Stock Talk

With summer done, I was thinking I may be due to make a few investment decisions, but it was quiet month with one selling decision which I wasn’t counting on making anytime soon along with one decision to buy more shares and one new stock I added to my portfolios. At the same time, I was faced with a decision that challenged some of my personal values and given the times we’re in, I don’t think I’m the only one that may be facing similar decisions. In this episode I walk through my most recent investment decisions from September.

Investment Decisions Made:

Bought more shares in Tyson Foods (Ticker: TSN)

Sold shares in JD.com (Ticker: JD) for 28.5 percent loss (Net Forex)

Bought more shares in MGM Resorts (Ticker: MGM)

New Position: Bought shares in Las Vegas Sands (Ticker: LVS)

In Part 1, I shared some thoughts on a recent report by the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) outlining the challenges the financial services industry is having in getting Millennials to invest. The OSC report had a great opportunity to address those investing pain points, but like so many financial literacy initiatives, the messaging is not clear, consistent, and understandable. The report identifies solutions, yet they are separate and not integrated and use a lot of industry jargon that people just won’t connect with. They emphasize processes over results. What is the outcome we want Millennials to achieve with investing?

Another way?

In this episode, I’d like to share from my experience as Investment Coach and as someone who works with people to develop their investing competencies, some ideas that I found have better motivated people and not just Millenials into become more engaged with investing. They address the pain points people have with expressed about investing which include; being scared of investing, feeling overwhelmed by the process, feeling paralyzed when trying to make a decision, and not knowing how to start and take that first step. These are my takes and perspectives. They are by no means the most definitive and all encompassing.

My motivation in starting my own practice to teach and engage people on investing revolved around financial literacy. I thought that if I could improve someone’s financial literacy, they will have a better chance at becoming a successful investor. I was always a big supporter of financial literacy programs, especially in schools. It made sense and I thought it was the right thing to do.

The reality is over the years I’ve learned and witnessed first-hand that while noble and done with good intentions, financial literacy programs just don’t work. A revolving door of programs, a lot of them government and industry sponsored have been rolled out over the years, starting out with enthusiasm and then just petering away in obscurity. Here in Canada, we even have a Financial Literacy Commissioner that acts and cheers Canadians into becoming more financially literate, but to no avail. So much effort, again all with good intentions, has been put into improving financial literacy but it just doesn’t seem to stick. 

So queue the latest attempt at cracking the financial literacy daVinci Code. A 42-page report commissioned by the Ontario Securities Commission and prepared by a dream team of consultants and personal finance thought leaders. The report attempts to answer why people, specifically Millennials are not investing and what financial institutions can do to get them to invest. In this first of a two part series, I walk through the report and highlight some of the good points as well why the industry continues to make the same mistakes when it comes to engaging people about investing. In Part 2, I offer some some solutions that I have developed from my own practice and from my own experience helping people make more successful investment decisions.

I continue on with my analysis of video game stocks with a quick dive into Take Two Interactive. They are known for their Grand Theft Auto franchise.

Continuing on in my analysis of video game companies is my review of Electronic Arts. EA is more known for its sports games such as Madden Football and FIFA Soccer. It seems like a natural fit for EA to leverage their sports expertise into the E-Sports domain. In this episode I do a quick mind map analysis to see if EA is worthy of adding to my portfolios.

We’re half-way through the year and so I thought it would be a good time to check back into my ROBO portfolio to see how it’s doing and if there is anything interesting going on. Three and half years ago I decided to try an experiment and find out for myself. I setup an account with one of the big Robo Adviser firms and invested $5000 of my own money into it. My goal was to go through the process and blog about my experience and more importantly, the results. I said that we need a good five years to really get a handle on how effective these services are compared to traditional wealth management services. Well, we're coming upon the 4th anniversary of my ROBO account, so in this episode I take a look at how it’s doing at the mid-year mark.

The cornerstone of my investment coaching practice is to teach and engage with people on how to educated and ultimately successful investment decisions involving stocks and Exchange Traded Funds (ETF’s). It’s one thing to teach this stuff. It’s another thing to model the behavior and it’s a totally different thing to actually demonstrate tangible results. Several years ago I decided to dig up my past trading records and to identify the most recent 100 investment decisions I made and to see how faired. In this episode I review my most recent results for my last 100 investment decisions.

You can't go one direction in the stock market these days without hearing something about Tesla. It has become the classic retail stock. Their CEO has said a few things recently that have had the markets in a tizzy. I've never really looked at Tesla stock because just eyeballing it, it looked overpriced. Well I thought with all the hysteria going on that maybe this is a good time to dive in and have a look at the company. This is my mind map video on my quick analysis of Tesla to see if it may be worth picking up.

Just because it's summer doesn't mean you lift your foot off the investing pedal. I ended up making several moves in June as some of my positions had crossed my return threshold and I had to make some decision on whether to hold on or sell and bank the profit. I also made a decision to add another stock to my portfolio as well as remove a hedging  position. 

Decisions Taken:

Bought more shares in Big Lots (BIG)

Bought more shares in Southwest Airlines (LUV)

Sold shares in Williams Sonoma (WSM)

Sold shares in Baidu (BIDU)

Sold shares in Gold ETF (CGL)

New Addition: Bought shares in Starbucks (SBUX)