Buy Trades for January 1 – 17, 2020

Most of the buy orders I enter are buy limit orders. That means I set what I think is an acceptable price to pay for the stock or ETF before submitting the order.  I limit what I will pay. Perhaps a stock is trading at $15.30 per share, and I believe it is likely that someone could sell at a lower price. So I might enter the order to buy shares at $14.95 per share and wait to see if the price drops to my price.

In the list of securities I bought so far in January, I color-coded them to help you see the types of stocks I was buying. Some are additions to long-term holdings. Those are shaded green. If the holding is a new purchase, like APLE, SCS and CFG the shading is blue. There are also some very speculative buys including BGG, THCX, NLOK and NVAX coded in a light orange. One of those positions, NVAX was sold at a significant profit because of the news that Novavax is working on a Wuhan Coronavirus vaccine candidate as the first US case emerged.

I can recommend CFG and SCS as along term investments.

Buying new positions – For SCS and CFG, I like the dividend growth prospects. SCS is Steelcase, and industrial firm. CFG is Citizens Financial Group, Inc. a financial firm with their headquarters in Rhode Island. CFG has a dividend yield of 3.82%, a payout ratio of about 40% and five years of dividend growth history. SCS has a yield of 3.00%, a payout ratio of about 40% and nine years of dividend growth.

Gradually adding to out-of-favor stocks – At the present time energy is very unloved, so CVI has been dropping in price. I now own 800 shares, and I have a measure confidence that this will turn around. It may not, but it will probably take some time. Note that I bought smaller chunks as the stock price dropped. I bought 50 shares on 01/16 and added another 25 on the 17th. I started buying CVI in October 2019 and have made a total of nine buys since the first one.  

Opportunistic Buying – When Target’s (TGT) price dropped dramatically, I added five shares before the market opened to bring my total count to 550 shares. Usually buying before the market opens is a bad idea, but I couldn’t resist a small buy. The price dropped some more since then, and I may buy more shares in the weeks ahead.

Buy Speculative Positions – I don’t recommend speculative investing as a main strategy. However, there are times when I will invest $500-$1,000 in a company that I think has potential for huge gains. In the case of NVAX, I made a quick profit. The shares I bought last Friday were sold today for a profit of $433.37. Some of that was in my Roth and some in Cindie’s Roth.

Buying Considerations:

Now that I have a Seeking Alpha premium subscription, I am finding a wealth of information that helps me in my buying decisions for both stocks and ETFs. Sometimes the most important thing you can do is identify the investments you don’t want. I would say that in every fifty investments I look at (very quick look) I find one diamond worth considering. Five minutes of due diligence is a wise approach.

The link below is what I use to look at the earnings calendar for the positions in my Seeking Alpha account. This might not work for you if you don’t have a paid Seeking Alpha account with a portfolio.

Seeking Alpha: https://seekingalpha.com/account/portfolio/calendar