Recent Buys

[OpusX1]

I recently bought JM Smuckers, SJM it is yielding 3.74. Has a history of raising dividends for over 50 years Seemed like a good play. not much risk, good yield.

i bought AFLAC, AFL is yielding 8.22. Love the yield not much down side as I paid less than 15. Plenty of cash so I think the dividend is safe for this year. Good company beat down by big insurance and banks.

I have been watching but have not pulled the trigger on GE. Seems like a great buy at under 10. Closed today at 8.47 and is yielding 14.6 after cutting the dividend. Traded as low as 5.75 last week. Great Company beat down by GE Credit. I think I will gamble on 1000 shares soon.

What are you thinking?

[Boomer]

I recently bought JM Smuckers, SJM it is yielding 3.74. Has a history of raising dividends for over 50 years Seemed like a good play. not much risk, good yield.

i bought AFLAC, AFL is yielding 8.22. Love the yield not much down side as I paid less than 15. Plenty of cash so I think the dividend is safe for this year. Good company beat down by big insurance and banks.

I have been watching but have not pulled the trigger on GE. Seems like a great buy at under 10. Closed today at 8.47 and is yielding 14.6 after cutting the dividend. Traded as low as 5.75 last week. Great Company beat down by GE Credit. I think I will gamble on 1000 shares soon.

What are you thinking?

I own SJM, as a result of Procter and Gamble sending Jif to live there several years ago, and holders of PG got Smuckers along with the deal. Folgers is going from PG to Smuckers, too, I think. but I have not paid attention to the details of that. There was an exchange available last fall, as I recall. Hey, what is not to love about a company whose address is One Strawberry Lane?

I understand what you mean about pulling the trigger on GE. I am watching that one, too. They are perceived as a financial I guess, and they sure are getting beat up. But so far, I have not bought any. I used to own it, but got rid of it long ago. That price is just weird to me for GE.

Meanwhile I am watching Kraft, and I think I will buy some soon. I also think about 3M. And then there is Waste Management (WMI).

I currently own a couple of utilities, but I am thinking about maybe getting a third one, but I do not know which one. Any thoughts on that?

Maybe I had better stop just thinking and do something with that online account I set up last week. I have never traded on online before.

(Please keep in mind that I know absolutely nothing, and nobody should pay any attention to me at all.)

Boomer

[conn8757]

Boomer - it sounds to me like you know quite a lot. I am impressed with your knowledge. I am only in funds except for one insurance company that we have owned for 30 years which is badly beaten down right now and an oil exploration company that went kerplop as soon as we invested. Good luck to you all -

[OpusX1]

Boomer. I think 3M is a great buy now. Yield is around 5. A great Company.
We have owned 2 utilities for years. First Energy and American Electric Power,
Can you tell were from Ohio? Have not been looking at any others so can't help much there.
For a pure dividend play have you looked at Philip Morris? Yields 6.5%.
So many great buys so little cash available.

[Boomer]

MO or Altria was one I looked at a few years ago. At the time, had I made the move, I would have done quite well. But I sat back and actually lost interest in it. Another I looked at was 5/3, that's how long ago I'm talkin'. But I decided that I just did not like them. At the time, I also looked at other banks, but decided that I did not like them either. Somehow, I kept thinking that banks and stockholders might not be a good mix.

When I look at a stock, I think about it almost purely on a gut level. No sophistication about me at all. I remember not buying Home Depot because I had seen Central Hardware and HQ and maybe a few others come and go. Also, I could not think about REIT's because of my untimely, arrogant dance with that :cus: tech bubble in the 90's.

There was somebody on this board several months ago who used a little saying, "On the way up you earn. On the way down you learn." I loved that little saying. It applied to me on the tech thing. I learned. But even having done that, I have enough Cincinnati in me not to have bet the whole farm. Like I said before, it's just my little stash of butter and egg money.

And right now, I am watching to see what PG will do about the dividend. I think it has been uninterrupted since 1890 and raised annually, uninterupted, for more than 50 years. I think they will raise it. Just my gut telling me that. But they have been hammered, too, for now. In the last recession, consumer staples held its own better than so many other things. But this sure is a horse of a different color.

And now I better get out of here to go to exercise class. I told that daggone Mr. Tony when he started this forum last week that I would get way too into it and not go to exercise class and it would be all his fault. But he started the investment forum anyway.

Seeya.

Boomer

[OpusX1]

Ahh The Tech bubble! I was day trading the bubble for about 6 months. Had a account with Brown and the fee was $5 for a market order and $10 for a limit. I was trading Corning Glass mostly. it was trading around $150 and I was buying/selling and shorting 200 shares at a time. I would trade when I had a profit of $100. Some days I would trade 8-10 times a day. I took my original stake from $25,000 up to $140,000 in 5 months! Lost all but $3,000 of the profit when the bubble burst. My health suffered too. Risking $30,000 a trade to make $100. Insane. Corning went from $175 to $4-5 in about 3 weeks. I kept a very accurate log of my trades on quicken and when I took my information to our CPA I had made over 1200 trades in 5 months! Now I only buy and hold. Only selling losers to cover any gains I may have to take.

[inda50]

I am impressed by your intestinal fortatude. I would love to day trade my self, but don't have the guts and would probably would wind up getting a divorce in the process. I'm holdin some GE and a few other i bought in the downturn. I'm still 25% underwater, but i'm confident the market will get back, it may take a year or two.

[Boomer]

Well, I did it. My first online trade. I did not make a phone call to anybody to do it for me.

Wow. It sure was easy. Point. Click. There it was.

OK. OK. I will tell you what it was. It was Kraft (KFT) at $22.23.

Now it's time to celebrate my new adventure. (I hope it was cause for celebration anyway. Time will tell, of course.)

So Hey! Philly on Ritz Crackers and Mac and Cheese and Oreos and Kool-Aid all around!

(But I know that I could never be a day-trader. I am just not all that adventurous. Geez. Didya see what I bought?)

Boring Boomer

[Bob45]

I just started day trading. I joined TradeKing. $4.95 a trade. Penny stocks are a little more. I made some money with Citigroup. Bought low and sold on the upswing. I got out at 40%. If I would have stayed longer I could have made 80%. I am holding QQQQ. I plan on buying more a little at a time and staying for the long haul. My big profit maker has been DXO. It is an oil ETF fund. I'll buy and sell it a couple times a day, or hold a couple days depending on how it's moving. So far I'm up over 20% in 4 weeks. I'm having fun with it, but it is nerve racking trying to time the market.
Bob

[OpusX1]

I made some money with Citigroup. Bought low and sold on the upswing. I got out at 40%. If I would have stayed longer I could have made 80%

35 years ago my Dad gave me some good advice about trading. He said don't worry about making more just remember you'll never get hurt taking a profit.

[Boomer]

...........35 years ago my Dad gave me some good advice about trading. He said don't worry about making more just remember you'll never get hurt taking a profit.


Opus, your dad gave good advice. This economic nightmare was brought on by those for whom it is never enough.

I am watching General Mills (GIS). It has been pounded like everything else. I just started to look at it recently.

Yesterday, I threw out a stack of investment magazines that I had forgotten about on a shelf in the office closet. They were all full of advisers' recommendations. Looking through those, I decided that I might as well just ask the Pillsbury Doughboy or Betty Crocker or the Jolly Green Giant what they think about their company. You know, I do think Hamburger Helper is going to become increasingly popular. (I know. I know. GIS sounds a lot like KFT. Redundant of me I guess.)

Boomer

[OpusX1]

GIS is a good company. We have owned it for about 12 years. The Aflac I bought was up close to 40% last week. Smuckers up a bit. Hopefully we have bottomed out. Still haven't pulled the trigger on GE. Probably will wait too long and miss out.

[Boomer]

I look at General Mills (GIS) and then I look at Kellogg (K) and then I look at General Mills and then I look at Kellogg and then I look at General Mills and then I look at Kellogg. And while I do not think I need to be in any big hurry, I do think I want one or the other.

It's not like I am doing some kind of big deal analysis. I do not know how to do some kind of big deal analysis. I just point and click around once in a while to see what these two are up to, or down to.

I guess I just need to figure out which one I like the best. The Pillsbury Doughboy? Or is it Tony the Tiger?

:shrug:

Boomer

[OpusX1]

Six of one half a dozen of the other. Just buy 500 of each. See easy. LOL
It has been nice to see a recovery start the past month. Hope it keeps up and we have semi normal year. I don't mind the ups and downs of a typical year but the down down down of last year was no fun.

[Canwego2]

I bought some RCL and CCL about 3 months ago ...starting to see some good results. My Ford stock is also doing great too!

[Boomer]

GE has come up in this thread, here and there. It looks so cheap. Not as cheap as it was there for a while. But cheap. Well, it looks cheap anyway. And I wonder if when things improve, it will just look flat. Flat for a long, long time. This one makes me really sad. They are all sad, but this one for some reason gets to me a little more. It's like when you see one of those beached behemoths on television and all those people are trying to get it back into the water so it can swim again. I bet everybody knows somebody who works for GE. I sure hope somebody figures out soon how to rescue the behemoth.

And here I am posting a link again. It's for anybody else who is keeping an eye on GE like I am.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_15/b4126032280666.htm?chan=magazine+channel_top+stori es

Boomer

[Canwego2]

Boomer...I feel the same way about GM. I own some of it's stock. Living in Michigan I have seen how many people are really hurting. Hopefully, Fritz will get them back on the right track....:beer3:

[TomW]

I made some money with Citigroup. Bought low and sold on the upswing. I got out at 40%. If I would have stayed longer I could have made 80%

35 years ago my Dad gave me some good advice about trading. He said don't worry about making more just remember you'll never get hurt taking a profit.


I think it was Bernard Baruk who said " You may have the top 20% and the bottom 20%, but I shall take the middle 60% for myself."

[Boomer]

I just now managed to somewhat revive from a case of the vapors after having checked CD rates for one coming due soon. (Why oh why can't they give all us good little 55 and uppers a decent CD rate and let us go in together and prop up the banks. They could call them Geezer CD's. Oh well.)

Anyway, now I am back on that utility kick again. Already have Duke. Thinking about more Duke. That dividend is approaching 7%. Or it was recently. May be less now. I am not greedy. I can live with 7%. I can't deal with a 1.8% or whatever that obscene number was they just said to me for a CD.

I think Duke is run OK unless somebody decides they are not green enough. Could happen I suppose. (And remember that I am not a financial adviser and have no credentials for anything financial. Just been taking care of things for us. So please do not take any suggestions from me.)

Anyway, I am thinking Duke because it is one that I know. But does anybody out there have another utility stock they like a lot. I promise not to hold you responsible. I am just interested in what others have to say about utility stocks.

Boomer

[mgm4444]

I just started day trading. I joined TradeKing. $4.95 a trade. Penny stocks are a little more. I made some money with Citigroup. Bought low and sold on the upswing. I got out at 40%. If I would have stayed longer I could have made 80%. I am holding QQQQ. I plan on buying more a little at a time and staying for the long haul. My big profit maker has been DXO. It is an oil ETF fund. I'll buy and sell it a couple times a day, or hold a couple days depending on how it's moving. So far I'm up over 20% in 4 weeks. I'm having fun with it, but it is nerve racking trying to time the market.
Bob
Bob,

Your opinion on TradeKing? - I'm w/TDAmeritrade at 9.99 a trade. 4.95?? that's great if ur a day trader !!

[Boomer]

I am getting ready to go outside this morning to continue a big job I gave myself. I am planting about a million little plugs of groundcover. I am doing this so that, down the road, I do not have to spend all my money on mulch. So here I am, planting all those little plants, everywhere. (It's vinca or myrtle, as it is sometimes called.) Now, if you know anything about groundcover, you know that the first year it sleeps. The second year it creeps. And the third year it leaps.

Before you think that I am completely lost and I must think I am in the gardening forum, let me explain that I know where I am. And I have a vague idea where I am going. I hope. Not only with this post. But with the groundcover. And maybe even with some stocks I like.

I tend to go on and on about dividend paying stocks. I like them. But I do not chase huge dividends. I want only a reasonable dividend. Huge dividends make me skittish. You know that thing about if it sounds too good to be true....they're getting ready to slash the dividend followed by really bad news.

So anyway, yesterday, I came across a copy of Business Week, a special issue from the first of the year that was about the investment outlook. And therein, I found an article about dividend payers that kind of sums up how I view them, too.

I am a really boring investor. No daytrading. Only calculated risk. Always keep some of it untouched. Understand what the company you buy does. Is there a product? Do people need the product? How long will they need the product? In other words, boring, boring, boring. Oh and also lazy. I do not want to have to monitor a stock all the time. And, at this point in life, I know how old I am.

So here's the article on dividend payers, in case you want to read a kind of old article on dividend payers.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_52/b4114068597633.htm

Like my groundcover that I am planting. The good dividend payers will probably sleep. Then maybe creep. And someday maybe leap. (I hope not a backward leap for either one. But you just never know.) Meanwhile, I will wait patiently and see a little green along the way.

Boomer