Stock Market and Me - A Walk Down Memory Lane
So learning about the stock market started at a young age for me. Officially, I started having money in the stock market some time in junior high school.
It first started by going to a bank getting introduced to the investment side of the bank branch. And from there I started investing in mutual funds that tracked the index, bond funds and monthly income funds. At that time, the idea of investing in stocks sounded scary (and in hindsight, rightly so as trading costs were high, and with the capital I had, it wasn't enough to have diversification).
Then in 2007, cashed out of the stock market to purchase property. While it seemed logical at the time, the timing of the purchase was right before the housing market crashed - making the property I bought suffer a huge loss on paper. This would cast a big shadow and would delay my (re)-entry back into real estate.
From that point on, for quite a few years, I had stayed mainly in the stock market as my go to investment choice. Over the years, my investing strategy evolved as I learned more about the stock market, had more ammunition (ie. capital), and had a bigger appetite for risk.
(2007 to 2009) I started buying funds that didn't necessarily track indexes, and also dipping my hands in buying big blue chip stocks (like BoA, Chevron. etc.).
(2009 to 2012) I went after dividend yielding stocks. Finding stocks that are about to ex-dividend and buying them, and then selling them shortly after the ex-dividend date. To identify these stocks, I wrote some code that would scrape a website that had ex-dividend information and then parse that through the information to figure out what are candidates for buying.
(mid 2012 to 2017) - Transitioned away from dividend yielding stocks and into the '2% strategy'. While the dividend strategy worked okay, there were a few choices (and placed a large position on it) that had a big dip in the principal (CEL, FRE) - that and the site I was scraping was no longer scrap-able.
(2015+) - Read up about covered calls. Started integrating this into the investing strategy.
(July 2017) - Yahoo shuts down their free API to access historical data, breaking my ability to grab historical data to perform the analysis I was doing to identity stocks to buy. Tried various non automated models (like the queries brokerage sites offer), but none really did the trick.
(2018) - Got busy with life. Didn't have much time to research stocks (especially with the Yahoo APIs being shut down). Ended up making about 5 to 6 trades a month on average.
(2019+) - Got back in the game and evolved the 2% strategy. Used a combination of information that gave intra-day day trade ideas, to get the shortlist of stocks. Combined that with analyzing option prices and trend analysis. Also started placing buy order in the afternoon instead of the night before.
Summary of trades done over the years. Below is just the selling of a stock/fund.
Future posts will go into details for each of these strategies.
For stock picks done over the years, see: Stock Picks.
It first started by going to a bank getting introduced to the investment side of the bank branch. And from there I started investing in mutual funds that tracked the index, bond funds and monthly income funds. At that time, the idea of investing in stocks sounded scary (and in hindsight, rightly so as trading costs were high, and with the capital I had, it wasn't enough to have diversification).
Then in 2007, cashed out of the stock market to purchase property. While it seemed logical at the time, the timing of the purchase was right before the housing market crashed - making the property I bought suffer a huge loss on paper. This would cast a big shadow and would delay my (re)-entry back into real estate.
From that point on, for quite a few years, I had stayed mainly in the stock market as my go to investment choice. Over the years, my investing strategy evolved as I learned more about the stock market, had more ammunition (ie. capital), and had a bigger appetite for risk.
(2007 to 2009) I started buying funds that didn't necessarily track indexes, and also dipping my hands in buying big blue chip stocks (like BoA, Chevron. etc.).
(2009 to 2012) I went after dividend yielding stocks. Finding stocks that are about to ex-dividend and buying them, and then selling them shortly after the ex-dividend date. To identify these stocks, I wrote some code that would scrape a website that had ex-dividend information and then parse that through the information to figure out what are candidates for buying.
(mid 2012 to 2017) - Transitioned away from dividend yielding stocks and into the '2% strategy'. While the dividend strategy worked okay, there were a few choices (and placed a large position on it) that had a big dip in the principal (CEL, FRE) - that and the site I was scraping was no longer scrap-able.
(2015+) - Read up about covered calls. Started integrating this into the investing strategy.
(July 2017) - Yahoo shuts down their free API to access historical data, breaking my ability to grab historical data to perform the analysis I was doing to identity stocks to buy. Tried various non automated models (like the queries brokerage sites offer), but none really did the trick.
(2018) - Got busy with life. Didn't have much time to research stocks (especially with the Yahoo APIs being shut down). Ended up making about 5 to 6 trades a month on average.
(2019+) - Got back in the game and evolved the 2% strategy. Used a combination of information that gave intra-day day trade ideas, to get the shortlist of stocks. Combined that with analyzing option prices and trend analysis. Also started placing buy order in the afternoon instead of the night before.
Summary of trades done over the years. Below is just the selling of a stock/fund.
| Year |
# of Transactions
(Sold Only)
|
|---|---|
2007
|
2
|
2008
|
7
|
2009
|
35
|
2010
|
25
|
2011
|
25
|
2012
|
101
|
2013
|
164
|
2014
|
130
|
2015
|
101
|
2016
|
83
|
2017
|
105
|
2018
|
77
|
2019
|
207
|
Future posts will go into details for each of these strategies.
For stock picks done over the years, see: Stock Picks.
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