Adjustment time

It's been 4 years since my last entry.  We've been through Covid, and a semi-brief bear market recently.  It will be decided if that is over by whether we enter a recession or not, as some folks are predicting.  When Covid hit in March of 2020, the market took a huge hit, but then recovered almost as quickly.  I was able to grab some great deals in that dip, and then sold them as things got better.  All this was in my AIM account, using the rules of AIM.  The big one was trading out VZ for XOM.  It was a month before the big drop.  VZ had fallen a little, but I still had a pretty good profit in it.  When I noticed XOM sitting at 33, I couldn't resist trading out the VZ for it.  When the market did drop, I bought more of practically everything else in the account.  Oil had dropped ridiculously and the oil companies were suffering because of it.  When a company gets to a certain level that I look at it and take a quick breath in, it makes me think it should be in my portfolio.  That's what happened with XOM.

I've sold much of that stock since then, but still have a few shares left.  The stock is over $100 a share now, and I've been feeling it doesn't belong in my portfolio any more, along with a few others.  

It is the Friday before Christmas (falls on Sunday this year) and Tuesday is my next adjustment day.  I'm up to 8 stocks in my account and feel the time is right to adjust the number of stocks down.  I had in mind to build the account to 10 stocks before cutting it in half.  However, everything feels right to go ahead and do it now.  I'm going to dump all of the stocks that are either priced too high or are no longer in the Dogs and sell them and add to the ones left as well as add VZ back into the mix. (It is now down below where I bought it originally.)  I'll do this after I make any other adjustments if they are commanded by AIM.  The account will end up with the same total value as when I started and after any adjustments, only then it will have 4 stocks instead of 8. 

Starting stocks:  XOM, MRK, PFE, T, DOW, KO, WBA, INTC

Ending stocks:  DOW, WBA, INTC, VZ

We'll see how long it takes me to get back to 5 stocks.  It won't happen until I have enough extra cash in the account to have an equal amount, value-wise. 

That's all for now!