Chronicling my investing journey, dividend portfolio, and other financial instruments. Including stories from my decade long adventure with crypto currencies starting in mid 2013. Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, and more.
I got incredibly lucky today. This morning, on a whim, I sold four of the five Litecoin (LTC) in my Robinhood account for $132.36 each.
I spent the day with phone on the charger while I watched cat commercials and put out some updates on the Apex Girl wiki. I went and did some gardening and then had a long conversation on my smart watch.
The call prompted me to go in search of my forgotten phone. When I picked it up, I noticed the crypto widget on my screen was showing LTC at $85 per coin. The numbers kept changing.
I opened the Robinhood app and saw everything was red. Everything, crypto and stocks. My portfolio was down over 25%.
I was very happy to see how low the prices had gotten especially after my timely sell earlier in the day. I was able to pick up some cheap 0.44 Solana (SOL) and 70 Ripple (XRP) and also buy back a single Litecoin for $98.17.
I tried multiple times to get a limit order for 2 coins at $90 each, but the market kept rejecting the orders, so I gave up and used the market order.
Historically, I’ve had terrible timing when buying and selling. Somehow my buys always become the peak and my sells become troughs. What looks like a low price is always a day away from becoming the highest average.
Thankfully, today I had a win.
The information in this post is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended to be legal advice. While I have tried to ensure that the content is accurate and current, I make no guarantees. You should seek legal or other professional advice before acting or relying on any of the information.
A couple of years ago, I tried my hand at dividend hopping. The strategy was to buy a stock in time to qualify for earning a dividend and then sell it right after—”Hopping” from one dividend to the next.
I had two successful jumps before I encountered problems. I managed over a thousand dollars with a few special dividends that showed up quickly. My fourth stock became an issue, partly because I forgot to sell it promptly.
Mesabi (NYSE: MSB) is a Royalty Trust that pays a quarterly distribution to unit-holders of record throughout the year.
The trust owns the right to an iron mine, and they have a separate firm (Northshore) to do the actual mining. The trust gets paid based on the amount of iron pellets that get shipped from the mine.
So, after I got the juicy distribution, I sat in front of the TV and spaced out, forgetting to close my position.
Then the share price began to drop as people jumped away to different stocks. By the time I remembered to sell, it was too late, and the difference between my buy-in value and the dividend payment would have resulted in an overall loss if I decided to close my position.
I decided to wait for the next distribution and make my sale then. At the time, it seemed like an easy answer to my blunder. But of course, it got worse.
Cleveland Cliffs, the parent company of Northshore, which operates the mining operation, announced that they were halting mining due to low prices in the market.
This meant that there would be a much-reduced payment for the quarter. A lot of people closed their positions, and the share price dropped further.
I had bought my shares at $33 each, and I was then looking at $20 per share in value. The mining company went on to use the leftovers or “tailings” from the mine to make rolled steel to sell.
There were maybe 1-2 years of low payments after this. Just the rent on the facility.
As the shares dropped to $16, I decided to buy some more to lower my average cost. I purchased an additional 50 shares last year.
Mesabi ended up saying that the mine operator didn’t have the authority to halt mining even if it wasn’t as profitable. The contract required them to keep mining.
They went into arbitration to get things sorted out, and thankfully, the judgment was in Mesabi’s favor.
Just recently, we (investors) got word that Mesabi would be issuing a large distribution that included the value of the arbitration award. I have 150 units and will be receiving $5.95 per share, for a total payout of $892.50.
Certainly, a happy number to see after all the waiting. I also see that the shares are back up to the 30-dollar range, where I had bought in.
I should be able to make the final payment on my credit card that has the balance transfer for my Nissan LEAF once I get the distribution payment, and I sell out about 50 shares from my position.
It’s been a rough ride, but I am glad there was a bit of light at the end.
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I got an email this morning from Apex Fintech Solutions saying that the Invstr app had stopped working with them to provide brokerage services. This effectively shut down the stock trading app.
Invstr was a stock trading app that featured “Fantasy Leagues” for stock trading similar to fantasy football. The real brokerage and the fantasy brokerage operated through the same app with a selector to move between functions. There was also a social feed and you could follow other users whose portfolios you were interested in.
I had opened my account through an offer on Swagbucks and had deposited $100. I put my funds into a dividend stock intending to leave the funds there until my retirement or other sufficient need.
I did not receive any kind of notice from Invstr about them stopping service. I did send a support ticket in April asking for help to login to my account but there was no response.
I have sent a support email to Apex in the hope that they can locate my account and liquidate the funds. Unfortunately, without access to the app I am unable to locate my account number. I checked my old hard drive, but it only had two screenshots and neither one showed my account number.
I have also been communicating with other Invstr members on the Invstr subreddit.
This has been really disappointing for the company to just up and vanish without a word to users. I feel really let down and cheated out of my money.
I have five portfolio’s with different mixes of stocks and a Vanguard account with a ROTH IRA and a regular IRA. I rolled my HSA and 401k from when I used to work into these two IRA accounts.
I primarily invest in REITs which are modeled after mutual funds. REITs pool the capital of numerous investors. This makes it possible for individual investors to earn dividends from real estate investments—without having to buy, manage, or finance any properties themselves.
For monthly dividends, the following are my picks:
Orchid Island Capital ($ORC) 19.33%
Credit Suisse X-Links Silver ($SLVO) 17.77%
Credit Suisse X-Links Oil ($USOI) 41.76%
Armour Residental ($ARR) 13.86%
Prospect Capital ($PSEC) 9.05%
Horizon Technology Finance ($HRZN) 8.17%
I also keep a portfolio that mimics the funds held in the Renaissance Technologies hedge fund. A bit of professional diversification in case my own picks fail.
I just wanted to give an update on my current portfolios and generally where I am with my varied investments. Gains and Losses and how I am planning on investing in this new year of the black tiger.
First, though, I should offer some background information for context. I am currently living essentially rent-free in a family home owned by a relative.
I try to live simply and keep my expenses low. I resigned from my retail job of 11+ years in 2020 and have been unemployed since.
I decided to go back to college last year and am currently enrolled full-time at a local community college.
The FAFSA, plus other financial aid, more than covered my tuition needs and left me with a sizeable chunk of change left over.
I know it has been some time since I last posted anything about #investing, but I had some good news today, so I will get right into it.
Webull
I use five different brokerage apps to manage my portfolios.
On Webull, I have all of my speculative stocks, including picks from Green Energy, Hotels, Space, IPOs, Electric Cars, and DOGE/SHIB.
This account started out with around $3,000 back in 2019, and currently, it sits at a value of $1,884.
It was mostly downhill until COVID-19 hit, and then I started to crawl my way back up.
Still, though I am looking at everything I hold being RED.
On Sofi, I have two dividend-paying stocks: Credit Suisse Silver (SLVO) and Orchid Island (ORC).
The rest of the portfolio includes SPACs that I thought had potential and a few Meme stocks, including Genius Brands International (GNUS) and Ocean Power Technologies (OPTT).
I’ve had the account since July 2019 and am down 42% unfortunately. Last year, I liquidated my HSA account from work and tossed the lot into Sofi, which put me at around $25k account value.
That number has dropped, and I now sit around $15k, which has been somewhat painful. I have earned around $1,990 in dividends, though.
My Charles Schwab brokerage includes funding from a home business mining the cryptocurrency Litecoin (LTC).
Sadly, I had to stop mining in 2020 and eventually shut down in 2021. I have an SBA loan from disaster relief financing that I am currently paying off using the dividends from Schwab. (Schwab won’t let you take screenshots as a security precaution.)
I have an account with Firstrade, which holds all of my OTC market stock.
I have small investments in ClickStream (CLIS), Farmmi (FAMI), Hyper Solar (HYSR), Envirotech Vehicles (EVTV), and Unrivaled Brands (UNRV).
These are all long-term plays, and I don’t check in on them all that often.
I had some Green Energy stocks and Cannabis stuff in here for a long time, and they really didn’t fare well.
I also did crypto for a bit and failed. It is very RED in this portfolio. I think back in November 2021, I heard about Renaissance Technologies and the dividend stocks that were included in their portfolio.
That got me inspired, and I made a Watchlist on Webull that included all of those stocks.
I have started closing my GREEN positions at Robinhood and moving the funds into the Renaissance Dividend list.
Robinhood started with $1,935 in 2017 and is currently UP 3.32%, but used to be much higher.
For my future plans around investing, I recently threw the bulk of my Schwab cash into Retail Value (RVI), which is paying out a special dividend tomorrow of $3.27 per share.
I was able to buy 780 shares and am expecting a return of $2,550.50 from that, which should be enough to clear the SBA loan in full.
I will continue to chase dividends with the Schwab account. I have also been playing around with new YouTube and Instagram accounts to explore other topics I am interested in.
The Game Girls Gallery is one of the more popular pages that gets a lot of traffic, and so I made YouTube/Instagram pages for it.
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I got tired of checking all of my stocks and through everything into 4 ETN’s by Credit Suisse. It really wasn’t much trouble but I have become lazy with the dividend investing. I’m also seeing much better returns with the ETN‘s over traditional dividend stocks. I know I’ll be paying way more tax but I still think I’ve offset that by my profit yields.
Ideally once the crappy stocks hit a breakeven I will be able to drop them and dump my money into dividend stocks. I have only regrets concerning SPAC‘s and IPO‘s, EV, POT, Green Energy and Crypto.
I’ve got 1000 shares of $USOI, 35 $REML, 14 $GLDI and 4 $SLVO on Charles Schwab.
Webull has 165 shares of $SLVO and a bunch of failed SPAC’s and IPO’s.
Robinhood has Green Energy, Cannabis and EV failures and 189 shares of $REML.
SoFi has my main investments and of course more speculative stuff that is always in the red. I have 100 shares of Alight, 100 Paysafe, 300 Genius International, 551 Ocean Power Technologies, 200 Orchid Island Capital, 2200 $SLVO, 20 $NSTB, 20 Blade Air Mobility and 80 shares of 23andMe.
On SoFi, the 200 shares of $ORC is getting me $13 per month. $SLVO earned $275 in June and $233 in July. I haven’t received coupon payments as of yet on the Robinhood or Webull shares. Over at Charles Schwab I get around $108 from $USOI each month and maybe $13 from $REML. I think I’ll eventually throw the entirety of my investments into REIT’s at some point.
I used to be really big on expanding my credit limits and getting my credit scores super high. I would jump at any credit card deal or bank account bonus I came across. At my peak, I had a FICO score of 805, 12k in business credit, and 48.65k in personal credit limit.
I realize these numbers are on the low end for the churning crowd but when I first came across the Fat Wallet Forums I was working part-time making minimum wage (7.25). I was surprised I was able to get so many cards early on given my lack of credit history. It was a great game grinding my way up to the 800’s.
Anyway, now that I am not working anymore and just focusing on my blog and enjoying my days I do find that managing all the cards to be a time-sink. Keeping track of each card and making sure there is regular activity and changing passwords semi-annual for security is a real chore.
I recently shut down my crypto business and was closing the business credit cards. That got me thinking that it would be a nice break not having to manage the extra data. So I started looking at personal cards that I didn’t have much use for.
I closed my SunTrust account a few AMEX and one of the Chase cards. Petal is gone, the Netspends, Oxygen, and PODERcard. I also closed my old BBVA account which was used for the business.
I’ll just have 3 bank accounts that I use actively. Sofi Money since it includes my Dividend investments, and my Charles Schwab which has mainly ETNs with nice coupons each month. Lastly, I am keeping my Dow Chemical Employee Credit Union checking/savings accounts. I heard about Dow from MilesPerDay, they have this really nice member Giveback program where you get the interest back on your loans and deposits.
The credit cards I’ll be keeping are:
Citi Simplicity 3k
Citi Rewards+ 2.8k
Cap1 Quicksilver 11k
Cap1 Savor 3k
Cap1 Walmart 8k
Synchrony Amazon 1k
Lowes 2.85k
Big Lot’s 1.5k
US Bank Altitude Go 4.5k
Amex Delta Blue 3k
Chase AARP 3k
Total 43.65k personal credit
I think that’s it for now. If you haven’t already please like and subscribe. Also, feast your eyes on my lunch of waffles and 떡볶이.
Fat Wallet Refugee 