Recent Buy! October 2014

    In the past few weeks the markets been dropping quite a bit, with an overall drop of 11.4% of the S&P/TSX Composite, which certainly hurt a lot of peoples portfolio values but also brought about many tempting opportunities.This week I decided to go with adding to my position in Alqonquin Power and Utilities (AQN). I'v been watching it from the sidelines in a portfolio simulator for about 3 years now and bought my first position in them in December when I first started my portfolio. Since then its gone up 22%, for the past month or so its been trading quite a bit lower than where its price had stabilized at around $9, so I decided to add to the position with 81 new shares at $8.59.

Brokerage Review: Scotia iTrade vs. Questrade

    So in this post I will be comparing the Bank of Nova Scotia's trading platform: Scotia iTrade and Questrade's trading platform IQ and IQ Essential. Before I started out investing on my own, the first thing I had to do was figure out, where am I going to do that? So initially I took a look around all the common places(for Canadians anyways) like the big banks: Scotia, TD, Royal Bank, BMO, CIBC. This was around the same time I first started looking for, finding and following investing blogs while researching for brokerage information; you can checkout my blogroll for those helpful sites!

Next Buy Watchlist: Oct. 2014

    Markets have been heading downwards recently, but that also means there are some better deals to be had. And so with some extra cash sitting around I'v decided to move about into my brokerage account and see what pops up within the next week or so. Normally when I move money into my brokerage account I have a clear purpose as to what I am buying already, down to sending pretty much exactly the amount I need for the targeted number of shares within $10 to account for small market fluctuations in the stocks price. This time however, with the markets being so volatile I'v decided to move an amount that can buy a nice amount of a group of particular stocks, but I don't have a single accusation in mind.

    Generally speaking though due to my current heavy weighting in Energy I am looking to avoid it, except perhaps more of Algonquin Power and Utilities as it has no stake in the Oil market which has recent seen its prices declining.

Brief on Analyzing Stocks

    When I go looking for companies in which to purchase shares in I start out by compiling a list of stocks which I am interested in and try to balance them within my portfolio's sector weighting.  Once I'v selected a watchlist of company's I look at a few key pieces of financial information which are readily available either on the company's website, or by simply using Google Finance which has financial information on each company readily available, just search the companies name or its stock ticker. Google Finance also provides access to summarized company Income Statements, Balance Sheets and statement of Cash Flow; however for full detail statement with notes you will need to get that information from the company website if publicly available.

Key Information that I look for are: Ranges, Volume, Market Cap, P/E, Dividends, EPS, Inst. Owned and Financial Statements. Here's my brief breakdown of each:

Portfolio Update: October 3rd 2014

    It is time once again to update my portfolio. Its been an interesting month with the additional of a new company my portfolio has grown just a little bit more and my overall dividend income along with it! Suncor is now my 13th position and 11th company that I now own shares of, I also added 6 shares of the exchange traded fund, ZDV which adds about $.36 in dividend income a month :)

    Unfortunately the market has been on a bit of a down turn this month so my total portfolio value took a bit of a hit as well. Particularly my new Suncor purchase is down 7.54% as the prices of oil has been softening, either way I can't wait to see its first dividend payout hit my account! The upside is that many great companies are now looking very reasonably priced compared to August and September and I'll have a new watchlist up in the next week or so.

    Since my last portfolio post I noticed that some of the formula's were not carried over well from Excel to Google Drive... so there were some errors, I have now made a dedicated table for use on the blog. I have also added a bit more information in, such as; portfolio return before and after dividends are applied and the yearly expected dividends the portfolio should turn out and the dividend total I have received for the year.

September 2014 Income & Expenses

    September has come to a close and as October has started it is time to take a look back to see where all my money has gone! As expected due to moving out and getting settled in September was a very expensive month in comparison to my previous ones. Luckily income was pretty good as well this month which helped to balance the figurative checkbook.    
 
    So knowing that my rent and food costs would be going up a lot more I'v made an effort to pick up more hours to boost my income some, which resulted in my work income being a couple hundred dollars more than last month. Also with more hours comes a bit more tips which is under my 'other' income. No aquarium equipment sold this month, so its not as high as last time. Dividends were not as high as the last two months either but that is only due to having no quarterly payers hitting my account this month as i mentioned in my dividend update post. All in all not a bad month for income, I brought in about $200 more than last month.