February Number$

Since the new year began, I've fallen out of the habit of posting my current stock holdings and monthly portfolio gains on the blog.  Not sure why that is.  

Have I become paranoid about tossing our personal financial details out into cyberspace?  

Or maybe I'm just a fragile, shy little bunny who doesn't want to brag when she has a good month in the markets.  Huh?  

"Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haha haha haha haha hahahahaha... whew".  Okay, clearly that's not it.

Posting my monthly holdings and gains is the best way for me to stay accountable to myself and our investing strategy, which is, in a nutshell:

• saving mucho dinero to invest (30% to 50% of our annual income)
• buying solid companies at a low price and hanging on for the ride
• trading in/out of the more volatile stocks
• owning no more than 15 companies - the max # I can keep track of 
• chasing yield (which no one should EVER do)

This strategy is working for us and the proof is in the numbers:

• TFSA #1    Feb gain +3.27%    2011 Year to Date +2.94% (January was blah)
• TFSA #2    Feb gain +5.87%    2011 Year to Date +9.10%
•  LIRA        Feb gain +3.54%    2011 Year to Date +8.88%
•  RRSP       Feb gain +2.77%    2011 Year to Date +10.24%
•  non reg    Feb gain +2.77%     2011 Year to Date +8.03%    

Earlier this month I took profits on my two big trading stocks, so roughly 1/3 of the entire portfolio is now in cash***.  

Current holdings include:

• Student Transportation
• Alaris Royalty Corporation
• Chorus Aviation
• Inter Pipeline
• Pembina Pipeline
• Yellow Media

Yup, that's it.  Only six companies.  Which means if we hold 33% cash, then several of these equities must make up more than 10% of the entire portfolio.  That's another big no-no.  

The 'experts' (whoever they are) suggest that you should own no more than 5% to 7% of any one company for diversification sake.  I fully agree with this unwritten rule. Just like I agree with the 'Don't Chase Yield' rule.  

But I don't follow either of them.

Us shy and fragile Ninja Investor Bunnies usually ignore the rules  :) 

***  The Canadian loonie is at a three year high of $1.02955 against the US dollar. If/when it hits $1.05, some of our free cash will be buying a few American bucks in my US dollar account.

Comments

[Don]

Hi Kelsi, you are really doing good with your investments, we are mostly sitting on cash and some TLT treasury bills which with the Canadian/Us dollar and TLT fluctuations we have done alright with very little risk. (The 2008 crash really shook us up). Out of curiosity how did your investments do in 2008 or did you pull out at the right time?

[kelsi]

Mr P - I got my butt kicked in my RRSP in '08. But my non-reg account is more than 3x larger than my RRSP and it gained a little more than 10%. Overall we ended the year a little ahead.
And with a few strategic cap losses I had a LOT of available cash when good companies got really cheap at the end of '08 and in March '09. That was a huge turning point for our investments, and it was a combination of solid research and VERY LUCKY timing. I realize many folks lost 30+% of their portfolio so I feel damn lucky with our small gain.
If all goes to plan we'll reach our financial goals by 2014 and I'll start to move the majority of our investments into fixed income.

[Don]

Hi Kelsi, thanks to your blog we have realized that most of our fun times were in our rv, so after 5 years we are now back into it! Our new one will be here in 5 weeks!

[Jacq @ Single Mom Rich Mom]

February was a great month for me too! I did the dirty market timing thing and sold some Suncor a week or so ago. Everything took a bit of a hit the last couple of days though. Oh well, still up quite a bit from December. Pembina's a good company, I have friends that work there. :-)