Market Turmoil

    Looks like the markets are getting a little bit shaky today. The S&P/TSX  went down 194.08 points, or 1.25%. The US S&P 500 fared even worse, losing 39.4 points, or 2%. Personally my portfolio dropped 1%, based mostly on Energy and Finances, Veresen (VSN) alone made up ~.05% of my losses today. The market appeared to be shaken from the announcement that Argentina has defaulted on its debt as it attempts to broker a deal to restructure its debts. There is also the ongoing instability in Europe as the Russia/Ukraine, and Israel/Palestine/Hamas conflict continues with fears of escalation in the area that will continue to negatively affect the broader Eurozone.
  

July 2014 Dividend Update!

    So the month of July has pretty much just finished and so I've received another months worth of awesome dividends and distributions from the companies I hold. Hopefully you've all received some good ones as well! This month has been my best month thus far with a grand total of $57.26 in passive income! That's roughly 5 hours of minimum wage work that I didn't have to do this month! :)

Recent Buy!

    Today I added additional shares of Toronto Dominion Bank (TD) to my portfolio. I bought 10 shares @$55.50, TD currently has a dividend of $.47 so this purchase adds a total of $18.8 in dividends a year to my dividend income! Since I already have shares of TD my total number of stocks/ETFs remain at 12. The financial sector weight in my portfolio is now at 21%, so I am still looking to boost that number up in the future.

    TD was one of my stock considerations in my Watchlist post. I decided to go with TD instead of a Telecom or Insurance company for a few reasons:

Next Buy Watchlist

    So I'v been able to save up a bit more money to buy a few more shares of a high quality company. I have narrowed down the list of companies but I'm still undecided. Currently based on my portfolio sector weightings of the type of companies I want to be invested in at the moment, I am looking for either Financial or Telecommunication companies.

Excel Portfolio Tutorial: Basic Table Foundation

    Tracking your various investments, registered and non-registered accounts can be fairly difficult and daunting, especially when you have multiple accounts with different companies. I find that by using Microsoft's Excel makes the task much easier and allows for the creation of a clearer picture of ones total investment portfolio. Setting up a spreadsheet (worksheet), or multiple worksheets within Excel and creating the tables can be quite time consuming if you are not familiar with using Excel, along with the financial formula’s to show you what you want to see.

   

    So in this first post I’d like to show you how I have setup my Excel worksheet for tracking my investment portfolio within my brokerage account. I’ll start with:

1.  Setting up a Table: Columns, rows, labels.
2.  Basic setup structure.
3. A few basic formula's shown within Excel.
   

Portfolio Update: July 1, 2014

Portfolio

My Portfolio as of July 1,2014.



 
   Heres a snapshot of my portfolio within Excel. Over the next few weeks I'd like to make a post