Some holiday progress

Merry Christmas '23 to all! 

The market has been in very good holiday spirits in the past few weeks - it's bumping it's head against some high ground.  I told a friend that I'm feeling a breakout coming.  Well, it will either breakout or bounce back down in the new year.  I'm prepared either way.

INTC definitely has had some upward motion in the last few months.  The rest of my account has been mildly up, and the combination of that and the onward climbing of INTC cause a large sell signal.  INTC was the only stock outside the range of values, so I sold enough of it to cover the entire suggested amount. That is the only thing that happened in all of the accounts in term of buy or sell signals, even though pretty much all of them had risen - just not enough to make up for the recent down action in the market over this year (with all the rate raising and such.)

I did a little bit of adjusting in my account.  I had pushed the number of stocks down to 4, but since I had an extra bit of cash in my account, just after last month's update, decided to add another one.  I was looking through the current Dogs and noticed MMM was surprisingly down. It was actually listed as one of the Small Dogs, which I would have never thought it to be!  I decided to buy enough shares of it to put it in equal value to the other stocks.  I'm glad I did.  Since then, the stock has gone up over $10 a share!

Also, in my son's account, one of the stocks, LUMN, had gone down close to $1 a share.  I wasn't convinced that it was really seriously in trouble, so I sold 1 share of one of the healthy stocks in his account to buy a bunch more of LUMN.  In Robert's book, he discourages you to chase a stock into the dumps, but I still feel that this company is an exception and has some upside.  Since then it is now creeping up towards $2, which would double the value of that stock, doing Harrison's account a lot of good. I try to not break Robert's rules, but I also try to see the logic of not panicking when it makes sense.

 I had planned on only updating this once every 3 months, but decided to do an extra one today.  I changed my account yesterday by adding another stock to it.  In updating, I had noticed a few months ago that I had over 60% cash in there, which really is too much.  I had planned on buying CSCO because at the time it was looking like it might go down to 48, which the price I decided I wanted to buy it at (for some reason).  Well, it never went down that far, and now has been over 50 since around that time.  So, yesterday, I went and looked at the Dogs of the Dow site, and lo and behold, there is MMM (3M company) as one of the 'small' dogs, coming it at $86 a share and paying an almost 7% (!) dividend!  Well, without asking any questions (which is not always a good way to do things), I went and bought 20 shares of it, which matched the amount of average value of the other stocks in the account - about $1750 apiece.  Not that I cared that much, but I found out MMM was going through some legal battles with some of the chemicals or something.  Nothing like the shit show surrounding Union Carbide many years back, but enough to instill some fear, making their stock fall under $100, which I couldn't recall the last time it had done that.  When I look at something like that, and it occurs as a surprise to me, I've learned that I should act on it, which I did.  Well, today I get up and look at the accounts, and the market jumped a bit, but it turns out MMM is all in the news and jumped up by $5 a share!  I had good timing for once, even though history shows that you don't really need good timing with AIM.  It was just nice to have some for a change.

I'll get back on schedule with this in a couple months...

 The market seems to be languishing in indecision right now. Still at what seems to be the bottom of a pattern, it will go up one day, and then back down for a few days. I am being very cautious with my 'cash accumulation' strategy.  I don't go for much more than a twenty dollar premium on one stock these days.  It's not a downward market, but it isn't at a definite bottom and creeping up either.  I know this all seems like a 'definite maybe' kind of talk, but that's the way the market is right now.  I haven't bought anything, except in Harrison's account, which can't seem to find it's footing.  The other accounts are threatening 'buy' signals, but haven't gone to the point of action.  Sheldon's is the only one that keeps chugging along with no warning of any buys.  That all says that there is no definite direction to the market.  It may take something disastrous in the world to send it really downward.  Eventually, if that doesn't happen, the market will start creeping up again and continue it's regular scheduled program.

 Well, I think we've been through our little 'bear' market now.  I think I had one buy signal in a couple of accounts.  Not really the 'end of days' many touted it to be.  I may be premature about this, but it seems like the market is stabilizing.  It just seems to be unsure about where it wants to go.  I continue to accumulate cash, just in case.  As in all times, you have to keep the attitude 'It could go up, or it could go down.'  I'm ready either way.  I did get a little too over-enthusiastic about trying to generate more cash in some of the accounts and got careless, losing a good chunk trying to do the naked put strategy.  I have since become more conservative in that regard.  I still have yet to do anything REALLY stupid in my personal account, but I've been lucky a couple of times too.  I just need to stick with really established companies and not get too greedy.  It's really a good strategy when done correctly.  It becomes a little tempting when you have loads of cash in your account and you get antsy because that cash isn't really producing anything.  I'll continue with it but stay conservative and realize that if the market starts going in a more consistent downward direction to back off.  If it does that, the cash will become more valuable just sitting in the account.  Until we see a more certain and consistent upward movement in the market, I have started to wait until later in the month to do those trades.  I end up pulling less cash per trade, but that's better than being stuck in one and then needing the cash if the market decides to take a shit.

 Stocks are down a bit lately, mostly because of the Fed's raising of interest rates (or the speculation that they will continue to do so.)  There has been scattered talk of a recession looming, but there is much evidence to dispute that.  We'll just keep minding AIM and taking advantage of low prices and filling the cash coffers when they're high. 

I did do a bit of buying in Harrison's account. One stock, LUMN (Centurylink) continues to sink. I went ahead and left it and bought an appropriate amount to put it in line with his other stocks, mainly because it seems to remain a decent company.  It's price is just very low right now. I went against my rule that says for this account, if a company quits paying a dividend, to switch it out.  If LUMN continues to stay down and not pay a dividend, I will make a move, but I'm wanting to give it some time. The upside is, if it recovers at all, it won't take much for it to call for selling of some. If it continues to sink, I won't have much choice but to figure out another company to trade it for.