As of Friday, 2/21/2014 see attached spreadsheet.
20.xls |
Once I decided which stocks to invest in, the next logical step is "how do you do it"? It so happens that I have had an IRA (Individual Retirement Account) account with Vanguard, the second largest Mutual Fund family after Fidelity. I chose Vanguard because of their low costs and the fact that it is the ONLY Mutual Fund Company that it is NOT FOR PROFIT. I purchased my stocks via their brokerage services (no transaction fees). Next week I will start tracking the performance of my 5 stocks portfolio. All information on my stocks can be easily obtained from Yahoo Finance". For simplicity, just click on the symbol of my stocks and you'll get all financial data you ever wanted. And all of this for FREE, no need to pay for fancy advice websites. Once again here are the symbols of my five stocks with hyperlinks to Yahoo
Finance: COST, F, JNJ, MSFT, NSRGY. Tip: you don't need as much info on your stocks as they tell you on CNBC. Once you decided you're comfortable with investing in the US/World economy and you selected your stocks based upon your own knowledge of their products and services, Ben Graham advises you pay attention to these key financial statistics: Price/Earnings (P?E) and Price to Book (P/B) easily found on Yahoo Finance. I'll publish my list of stocks and my tracking procedure on my next post. Legendary investor Benjamin Graham (1894-1974) once said: "Wall Street people learn nothing and forget everything". Everything one ever wants to learn about investing in the stock market as opposed to speculating is in this book. The essence of Value Investing is to buy quality merchandise (whether it is stocks or socks) when it is marked down.
I have decided to invest in a portfolio of value stocks of companies that I personally know and admire such as: Costco Wholesale (COST), Johnson and Johnson (JNJ), Nestlé (NSRGY), Microsoft (MSFT) and Ford (F). I will follow these shares thru the end of the semester and beyond and report on the performance of this portfolio all the while being aware that a buy and hold strategy is required. |