Invested Ladies

 

It's Good Friday and the weather is getting more seasonal with temps staying above freezing the last few day, hopefully staying that way. Unlike Manitoba which had a major blizzard and anywhere from 15 to 50 cm's of snow over the province the last couple days with more snow to come today. 

While most '9 to 5' folks have a nice break from work over the Easter holidays, investors size up last weeks market activity and plan their next moves that are in the "accumulation' phase as DIY investors and that's where I will be for the foreseeable future.

Reading and researching the stocks, I pause when I see something I like and gives me ideas beyond the path I am taking. 

As I mentioned in previous posts, I follow the BTSX portfolio on Dividend Strategy and came across an invested lady from Canada and Melissa shares her dividend journey on Our Life Financial with monthly results. In her latest post she highlights an investment challenge that 7 ladies got involved with back in October of 2020 called ...

#WeInvestChallenge and their start/progress is on Instagram searching that title.

I tracked the ladies progress but focused more on Melissa and Our Life Financial.

She started with Power Financial of Canada (TSE: POW) and later added Enbridge (TSE: ENB), which resulted in growth and dividends. Both stocks I own.

Interesting along her progress posts on Instagram she mentions that she looks at the top ten holdings of XEI, an ETF in the Blackrock lineup called ... ishares S&P/TSX Composite High Dividend Index ETF. This is a monthly paying ETF that holds 75 stocks with decent growth and dividend yield.

XEI is rebalanced quarterly and holds a lot of top quality stocks mentioned in the sites I visit and read so I figure I'll do some research on those. I currently hold 5 of the top ten currently ranked on XEI.

Similar to what I do with the BTSX and the 10 dividend paying stocks listed.

Like everything investing, be aware of the risk involved and I only share ideas here that work for me where it's about personal choices. One should always keep in mind that past performance is not an indication of future performance when using it as a reference.

The Learning Curve

 

Fresh out of college, I got hired by a fledgling airline carrier before I finished my final year. I was armed with a wealth of knowledge about the modern jet propelled aircraft and mechanical/avionic maintenance procedures. Confident. 

On my first day on the job, it was nothing like College and I had to learn the basics the way the company wanted things done from square one and "on time performance" was and still is the motivation. 12 hours or less to get what looked like an overwhelming amount of work to be done on an aircraft and on the Gate early in the AM, ready to fly for the day.

I figure it took about 3 months or more to get the 'big picture' of everything that's going on in that busy Hangar and with the company. That company became the biggest regional airline in Canada.

When I first looked at buying stocks outside of a managed RRSP plan (with high fees), it was also overwhelming with 'information overload' looking into stocks and the Market place.

I soon found out, it would take me more than 3 months and it has become a continuous learning curve.

Where to start? With the help of a like-minded friend when it came to stocks, I got a start and quickly focused on dividend paying stocks. Eventually landing on informative Blogs and sites featured on my Blog here.

I added Mark from My Own Advisor and I look forward to reading his Blog every weekend and posts published during the week. Loads of information and he references other Bloggers as well.

Looking at the big picture once again, I can see many that include the same stocks that pay dividends, as well as "picks" I don't see in others, which I check out to see if they maybe a worthwhile addition.

For example, I have picks and ETF's, I don't see in other Blogs.

Overall, it makes for good reference material and possible starting points for folks new to investing in the stock market.