I'm back from a Viking Med Cruise. Got in late last night and am up early except it's past Noon in Rome so my body doesn't think so. Great trip except for one afternoon.
So one day last week I looked at my accounts and realized I have several stocks that I've owned 6 months or more in my IRA where I have negative returns. I'm thinking this is long enough and I have the urge to sell them. I almost did this then but held off due to my aversion to vacatrading. Plus nothing was urgent.
These are all in my IRA. The stocks are: AGM, ED, LYB, MRK, PFE, SLB, VZ.
I am not looking at putting this money into growth stocks. I've mentioned before that I recently surpassed one of my portfolio magic numbers; the point where I can relax and say, "You've done it. Don't get stupid and you have enough until you get dead." Nice feeling.
This is not to say I don't want to continue to grow it because, well, why not. But I temporarily want to get to at least $250k in "not stocks." I want the biggest chunk of this to be in SGOV (maybe some bond funds once I study more), gold, silver, and, if I can clench my teeth hard enough, crypto - all of these through ETFs. So this $250k "not stocks" is my current focus. Once that's reached I'm back to mostly growth because I'm just 63 and to me, looking over a 25-year period, growth is still gonna pay off, as long as I pick the right companies (or ETFs).
For the above, because what I'm mainly looking for is investments that don't necessarily move with stocks, valuation matters a little but getting them banked is more important. Also, SGOV will partially serve as an in account bank of available funds depending on market movement. Could I leave it in the Fidelity MM? Sure but for me psychologically there's something very different from having that money in a fund vs the MM - I tend to view the MM as lazy money and want to put it to work buying something. If it's in something with a ticker symbol I'll leave it alone. Purely mental but I've been doing this long enough now to know how the irrational part of my brain works.
I am pretty comfortable with the idea of selling these Monday though with VZ and PFE I'm going to look more closely - and figure out if AGM can get back to $200 or more in the near future like it was a couple of months ago.
I also have some stocks I'm up on overall that have soft 12-month returns. They could also be on the chopping block. And for any of these I could decide to hang onto, say, $5k if I think the company is sound, undervalued based on cash flows/debt/growth prospects, and could have a turnaround in the next 6-12 months.
I won't say I absolutely won't put a little into something growthier if I think it's cheap (have a bunch of ERs to go through) but this is not the present focus.
When I do whatever I end up doing I'll post it here. |
