Investments

[GRH]

In the past few days I've increased my exposure to two ETF's. I bought a position in SCZ, which is an iShares ETF that tracks the foreign small-cap market. In addition, I added to my exposure in XLU, one of the sector ETF's that follows the utlility sector of the S&P. In December, XLU increased their dividend payment by 5 cents a share which pushed the yield of the security back over 5%. Thus, it made sense economically to reinvest some of my dividends into XLU.

[sesame]

Ai GRH,
I'm glad to see you here again after... centuries!
Nice Avatar, it goes well with your work.
So you are a busy trader now?

[GRH]

Good to see you Sesame! It has been ages. As for my trading, I'm really much too lazy and poor to be much of a "trader." I do some trading, but too much of it, and the commissions eat up your profit. A lot of my stock holdings I buy for the dividend income (which I generally reinvest in stocks) and secondarily for the capital gains. Since I invest for dividends, that means that my average holding period is usually at least 6 months.

[GRH]

I was looking at my retirement portfolio and running some statistics on where things stand. Here's my current breakdown:

Domestic Equity 62.7%
International Equity 24.7%
Bonds 9.4%
Cash Equivalents 2.2%
Gold 1.0%

Concentrations within my portfolio include the following:

Commodity Exposure 8.4%
Real Estate Exposure 8.2%
Emerging Markets Exposure 7.2%

[GRH]

Well, we've had some volatile days on Wall Street in the past few weeks.

There was the "flash crash" where the DOW Jones plummeted nearly 1,000 points in a twenty minute period. Personally, I was day-trading during the flash crash, and it scared me shitless. I've never seen such volatility or such a quick sell off. I ended up cashing in (at a much reduced price point) some capital gains (to take advantage of my 0% capital gains tax). However, I cashed out most of my positions and ended up rebuying them later in the day. My total take for the day was probably a wash or slightly negative. I increased my exposure to some stocks during the downturn.

Then I reaped the benefit of the bounce when Europe announced a nearly trillion dollar bailout for the Euro zone. I cashed out some positions after the bounce with a profit.

However, the recent 376 plunge in the DOW (and the corresponding drop in S&P 500 and Nasdaq indexes) has taken us below the "flash crash" levels of earlier in the month. We've officially entered a correction, and I've seen my profits trimmed by the latest downturn.

That said, with the current downturn, I'm buying more stocks on a periodic basis. I've increased my exposure to GE and COP and will be adding to my portfolio in the coming weeks. Afterall, buy stock when it's cheap.