If I Knew Then 5

Here I am going to talk about my adventures in stocks, or my early stock investments. I did relative well. Doing relatively well on my stock purchases gave me confidence to invest in stock and get rid of my mutual fund investments.

The first stock I bought was BCE (TSX-BCE, NYSE-BCE) on October 15, 1982. From the time I bought this stock until September 1987 I reinvested the dividends for more stock and make extra cash deposits. To be more consistent with the Mutual Fund investments, I looked at this stock's value in October 1998. This is a holding period of some 16 years. My total return on this was 13.31% per year with 8.79% per year from capital gains and 4.52% per year from dividends. Over the same time period the TSX index showed an increase of 8.1%% per year.

Because I started to track this stock in Quicken only in December 1987, I only have Quicken calculations from there to the present. Using Quicken from December 31, 1987 to April 30, 2017 I have a total return of 9.52% per year with 4.12% from capital gains and 5.40% from dividends. The thing with Quicken is that it takes care of the split off and my selling of Nortel and Bell Aliant. This is the total return over a 29 year period. Over the same time period the TSX Index return is 5.59% per year.

Another early stock purchase was Bank of Montreal (TSX-BMO, NYSE-BMO) which I bought on October 4, 1983. From the time I bought this stock until July 1987 I reinvested the dividends for more stock and make extra cash deposits. I looked at my return for November 30, 1998. This is a holding period of 13.6 years. My total return was 14.98% with 11.84% per year from capital gains and 3.14% per year from dividends. Over the same time period the TSX index showed an increase of 6.72%% per year.

I have only tracked this stock from December 1987 also in Quicken. So from December 31, 1987 to April 30, 2017 I have a total return of 15.845 per year with 9.64% from capital Gains and 6.20% from dividends. This is the total return over a 29 year period. Over the same time period the TSX Index return is 5.59% per year.

The third stock purchase I made was Labatt which I bought on October 4, 1983. I reinvested the dividends for more share in 1985. I had to sell this stock on July 28, 1995 as the company was bought out. My total return was 11.81% with 6.68% from capital gains and 5.13% from dividends. Over the same time period the TSX index showed an increase of 8.30%% per year.

This is the last of a series of blogs called "If I knew now". In February of 2017 I started this series saying that If I Knew Then when I started investing what I know now, I would have only invested in Canadian Dividend Growth stocks. My first entry was about investing in US stocks in the blog If I Knew Then 2. In the next entry I talk about investing in international stocks under If I Knew Then 3. In the fourth entry I talked about investing in Mutual fund under If I Knew Then 4.

On my other blog I wrote yesterday about TFI International (TSX -TFII, OTC-TFIFF)... learn more. Tomorrow, I will write about Reitmans (Canada) Ltd. (TSX-RET.A, OTC-RTMAF)... learn more on Friday May 12, 2017 around 5 pm.

This blog is meant for educational purposes only, and is not to provide investment advice. Before making any investment decision, you should always do your own research or consult an investment professional. I do research for my own edification and I am willing to share. I write what I think and I may or may not be correct.

See my site for an index to these blog entries and for stocks followed. I have three blogs. The first talks only about specific stocks and is called Investment Talk. The second one contains information on mostly investing and is called Investing Economics Mostly. My last blog is for my book reviews and it is called Non-Fiction Mostly. Follow me on Twitter.