend, and finally chose Newmont Mining Corp because it was a well established company and paid over a 3% dividend – see A Beautiful Gold Trade.

Now, I could have just bought the stock outright for $43.34 a share.  And I don’t think that would have been a bad decision.  The stock price was low enough.  And had I done that, I would already be up over 2% in just eight days.

But instead, I chose to do something different.

I chose to see if I could buy it cheaper – at $42 a share.  But I didn’t just put a $42 order out there.  Instead, I got someone to pay me $112 to buy it  Read the rest of this entry »

I just sold a terrific high yield bond fund I’ve been invested in for a few years.

Why do I say it was terrific?  Because based on my original purchase price, it was paying me a handsome 8.3 % dividend.  And the dividends came out every month just like clockwork.  Also, I sold it for a 36% gain, so I made money all around.

I’ll tell you  the specific fund in a minute, which at today’s price is still paying a great 6.13% dividend, but first to the question that must be on your mind at this point.

That is, to say it politely, what’s not to like about this fund and have I gone mad?

Okay, so I guess that was Read the rest of this entry »

I recently made a hard decision to sell one of my gold stocks.  It was difficult because the stock was up 125% from where I bought it.  And we always want to hang on to winners.

But I was dissatisfied because it paid no dividends.  So I made the tough call.  And I sold the stock for a 125% profit.  Which, by the way, isn’t such a bad thing.

Then I went shopping for gold stocks that paid dividends.  This is not so easy to find because most gold mining stocks pay no dividend at all.

But I found one which I will share with you Read the rest of this entry »

I made a hard decision today.

I sold two gold stocks in my portfolio that I had done well with.  Actually, very well, as I was up 135% on one and 40% on another.

And I kind of agonized over it for a bit, although I shouldn’t have.  Selling stocks when you’ve made a good profit is not such a bad thing.  It sure beats selling them when you’ve lost money.

And it’s not like I don’t think the price of gold won’t going to keep going up either.  Over the long haul, I feel it will continue on it’s upward path.

So why did I sell?

Well, the whole thing reminds me of a conversation I had with some friends in the past about their plants.  You see, I’ve been Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been amused with a television ad where one neighbor asks another about his financial retirement plans.  As the other neighbor is trimming his hedge, he replies, rather hesitantly, that he’s shooting to save about a gazillion dollars and he plans to just throw money at it and hope he hits it.

The gist of the ad, and something you and I probably agree on, is that he really doesn’t have a plan.  I might say that another way as well.  Which is that he does not have a clear line of sight on how he’s going to get paid in the future when he retires.

So I’m going to give you an absolutely clear line of sight on this.  Now there are other ways you might get paid as well, but I like this one for its simplicity and clarity (and many of the other methods are just variations on this theme).

But first, let me ask you a simple question.

Have you ever looked at your past pay raises at work and Read the rest of this entry »

When you go to an auction, you have every right to expect the bidding to be fair.  That is to say that you think you have an equal chance to place a bid just as all the other bidders do.

And it seems reasonable to expect that all bids are sincere bids, i.e. when someone, or you, places a bid, that means that you really mean it, that you will back it up with a purchase if you are the last bidder.

Now imagine that you went to an auction and you noticed that the auctioneer seemed to constantly recognize some people’s bids first.  And later on you found out they had paid the auctioneer on the side to recognize them first.  And you also found out that many times they were Read the rest of this entry »

In an earlier post we talked about why it’s smart to keep more cash in your stock market account.  This idea runs counter to what most investors think because they always want to be “fully invested.”

But we described how Warren Buffett feels much more favorably to cash than the average investor, and that he views cash as the ultimate call option.  That is to say that cash gives him the future ability to buy ANY stock by ANY date at a deep discount when the market tanks.

And in the vein of cash and call options, I mentioned that this is brilliant another way due to a thing called time decay.

So what is time decay?

Well, when you buy a Read the rest of this entry »

Many investors feel they should be fully invested when it comes to their stock market account.  They feel they should have all of their cash working for them.

And hey, I get this.  It has a very rational sound to it.

But it just isn’t necessarily so.  Indeed, it’s probably a rookie error to do so.

You might not be surprised to learn that the legendary Warren Buffet has a much different view of cash and investing.  He thinks of a cash balance in his investment account in a much more positive light.

I recently read that he thinks of cash as the ultimate Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes the smart thing to do is to sell your shares of stock.

So it’s good to know how to do this beforehand and take the mystery out of the process.

I assure you the process is pretty routine and a lot like buying it.  But we’ll walk through it step by step and you’ll see it’s not really that big of a deal.

Now, when to sell your stock is a different story.  The most sophisticated investors have trouble with this one, including legendary investor Warren Buffett.  So don’t feel too bad about yourself if you puzzle over this one.

That said, there are two times when you should sell your stock.

One is when it hits your Read the rest of this entry »

Have you ever looked at your past raises from work and figured what they may be in the future.  In other words, how big your paycheck might be five years from now.

Or looked at a social security statement that estimates the amount your retirement check will be at some future date.

I think many people do this at some point in time.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could do that with your stock investment account?  That is to say, sit down and figure how much your stocks will pay you every month when you retire.

Well, you can do this when you invest in Read the rest of this entry »