September's Hurricane Season

 

With hurricane season and several making their way up the North American eastern seaboard, eventually one will hit over the years and most of Atlantic Canada is still dealing with hurricane Fiona that whipped through here last weekend. Power still out in areas as damage continues to be assessed while the clean up continues for awhile. 

The now-iconic pictures of Josh Savery’s family home in Port aux Basque, N.L., teetering on the edge of a cliff captured the terror of post-tropical storm Fiona in a single image. While the famous picture reminds the family of what they lost, it also attracted an outpouring of sympathy and kindness.

I certainly don't want to see another one hit this year making things even worse. Lots of people lost their homes and/or had property damage. I think about Ukraine on how those people are going through that on a daily basis with no end in sight to that war.

Makes you think of personal issues and how others have it a lot worse to put it all into perspective and cope with life's problems.

In this season of storms on our east coast, the Markets and Crypto continue to behave like a tropical storm with continued fear and selling going on. 

On my end, I'll hold and look long term as always and with the stocks, I'll look for bargains with dollar cost averaging purchases: a Google search definition of how that works.

Dollar-cost averaging involves investing the same amount of money in a target security at regular intervals over a certain period of time, regardless of price. By using dollar-cost averaging, investors may lower their average cost per share and reduce the impact of volatility on the their portfolios.

The big banks in Canada are overall down and I figure it's a good time to buy individually or in a bank related ETF. For example, BNS or Bank of Nova Scotia is down from the $90 CAD range at the start of the year to mid $60's as of today so there's potential upside or gains in the future and has a dividend of $1.03 per share with an ex-dividend date of October 3rd for the bank's quarterly cash payment to holders.

The dividend is an increase this year since the Banks couldn't adjust their dividends during the pandemic start of 2020 until allowed to do so.

In a Fund, I hold Brompton's, Split Share Class A ... Brompton Split Banc Corp.: SBC, which holds the major banks plus select financials in North America in a dividend paying ETF. SBC pays a monthly cash dividend. There are many ETF's out there that carry banks so an individual's preference as always with DIY investing.

 

Mid-September Bounces

 

Mid-September, 2022 and inflation along with interest rate hikes are the top headlines in the financial world.

So far, the Feds are not winning the battle of beating down inflation. In the US, it actually rose in the latest update, which sent the stock world spiralling down for now and being correlated to S&P 500 plus NASDAQ, Bitcoin remains flat around the 20 grand range.

Where I'm into dividend paying stocks, I'm not worried about the lower values and keeping an eye on my portfolio with the maintaining/growth of the dividend payments. 

Eventually, the stocks will head north in price again but looks like it will be awhile as higher and climbing interesting rates are slowing spending as mortgage payments, etc climb. That eventually effects economy growth or lack of. Looks like that will come more to a head in 2023.

In the meantime, my plan is to continue buying dividend stocks at the lower prices. Some day when the Bulls take over from the Bears again (like in the last half of 2020), I'll benefit with a boost in my portfolio worth.

                                               Image Credit: Forextime (Flickr)

Ether (ETH), 2nd overall in crypto with market cap, has introduced the Merge with no issues and business as per normal going ahead. Holders such as myself won't see much change. Behind the completing of transactions are Validators now instead of Miners.

Not great news so far in 2022 with the stocks but history has shown it's all about up and down cycles over the years. Better days ahead as lows come to a point that there's always what they call, short term 'Bounces off the Lows' like the TSX index in September, when stocks show a lot of green instead of red on those days but that doesn't matter much to the long term holders such as myself.

That saying applies ... plan for the best, prepare for the worst. 

The September Merge

 

It's Labour Day, 2022 and stocks along with crypto continue to be in a funk. 

I usually add dates in my articles to give sort of a historical accounting of what's happening with investing in general, despite posts being dated.

The Blogs/Sites on my right sidebar have a common theme with the Markets being down these days. Stock prices may be down but their dividends remain on par or increase from year to year. 

Folks that manually reinvest their dividends received or "Drip" with automatic reinvesting usually at a discount, grow the number of stocks owned and in turn gain higher dividends at the next scheduled distribution date as mentioned in the posts on the right.

These days, many stock prices are down that will rebound so cheaper to buy and/or reinvest in my opinion instead of selling at a loss in panic mode.

I continue to focus on the top ten stocks in the TSX 60 which holds top companies by dividend yield and ETF/Funds that concentrate on Banks and Energy related with decent monthly dividends. Steady growth and patience is the name of the game for those who fund with what they can afford in these crazy days of high inflation, climbing interest rates along with living expenses/housing.

I had fun with Crypto once upon a time ... doing a lot of day trading and it was easier to win knowing where the market were going, along with large price range moves. Fast forward to today ... where Bitcoin gets influenced by stuff like US job stats and during the weekdays by S&P 500 plus Nasdaq (Tech loaded) moves ... it got a lot more complicated and frankly ... boring just watching so gave that up for the most part.

These days, I mostly hold the "coins" but still play with Ether (ETH) where I like it's price moves for Trades (usually ETH/USD) but it can get into a funk at times as well with general Trader indecision out there. 

Currently, it's probably just wise to hold on Ether where it moves from proof of work (Miners) to proof of stake in September called "The Merge" ... in about 9 days according to the count down. I'll wait until the dust settles on all that Techie stuff, see the result and all is good to go ... continue from there.