Investing in stocks or wall street as some would call it is not my area of expertise. I would consider myself a beginner at most. If you have been following my blog then you know I am a real estate guy. Most of my assets are in real estate and I plan on becoming financially independent by my real estate rental properties. But I do know that it is wise to invest in other asset classes. Which is why I finally dipped into investing in wall street earlier this year and I revealed it in my January Net Worth Update.
How Much Money Am I Investing With?
I haven’t put a ton of money into it and at the time of writing this, I have spent about $6k in purchasing the stocks below. The spreadsheet below is a dynamic spreadsheet constantly pulling the stock price on the stocks below. So the numbers you see will be different each day and depending on where the stocks go. If I stumble upon a stock in which I feel is at a great value and I have some money to play around with, I will definitely make a purchase.
Why Did I Choose These Specific Stocks?
I can’t honestly say that I have a very good explanation of why I chose the stocks below but what I can tell you is that I was influenced by a favorite blogger and friend of mine, Jay from FiFighter. His style of investing is extremely similar to mine and his articles on investing in stocks really resonate well with me. I also read the following book: The Intelligent Investor and learned a great deal of proven methods to invest in stocks. The stocks you see below were purchased because I thought they had great value at the time of purchasing. Only time will tell if I am correct and I may periodically buy/sell some of the holdings below depending on what is going on in the market.
What Online Brokerage Am I Using?
My preferred online broker where I will buy and sell stocks is through TradeKing. I spent some time researching all the online brokerages and decided on TradeKing because they had the lowest fees. If you are considering saving costs on purchasing/selling stocks then you should also consider opening up a free TradeKing account. If you use the links here, you will get $50 in referral money if you open an account, fund it with $3,000 and place 3 trades within 90 days. I was able to take advantage of the same deal when I started and got my free money.
What Are My Future Plans?
I’m hoping to be able to build my stock portfolio in the future but for now I want to concentrate on saving more money to buy another rental property. Stocks scare me because I have zero control over what happens with the stock price. As for real estate on the other hand, although I have zero control in market conditions, I do have control over setting rent amounts, choosing what goes into a property which can impact rental demand and I can also choose where to purchase based on local demographics and city stats which play a huge factor in my investing thought process.
What are your thoughts on investing in stocks compared to real estate?
I have not taken the plunge on individual stock, but have seen many have success with dividend incomes. Good luck!
Hi Brian,
I definitely cant see myself having a huge portfolio of just individual stocks but I like the idea of playing around with it when I have extra funds.
Thanks for sharing your journey into stock investing buddy. You are in the sweet spot, because you receive passive cash flow from your real estate and can allocate it however you want. When stocks look attractive to you, as they likely will in the future, you can buy…..same with real estate. If neither looks attractive, you can let your cash build.
Have a great weekend Alex.
-Bryan
Thanks Bryan! I am in a sweet spot and feel very grateful for the passive income I get from the rentals. It does free up some funds for investing in stuff like this by my passion of course will always be to stick with RE.
I am a big fan of mutual funds. I am a little afraid to invest in individual stocks because I feel like I wouldn’t take the time to do the necessary research and ongoing research to manage an individual stocks portfolio.
I dont blame you. Individual stocks require a ton of research and takes up a lot of time. I like the idea of mutual funds but just dont like the market right now in general for traditional mutual funds that follow the market. The ETF that I purchased is in gold mining which was at pretty much record lows when I bought it. I feel I got great value on that purchase and it seems to by paying off so far.
I can see Jay’s influence in your portfolio 🙂 B2G is a company that I wasnt familiar with, until I saw Jay’s huge position in it. Ive been looking at some gold mining companies and also considering holding bullion lately. Theres so much more risk without much reward in the market.
Good to see you take a step towards diversifying your investing methods. I am a big fan of diversifying and never relying on one investment or even one type of investment. Thanks for sharing your update. Looking forward to see how this portfolio develops over time.
cheers
R2R
Haha! Yeah I learned about BTG from him for sure. I wish I could back the truck up like he did on some of those. Today, my little portfolio below is showing over 75% returns which is mind blowing. Of course all of that is from the precious metal stocks. (gold and silver)
Thanks for checking it out!
I went to a 3 day class at the online trading academy. I learned a lot and realized that when the stock market tanks so will my mutual funds. I took my money out of mutual funds.
Oh man, yes that is always my fear. Im pretty much staying away from market index following funds and ETFs. I personally do not think its a great time to invest in the market. The ones I picked below pretty much go against the market and I think they will continue going up for a few years at least. When the market crashes again which it will someday, then I will go in and buy some mutual funds and make a killing on the bull run. Hopefully! 🙂
We are in agreement – rental properties are the big part of my strategy. I also have some retirement accounts invested in index funds. If picking individual stocks, I think it should be viewed more as fun-money than an actual large percentage of one’s savings.
Hey Brian! I agree with you especially in my scenario that my stock investing is pretty much fun money. I have good intentions to increase that though.
Honestly individual stocks scare me quite a bit.
I’ve listened to guys like Tim Sykes, but it’s incredibly hard to tell if he’s just making money by teaching others how to make money or if he’s actually successful.
I plan to invest in websites until I’m at a steady $15,000 per month and then I want to play around with other income methods like real estate and the stock market.
Have you thought about purchasing a website off of EmpireFlippers or something similar?
Cheers!
Oh yeah i know what you mean. This is why I am not into purchasing courses like that. I mean i would consider it if they have proof of success and they not charging an arm an a leg you know.
I think your plan to invest in websites is awesome. Its a niche that people are making very good money with from what I have read. I have never thought about doing that though because I just dont know how to make it a profitable business. I just dont have enough knowledge on it.
Individual stocks are definitely a higher risk than ETFs or index funds, but looks like it’s paying off so far for you. Best of luck with it! I mostly stick with blue chip dividend paying stocks when i do pick individual stocks, but speculative growth can pay off too! Gotta keep a little bit invested in everything!
Indeed! The stocks I have chosen are definitely all based off of speculation so i wouldn’t recommend anyone doing that. But to your point, yes so far its paying off really well and I wish I wouldve bought more.
I think its super important to have an idea of how much you’re willing to lose on individual stocks. I usually use a 25% trailing stop. If I invest in something like IBM then I’m content reinvesting those dividends until I’m about dead.
Yeah you know I have never actually thought about how much im willing to lose but that brings up a very good point. At this point, i would be okay with losing everything I have put into it and ill be hoping that never happens. Later this year and probably more next year I will dedicate more time to building my stock portfolio.
Good for you CFD, you are doing great work over her man. I feel like I have the reverse path of you. I am building my passive income first with a portfolio of dividend paying stocks and then later want to build in some rental property income. I eventually want 3 sources of income coming in; business, dividends, and rental. If someone is really interested in individual stocks and building a passive income stream from them then check out the book “The Single Best Investment” by Lowell Miller. I have read it a few times and it has really helped me shape my strategy.
Take care buddy,
Thanks so much Chad. Really appreciate it. I see there are a bunch of others doing the dividend thing and I have thought about it as well. Its a great path to start out with and I think it will set you up nicely whenever you are able to add real estate to your investments. I have not heard of that book but ill be sure to check it out. Thanks for the recommendation.
I buy stocks that I know many people would need the company services or products, Walmart , target
I feel the same way about rental properties, people are always going to need places to rent so I think its a very sound strategy.
Nice to see you trying Individual Stocks. Having a diversity of income streams is incredibly convenient as you reach Financial Independence!
I started Dividend Investing about 6 months ago and have about $6,654 in my portfolio. I am using Robinhood for my trading platform, I recently wrote an article about my experience, but long story short, it’s incredibly simple and $0 trade fees. Of the last 60 trades I’ve done, if I used TradeKing (4.95 per trade) I would have paid $297 in fees, but currently I’ve paid nothing. As a beginning investor, I’d definitely consider a look.
Wow I never even heard of robinhood before but that sounds very intriguing that they have no fees. Sounds amazing actually. Ill look more into this for sure. Thanks for letting me know about that.
Rock on. Like I said, I recently wrote an article on this and if anything I captured some great screenshots of the app to give you an idea of what it looks like. Good luck!
Fair play to you for making the plunge buying individual stocks 🙂 It’s a good thing to have a different investment idea, I think.
We much prefer stocks to real estate. It’s much more passive, usually provides a better income and it’s easy to compound.
Tristan
Hi Tristan,
Thanks for stopping by. If there is one thing I have learned from investing is that it is good to diversify. We’ll see what other types of investments I dive into in the future.
Hey Alex,
Good on you for stepping out there & “giving it a crack” :)..
I’d say that it really has to be about the individual & what they want to achieve, having said that there’s plenty of ways out there to generate income / capital gains & it really depends on what someone is looking to do..
Looking forward to hearing more & hopefully the wedding prep is going great!
Thanks Jef, Thats one of the reasons why I love “personal finance”. It can be so different and still be successful for so many people. Its great!
the investment market in stocks is very unpredictable, so can not miss good planning, great tips thanks for sharing!
Thanks Brendo!