DISCLAIMER: Take this post as investment advice at your own risk. Yadda, yadda, yadda.
In a future life, hopefully, I will end up with enough disposable income to really invest in the stock market, but until then, I do get a kick out of watching my small stock portfolio as it does its thing. My philosophy when I have real money to invest in companies will be drastically different, but for now I do things a little differently while I’m just having a little fun. I started here with a bit of my investing philosophy, and I thought that today I would expand on some of the things discussed, providing some reasoning behind why I invested in certain companies. First, we will discuss the companies I purchased since I use or used their products.
The first such company that I purchased was Ford Motor Company (F). When I purchased Ford the first time, it was right around the time that the US auto industry was bottoming out, shortly before the bankruptcies, and taxpayer bailout, of General Motors and Chrysler. As mentioned previously, I did not have the stomach for the $5 loss I experienced and liquidated the ten shares that I had. Obviously, Ford has rebounded a bit in the past four years or so and I would have looked like a pretty shrewd investor had I purchased more at the bottom instead of selling them all off.
The reason I purchased Ford was because I drove a Ford Taurus at the time. It fit with my philosophy of purchasing products that I used to be more invested in their success. Even though my ownership of the car did not impact Ford’s bottom line, I guess it showed pride of ownership, even though I ended up hating that car. Now that I no longer have that car, I still own my ten shares of ford, but only because it has become a relatively successful holding for me, though I don’t think I would buy more at this point if given the opportunity.
Another company that I purchased stock in using this method was Boston Beer Company (SAM), the brewer of Sam Adams beers. This one was definitely purchased because I enjoy the product, but due to the cost per share, I wasn’t able to buy a whole lot. Even now, I only own three shares, which is a ridiculous amount and a very, very small percentage of their overall shares outstanding. However, I did purchase SAM beginning at around $53.50 a share, purchasing $20 worth of partial shares twice a month. The most I ever held at one time was 3.4799 shares, and when I moved my brokerage account in January, they had to liquidate the fractional shares, which were sold for $96.85 a share. Overall, my $225 investment in SAM is currently worth around $275 or so, depending on the current price. I’m pretty satisfied with those results, and hope that they decide to split in the near future so they are affordable again and I can buy more. Maybe they’ll do a 3-to-1 split and I’ll end up with 9 shares at $30 a share, which would encourage me, and others, to buy more. We’ll see what happens.
The last stock I am going to talk about in this post is Apple (AAPL). I no longer own any Apple, though I still use their products regularly. The reason I no longer own Apple is for the same reason I own three shares of SAM: when I moved my brokerage account, they had to liquidate partial shares, and since AAPL is over $350 a share currently, I did not have even a full share, since I was putting the same $20-30 twice a month into the stock.
The first time I bought AAPL, it was trading for around $209 a share, so my $20 purchase netted me less than a tenth of a share. Over time, their price kept going up and I increased my bimonthly purchase to $30, eventually getting up to a grand total of 1.0788 shares, which I sold when AAPL was $260 a share, netting a gain of 54 cents! I just felt that getting that small fraction of shares wasn’t worth it and used the proceeds to pay off some other obligations at the time. However, I did get back into the AAPL buying game, eventually getting up to another 0.3312 fractional shares, which were liquidated when I moved my brokerage account, when AAPL was $329.57 a share, resulting in a gain of $9.15. A little better, and AAPL is above $350 currently, with rumors of a pending split in the media. However, even at $175 a share, I don’t think I can afford to buy AAPL again for a long time.
I hope that you found this post insightful in some way. If not, tune in next time for Young Robert’s Adventures in Love at Hunter Junior High.
Until next time…
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