Recent Buy & Sell! April 2016

    There had been a bit of volatility in the markets a couple of weeks ago. In particular with my holding of Veresen (VSN). In a single day it jumped up from $8.87 a share to $9.51, roughly 8%! So I took the opportunity to sell a portion of my shares. I sold 71 shares at $9.42, which lowered my monthly dividend income by $5.91, and $70.97 annually.
   However, I did this with the intention of eventually, and probably in the not so distant future buying back the shares at a lower price. Which I did the next week at $9.06! And since the share price had dropped back down, I was able to buy 74 new shares at that price with roughly the same money I got from selling the previous 71 shares. So now with those 74 shares my dividend income increased by $6.16 per month and $73.97 per year. A difference of about $3 more per year.

    These trades also had an impact on my portfolios open and closed Profit/Loss and the shares average cost. Previous to these trades my average cost of VSN shares was $15.41 and selling the shares, even on that days surge of 8% still made me take a loss on the shares of $5.99 a share, $425.29 total. Which always hurts, but factored into my decision. While VSN has been fairly consistent with its financial results and keeping up its funds from operations to feed its high dividend, the company is hinging a lot of its growth on its Jordan Cove project which is once again seeking approval through an appeal process after getting denied the first time.

    So my rational here was to 'take' this one day surge in share price to unload a portion of my shares, and slightly de-risk myself of the position. If the shares continued to climb then I would still have a part in that climb. However, if the stock dropped back down as it historically has done after a large one day surge in share price, with no relevant negative news making that happen then I would buy back into the position at a lower price relative to what I sold at. Which was the case, as I was able to buy back those shares at thirty-six cents less per share and add 3 more shares with that spread.

    So now that I have bought back the shares, I have slightly added to my dividend income and lowered the average cost of shares from $15.41 to $12.71. I now have a total of 174 shares of Veresen from the previous 171.

Summary:
Sold 71 shares of VSN @$9.42
Bought 74 shares of VSN @9.06

Previous average share cost: $15.41
New average share cost: $12.77

Monthly dividend increase: $.25
Annual dividend increase: $3

Realized losses of $425.29