Sunday 26 August 2012

Moving Forward - Ever Onward


Back in June of this past year I made the decision to unload two mReits - TWO and ANH. My basis for this was a simple realization - I did not understand how they made money. Simple really - I felt that since I could not understand what they were doing - how would I understand when they were in trouble and it was time for me to sell. I made an 18% and 11% percent profit on TWO and ANH respectively.
I had held them for less than six months and it was not a matter that they were not looking to be a good investment - I really wanted to go back to the KISS method and they were not simple investments.

I then took the proceeds of those two sales to take positions in Intel (INTC) and Pure Energy Services (PSV).

My average share cost of Intel was $27.29 and as of this writing I am down about 9% on that one, but I am not too worried about it - it's a solid company with great cash flow. DRIP over the next couple of quarters will average down that per share cost for me.

My second purchase, Pure Energy Services, worked out to a per share cost of $7.39. I was happy with this purchase as it was a company steadily growing earnings and cash flow and were paying a good dividend. As an added bonus I was just under the ex-dividend date and so I soon picked up my first dividend payment and DRIP shares.

A little over a month after my purchase of Pure Energy - they were snapped up by a bigger company out of Houston at $11.00 a share. I decided to sell out and pocketed a nice little 47.45% profit for holding the stock for just over a month - nice!

My investment style does not plan for me to flip a lot of stocks, however the chance to lock in  such a big win so fast was too good to ignore - and freed up funds to find a another long term holding.

When do you consider selling a position?