State of My Securities: May

Oh lord, make it stop!

So it's been a rough month, and June is not looking much better, to be quite honest. Here's the report for May:

The Portfolio

Disclaimer: This is not in any way a solicitation to invest in any of the securities listed in this post, or to invest at all. I am doing this for entertainment purposes, as a means to express my own opinions. I have no business relationship with any of the companies mentioned in the post. There is always risk involved with investment. Please do your Due Diligence before investing in anything.

I have small positions (1-250 shares) in the following securities:

1. Biostage, Inc. (Nasdaq:BSTG)
2. Facebook, Inc. Common Stock (Nasdaq:FB)
3. The Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE:KO)
4.  Hawaiian Electric Industries (NYSE:HE)
5. Square, Inc. (NYSE: SQ)
6. New York Managment Trust, Inc. (Nasdaq:NYMT)
7. UBS ETRACS Monthly Pay 2xLeveraged mREIT ETN (NYSEARCA:MORL)

Currently, I'm down 5.81% over the past 3 months, and -4.14% over the past year. This past month, my stocks fell another 2.32%. I did get to sell off my shares in Net Element (Nasdaq:NETE), but not at the price point that I had wanted to, unfortunately. I got around to puchasing the shares in SQ, which then promptly started dropping after their earnings report.

As I find time to do it, I'll hopefully do some extra due diligence and post about the securities that really excite me from my portfolio list.

Future Plans

Caveat: I have since purchased some shares in Pernix Theraputics Holdings, Inc (Nasdaq; PTX) for mostly shits and giggles. It's not a pick I would normally take, but I figured I could take a chance after reading some news on their current status. In any case, I'm watching it closely and will sell it after I find a good bit of profit (or if my very tight stop loss is triggered!)

I am still currently in the process of building up my dividend-spawning collection as well as companies I like a lot, I am interested and will likely buy into the following securities in the near future, assuming I can find time to do some due diligence:

1. Armour Residential REIT, Inc. (NYSE:ARR)
2. Cornerstone Strategic Value Fund, Inc. (NYSEMKT:CLM)
3. Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (Nasdaq: AMD)
4. Ford Motor Co. (NYSE:F)

I'm still aiming to get out of the following once major gains are realized:

1. BSTG
2. PTX

 I want to definitely increase the holdings in the following securities, as I have stated before -- the dividends are just great:

1. KO
2. MORL
3. HE
4. NYMT

Hopefully things turn around in June.

Until next time...

State of My Securities: April

Looks about right.

So this is my inaugural State of My Securities post for Pecuniary Ruminations. As stated before, I've started playing around in the Robinhood app in January, and have lit a ton of money on fire learned a lot about companies, equitites, dividends, and all sorts of things that make me happy that I'm starting to look into this stuff now rather than later into my life.

This post is meant to be short, because if I were to write about each security listed at length, not only would that post be way too long, I don't have time to fully research each and every single company in one sitting. I'll just be stating what I hold, and how I'm doing in the one month, three month, and twelve month time periods in terms of gains/losses.

Damned winking cat.

The Portfolio

Disclaimer: This is not in any way a solicitation to invest in any of the securities listed in this post, or to invest at all. I am doing this for entertainment purposes, as a means to express my own opinions. I have no business relationship with any of the companies mentioned in the post. There is always risk involved with investment. Please do your Due Diligence before investing in anything.

I have small positions (1-250 shares) in the following securities:

1. Biostage, Inc. (Nasdaq:BSTG)
2. Net Element Inc. (Nasdaq:NETE)
3. The Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE:KO)
4.  Hawaiian Electric Industries (NYSE:HE)
5. Bank of Hawaii Corp. (NYSE:BOH)
6. New York Managment Trust, Inc. (Nasdaq:NYMT)
7. UBS ETRACS Monthly Pay 2xLeveraged mREIT ETN (NYSEARCA:MORL)

Currently, I'm down 4.72% over the past 3 months, and -3.44% over the past year. This month, I took an 8.64% hit, due to some gains made in late March that promptly plummeted at the beginning of April due to a bad purchase.

As I find time to do it, I'll do some extra due diligence and post about the securities that really excite me from my portfolio list.

Future Plans

As I am currently in the process of building up my dividend-spawning collection as well as companies I like a lot, I am interested and will likely buy into the following securities in the next two weeks or so, after doing some due diligence (and posting my findings here!):

1. Armour Residential REIT, Inc. (NYSE:ARR)
2. Cornerstone Strategic Value Fund, Inc. (NYSEMKT:CLM)
3. Square, Inc. (NYSE:SQ)
4. Ford Motor Co. (NYSE:F)

I'm aiming to get out of the following once major gains are realized:

1. BSTG
2. NETE

State of the Cash: April

This is the inaugural net-worth/money accounts post, detailing the starting values that I'll be using to cover my net worth as I go through this journey to healthy finances. I hope that as I gather more and more data, these posts will become more and more detailed.

I will have a different post to detail the state of my stock portfolio (small that it is), because as I've written previously I find all of this personal finance stuff fascinating.

I am using You Need A Budget v4 for my major budgeting software. It's incredibly powerful, and I'll write a post about it in the near future. 

Net Worth

Net worth graph, pre-KawaiiKon (April 5)

Here is an initial graph, taken on payday (April 5th). I've got reasonably low debt, and fairly high liquid cash for movement. I only started accruing debt in February when I got my first credit card (Discover it). This screenshot was taken prior to my vacation later that week.

I went on my vacation, paid off a major portion of my bills, and as such, my month's net worth has as expected -- dropped:

Current Net worth graph, post-KawaiiKon (April 16)

As you can see, my assets have been trending downward, but my standing debt has also been trending downward. I have one more small paycheck to look forward to this month (April 20), and will be paying down more debt, as well as make my monthly Student Loan payment. This will probably make my net worth drop a little bit more, but will even out as the last of the vacation expenses get paid off.

Balance Sheet

As of April 16, 2016:

• Cash in accounts minus Stocks: $1319.87
• Debts in all non-Student Loan accounts $552.07
• Current Student Loan debt: $25,898.17

A New Year's Resolution Turned Hobby

Artist's Rendition of my Bank Account

I'll be honest: I'm just awful at managing my finances. As it stands, I've managed to spend on more frivolous things than I can ever hope to count. I surprise myself at the end of each month that I am able to blow so much money on stuff while still being able to make monthly payments and not go into arrears on my loans.

I've had this idea kicking around in my head for the better part of a week now. While I've had the opportunity to write about things that interest, irritate or annoy me regarding video games, music, or anime over at Traditionally Virtual, I've never wanted so much to just talk and shitpost about money or finances before. Feeling that it should and would be a more serious line of content, I've birthed Pecuniary Ruminations -- literally "Thoughts about Money" for your reading pleasure. Basically, like most things I've done in my life on the internet, it's on a whim that I'm here writing to you.

Why? What caused this sudden interest in money?

As with most things that turn out decently well for me, I have only my brother to blame. He came to me around last November extolling the virtues of this stock investment app on his phone: Robinhood. Around the same time, I noticed a person on my Steam friends list regularly opening You Need A Budget 4 (YNAB). I had just started regular payments on my student loans, and was quickly noticing that I was going to fail without any sort of serious plan about paying down this debt, and getting tough on my finances. On top of this, my brother's small success with investments in Robinhood had helped him be able to fund a small trip to Portland that December.

After some simple research regarding the YNAB method (more in another post), I decided to install the trial version of YNAB 4 and started playing around with starting a simple budget, according to the YNAB method. Next paycheck I bought a license, because of just how impressed I was with the software. At my brother's behest, I installed an android emulator and threw Robinhood on it so I can become familiar with the app while I waited for my account to be approved and my banking stuff connected to Robinhood. At the same time, I opened an account on StockTwits and just started reading whatever I could about anything and everything. It was a whole new world of knowledge, and it was the intellectual stimulation needed to jump start what was quickly becoming a stagnant lifestyle.

By January, I had purchased my first stock which I'm sure for most of my peers isn't exactly a thing you think about or even do. By February, I stopped hemorrhaging ridiculous amounts of money, and with March, I'm carefully navigating my way to a higher net-worth, though with a trip in April looming as well as my receiving a new credit card, I've almost slipped and fallen on this very delicate path.

So, what are you exactly going to do with this blog?

The first flurry of posts will most likely be an overview of what I'm working with -- super basic details about my portfolio with Robinhood and some starting figures from my YNAB budget. For me, this has been and will be an educational experience, so I want to document this journey. Perhaps I'll talk about the trades I made on a certain day and why I made them. Another day I'll do some research into a company and put my findings up here. Maybe I've read something that was super interesting about finance, so I'll write about it. Once a month, I hope to write about the current state of my accounts, and whether or not I've lowered or increased spending and paid down debts. I have friends that are interested in stocks and the markets, and I wouldn't be adverse to having different perspectives on this blog. It's what free expression is all about -- debate, discussion, and the sharing of ideas regardless of their perception.

I'm excited to be going on this journey, and I hope you'll join me on it.

Until next time.