Friday, July 13, 2012

Why I Put My Stuff Online

What I am putting online is the stuff I was doing. I have been analyzing stocks in spreadsheets a quite a few years. So, I am not really doing anything that I was not already doing.

The reason to go online was twofold. In 1999 I was laid off from work. Since I did not need another job, I decided to stay at home. It was sort of an early retirement I suppose. When you say anything about not working or retirement, people expect you would be doing some charity work.

I look at a number of options in charity work and none appealed to me. I had been an analyst for some time in IT and this is what I am good at. I am not good at the types of jobs you can get as a volunteer.

So, it appeared to me I could do something in giving back to the community (i.e. like charity) and still do what I love and what I am suited for. I also thought that putting my thoughts out there I would help me think more critically about the stocks I follow and therefore become a better investor.

I know that a number of people are trying to making money via blogging and the internet and I have not done this. I know all about theories that you should have different streams of income. I do have a diversified portfolio. However, if the market is such that I cannot make money from it, would anyone want to read my blog? The other thing is that it is in the market that I am making money, and so I am putting my energy there.

4 comments:

  1. Your blog had helped the Dividend Girl a million times! I got some nice stocks like KBL, ATP, VSN from your blogs. You are helping many other like myself but the other might be just too shy to say; THANK YOU!

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  2. I have been reading your site for a few months now and wondered why you put such an incredible amount of work into this stock analysis.
    Thanks for the information.
    Along this line, I wondered if there was a way for you to do a few posts on teaching others how to go about doing a decent stock analysis. How you track performance, what skill sets to acquire(I need to learn Excel)
    How long you need to do an initial analysis and then the updates. Do you use on line company reports or get the actual paper report.

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  3. Comments:
    Thanks Sunny, I have had a lot of fun and also found some good new stocks for me to invest in.

    Holmes Watson:
    Ok, I will try some posting of how to analyze a stock. I have tried a number of investment vehicles over the years. What I have managed is to make my living from investing. Yes, I do use excel spreadsheets, but they are not very complex (they just contain a lot of data).

    Generally, I update a few spreadsheets on the weekend and then write about them during the week. Since I am basically working for myself I can and do spend a lot of time getting distracted by this and that on the internet. The true beauty of investing for dividend income is that I can leave for portfolio a lone for 6 months and nothing will happen.

    I have invested for capital gain, but it is harder and you have to stay a top of it all the time. Option investing is even worse. Of course, with any stock market investing you have to be prepared for the value of your portfolio to flip around all over the place. However, with dividend stocks, my dividend income, overall, grows faster than inflation and it is rather stable.

    Yes, I use online company reports at present. When I started out I had to go to the library to get annual reports.

    I read a lot, especially history and economic history.

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  4. Your hard work is much appreciated by your readers, Thank You :)

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