Stocks and Trading Thread - Channeling your inner Mono

[Monoriu]

Seems all the bonds with yields above 4% are denominated in RMB now.  But I really don't want to buy much RMB now, with China's economy entering uncertain territory and the end of the long-term appreciation expectation of the currency.  I don't want to risk holding RMB until 2025 or something like that. 

[MadImmortalMan]

You could do what it seems like every other Chinese person with savings is doing. Buy houses in California.

[Tonitrus]

WY is merging up PCL.

I own both. 

[MadImmortalMan]

WY is merging up PCL.

I own both. 

If you bought WY below 35, keep it forever.  Good enough dividend for the Mono list. 4% or thereabouts.

[Tonitrus]

WY is merging up PCL.

I own both. 

If you bought WY below 35, keep it forever.  Good enough dividend for the Mono list. 4% or thereabouts.

Yeah, I had picked it up at about 28 and it's one of my dividend keepers.

And it fits in my pro-Washington state, home field investment bias. 

[Tonitrus]

Actually MiM, I would be curious for your take on my crappy, amateurish invest architecture...

My current set-up is like this...

Vanguard Roth IRA:  I set this up back before I joined the military...has only two investments in it, Vanguards REIT index fund(VGSIX), and Total Market index fund (VTSAX).  I haven't added to, or touched them in about a decade.

USAA Roth IRA: I've been keeping this topped up to the contribution limit.  Right now is about half a mixture of USAA mutual funds (of various types), and then I've been keeping my REIT stocks in there (with dividend reinvestment), for ease-of-tax purposes...because REIT tax issues look like a complicated bitch to me.  Plus a smattering of speculative stock purchases, and penny stock lottery tickets (like a few biotechs).  My biggest REITs in there are the ones that actually own property, and have respectable dividends, but are not those crazy dividend mortgage debt places...currently I have CSG, IRT, and SIR.

Brokerage (the one that is taxed):  Here I keep most of my blue chip stocks, with a strong bias towards good dividends.  Current major holdings are:
- COST
- AAPL
- T
- BKCC
- MAIN
- CTL
- WY (and soon-to-be-former PCL)
- PCAR
- SBUX
- NWL
- PFE

Plus a few other minor positions in some other wildcards (e.g. NMM, which has a rather nice dividend, but has tanked pretty good recently too.  )

Though, alas, don't really have the time/skill/knowledge to do anything much fancier than the meat-and-potatoes buying and selling of stock...and my picking strategy is probably not much better than the chimp-throwing-darts-at-a-dartboard method.   

[Admiral Yi]

AT&T is up 2.25% today on news that the Sage of Omaha has bought more shares.

[Ed Anger]

AT&T can suck my dick.

[Admiral Yi]

Sure it can.  It can do anything.

[Tonitrus]

As long as it's sucking with good dividends...

[Monoriu]

As long as it's sucking with good dividends...

Hear! Hear!

[MadImmortalMan]

Actually MiM, I would be curious for your take on my crappy, amateurish invest architecture...

My current set-up is like this...

Vanguard Roth IRA:  I set this up back before I joined the military...has only two investments in it, Vanguards REIT index fund(VGSIX), and Total Market index fund (VTSAX).  I haven't added to, or touched them in about a decade.

USAA Roth IRA: I've been keeping this topped up to the contribution limit.  Right now is about half a mixture of USAA mutual funds (of various types), and then I've been keeping my REIT stocks in there (with dividend reinvestment), for ease-of-tax purposes...because REIT tax issues look like a complicated bitch to me.  Plus a smattering of speculative stock purchases, and penny stock lottery tickets (like a few biotechs).  My biggest REITs in there are the ones that actually own property, and have respectable dividends, but are not those crazy dividend mortgage debt places...currently I have CSG, IRT, and SIR.

Back to front:
SIR—It's a very diverse REIT. 25% tech, 12% Industrial, 12% retail, the rest other stuff. Great div (over ten), low debt ratio (1.1). They have a high tech percentage. Their list of tenants includes F5 and Amazon. I didn't dig deep enough to see if any of that was actually datacenter space.

IRT—This one is apartments, mostly focused in the SEC states with some others scattered about. Debt ratio is 2.7, all long-term. Dividend nine and change. One thing as you said about "residential" reits is that some manage properties and the others buy mortgages. This is the former type. They own actual non-paper assets. Something like UDF might look more profitable on paper, but their net asset value is going to suffer the whims of the bond market a lot more. Your thinking is solid in my opinion.

CSG—Office REIT.  That's the category, but most of their properties are actually warehouses and distribution centers. I'm very averse to investing in offices in general (I'll explain in a minute*), but this one is interesting. They own SpaceX's HQ too. Debt ratio is low at around 1. Dividend 7. I think it's one of the safest office reits out there tbh and it isn't very expensive. I bet you didn't know you were invested in SpaceX, in a small way. 

*One of my theses is that office real estate is not going to be a growth market in our lifetimes. It's not like it's going to crash, but I think economics, politics, technology, competition and the labor market are going to increasingly cause cube farms to go dark over the course of the next couple generations. Not kill commuting entirely, just put significant and persistent downward pressure on that part of the real estate market. I think we'll see a lot of that space converted to living space in the downtown cores. A good counterpoint to this might be getting in some datacenter reits. Most of them are a bit better growth and dividends are kinda similar to high-yielding stocks. Frustratingly, these can be listed under either reit-office or reit-industrial.

Brokerage (the one that is taxed):  Here I keep most of my blue chip stocks, with a strong bias towards good dividends.  Current major holdings are:
- COST
- AAPL
- T
- BKCC
- MAIN
- CTL
- WY (and soon-to-be-former PCL)
- PCAR
- SBUX
- NWL
- PFE

Plus a few other minor positions in some other wildcards (e.g. NMM, which has a rather nice dividend, but has tanked pretty good recently too.  )

PCAR stands out. They've taken a beating, along with Cummins, Volvo, Cat, Navistar. Every one of them is giving gloomy outlooks, and they're all kinda trading together. Look at a chart of any of them vs the S&P and you'll see what I mean. The numbers look good to me, however. Better than the others I just listed.  Very cheap now. It might take a long while to come in, but the dividend is ok.

NMM: Look at that dividend. 17.5% I wonder how safe that is. Navios is rare in that group in that they actually have income.

Rubbermaid is not in trouble, even though that's a boring one, IMO. I like MAIN and I also own Blackrock, PFE and T.

Might be a good time to get in a little energy. Chevron is paying almost 5%. I have not yet done so, but I might.

CenturyLink has come in a lot too. Some numbers on them:
INCOME STATEMENT
Q3 FY15 Q3 FY14
Net Sales ($mil) 4,554.00 4,514.00
EBITDA ($mil) 1,782.00 1,746.00
EBIT ($mil) 734.00 649.00
Net Income ($mil) 205.00 188.00
BALANCE SHEET
Q3 FY15 Q3 FY14
Cash & Equiv. ($mil) 355.00 734.00
Total Assets ($mil) 48,754.00 50,646.00
Total Debt ($mil) 20,414.00 21,151.00
Equity ($mil) 14,250.00 16,445.00
PROFITABILITY
Q3 FY15 Q3 FY14
Gross Profit Margin 56.35% 56.29%
EBITDA Margin 39.13% 38.67%
Operating Margin 16.12% 14.38%
Sales Turnover 0.37 0.36
Return on Assets 1.49% 1.62%
Return on Equity 5.10% 5.00%
DEBT
Q3 FY15 Q3 FY14
Current Ratio 0.60 0.88
Debt/Capital 0.59 0.56
Interest Expense 341.00 337.00
Interest Coverage 2.15 1.93
SHARE DATA
Q3 FY15 Q3 FY14
Shares outstanding (mil) 554 571
Div / share 0.54 0.54
EPS 0.37 0.33
Book value / share 25.72 28.82
Institutional Own % NA NA
Avg Daily Volume 5,094,406 5,423,87
I made it this small on purpose.

If it can get over 30 per share, I'll be more convinced. You kinda don't need it when you already have T.

All only my opinion.


Mutual funds are all kinda the same, as long as they have low overhead I think.
FMILX New Milennium has always been my fav.

I will note though that I've got some positions in Vanguard's dividend fund VIG and also the SDIV global etf, and neither of those have come anywhere close to the returns I'm getting on the stuff I pick myself for dividends.

[Tonitrus]

Yeah, I've been thinking of dumping my stock/dividend mutual funds to roll into REITs or the actual dividend stocks.

[Monoriu]

Yeah, I've been thinking of dumping my stock/dividend mutual funds to roll into REITs or the actual dividend stocks.

Actually, I've been thinking of doing the opposite, dumping the dividend stocks to buy dividend funds 

[MadImmortalMan]

Yeah, I've been thinking of dumping my stock/dividend mutual funds to roll into REITs or the actual dividend stocks.

Actually, I've been thinking of doing the opposite, dumping the dividend stocks to buy dividend funds 

I'm not sure what it is, since a lot of the good dividend stocks are in the funds too. I don't think the management costs are quite that bad. They must just be weighed down with a bunch of junk. The SDIV is probably because it's in some badly-performing foreign stuff.