March and Changes, 2023

 

Spring and Fall are my favourite times of the year compared to the heat and humidity of the summer here. Although the winters are getting milder somewhat on the east coast of Canada, in tends to wind up with a few weeks of bone chilling cold winds. I tend to feel it more as I get older.

With my Blog, I'm going to switch to monthly posts starting in April, 2023 and do add-ons thru the month with updates. Sort of a running summary with info and my approach to investing. Keeping in mind, it's all on a personal perspective from a do-it-yourselfer investor ... tweaking as I go with a long term approach.

The stock market is a life long learning curve with good times and more than usual curve balls sent my way from 2020 to 2023 so far by the Market gyrations as they move with current news.

However, nothing unusual from Market downs of the past, just different circumstances and causes.

Heading into the last week of March, 2023 ... international banking contagion fear continues outside of Canada and as per usual ...  the press and social media tend to amplify the fear. 

I read and see what's going on but continue on my long term path of portfolio growth and adding decent dividend paying companies. 

It's impossible to have 100% good picks. No one has done it thru their investing careers. Learn by mistakes or usually a case of the unknown issues within a company suddenly made public, sparking fear and selling. There will be the odd loss going forward with the risk factor involved.

There are a lot of high dividend/yield stocks and ETF's/Funds going ex-dividend next week. On my radar is TC Energy (TRP) with a current yield of 7.251% and listed in the BTSK portfolio. 

There's been a lot of news about TC Energy and their mega project costing in the billions with their construction of a natural gas pipeline in British Colombia to feed a LNG plant. Their target to completion is by year's end.

The Coastal GasLink project is a 670-km pipeline spanning northern British Columbia. It will carry natural gas across the province to the LNG Canada processing and export facility in Kitimat, B.C.

Two top 5 banks in Canada go ex-dividend in early April ... Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS) and TD Bank (TD) with high dividend yields. 

These picks are also holdings in the Royal Bank's ETF I bought this month and will add to it with a ticker of ... RCDC. Sounds like the name of a rock band when you say it. Has a ring to it.

Mid March Contagion, 2023

 

It's mid March and being St. Patrick's Day yesterday, there wasn't much "green" in the Market's close for last week. Down and a sea of red.

Being a long term investor, I don't get all the panic and selling when stuff hits the fan. They call it contagion or contagious fear/selling I guess. Some banks in the US ran into trouble and that's all over the investing news as well as Credit Suisse across the Big Pond, which caused outright global fear for a day until the following day when it was announced it had billions in a line of credit to tap into.

When stock prices are down I become more interested than usual, looking for bargains. Normally, the lower prices don't last long before the Market place gets accustomed to the latest short term fallout and the tide changes to more buying than selling.

Canadian Banks come to mind like CIBC (CM) and Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS) with National Bank of Canada (NA) being popular these days. ETF's that hold these banks are lower in price as well ... for now.

Meanwhile ... Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) continue to climb in price. Bewildering for sure with all the downfalls in the Crypto market these past months. Going opposite to the stock market. As always ... very volatile when it comes to risk.

I assume the start of that climb was due to a couple of the largest "Stablecoins" losing their peg ... or equal to 1 US dollar for every USDC, for example. Where to transfer coins in a panic? Depending on the Exchanger ... not many options for some but to trade to BTC and/or Ether. That was probably a flurry of millions to billions of dollars worth of transactions overall.

However, USDC with Circle and Coinbase behind it ... is back to normal at this time. 1 USDC = 1 USD, give or take a few cents.

Bitcoin holders that were patient and didn't sell with the collapse of some big outfits and more US rules introduced, costing a few US Exchangers big bucks in fines to conform to the new regulations ... should be pleased with the boost in price lately. Sell some while it's up or continue to hold ? comes to mind I'm sure.