At the beginning of 2021 I decided to get back into the stock market after a decade absence. As it has been a full year, I thought I would report on my results so far. I have to confess that the stock market is down today. Creating this post on Monday would have yielded much better results.
When I created my online trading account, I really had one goal: do better than a regular savings account. So far I am up 33% which blows the savings account interest out of the water. I don't guarantee this result for everyone. In fact, I got quite lucky with on of my early stock picks: Ford (F). It is a funny story and worth repeating.
There are a number of stocks the provide additional benefits instead of just owning a piece of the company. If you own a single share of Disney stock, you can send them something like $30 and they will send you a gold-looking stock certificate worthy of framing. Ford has the benefit of if you own a minimum of 100 shares and hold them for at least 6 months, you can call investor relations and they will give you employee pricing on any of their vehicles. Last year the stock was at $8.52/share. So for the meager investment of $852, I could save thousands off a new car. I have yet to use that benefit but today the stock closed at $22.45/share. My original investment is up 163%. This is an anomaly and not all of my investments have done so well.
When originally looked at investing, I read that indexed funds can be a good way to diversify and that Russell 3000 (VTHR) fund was doing something like 15% over a 6-month period. That seemed promising to me and so I invested a few shares at $171.15/share. Today it closed at $203.84 for an increase of 19%. That isn't as good as 15% over 6 months but it is still pretty good.
I have also lost money on several stocks. My wife got excited about Redfin (RDFN) and Pinterest (PINS). At her urging I purchased 3 shares of each. In all fairness to her, the stocks were exciting at the time and were at all-time highs. Remember the adage about buying low and selling high? Well I keep waiting for the stocks to rebound before I sell them. Needless to say I am down about 65% for each of them. Fortunately those are the anomalies in my portfolio and I am ahead, as mentioned at the beginning.
Unfortunately past performance is no guarantee of future and so I can't rely on another 33% for next year. Having made a bit of money in the past year though makes it easier to keep my money in the stock market. I've definitely beaten my original goal.
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