As another year draws to a close our performance figures for 2014 look good. Our two Strong Buys from the start of the year are up 19% (Wells Fargo) and 18% (Melcor). The average for all the 15 stocks rated in the Buy or Strong Buy ranges is a gain of 10.9% which matches the rise in the TSX. My own total portfolio is up 14.1% despite having a healthy allocation to cash most of the year. Regarding my two RRSP accounts the gain there was 13.4%. If I calculate this year’s RRSP gain as a percentage of the total money that ever went into these two RRSPs the gain on that basis is 107%.
Friday was a strong day in the markets with the S&P 500 up 0.5% and Toronto up 0.2%
I mentioned that I had placed an order to sell any of my pref. shares if they happen to rise to about $26.00. They only pay 4 to 4.5% per year and $26 is 4% higher than the $25 I paid for these and I figured I might as well grab the 4% if they go to $26. Also it was a way to “play” market volatility.
For Brookfield Asset Management series F preferred share I set the sell price at $26.10 and it sold on Friday. I had bought these at the IPO at $25.00 as noted under May 27 below. I have received one dividend on September 11 of 36.06 cents per share. (I believe the first dividend was for a bit more than three months). So in total I had a return of $1.4606 per share or 5.84% in about six months. So, that is a good return. Some would calculate this as 11.68% annualized but I don’t really think that is a useful way to look at it. In the other half of the year that money might be in cash earning nothing or in stocks earning or losing who knows what. So I just look at it as a 5.84% return. But yes it is nice to do that in six months on a low risk investment. Maybe I would have been better off to hold the shares but that depends what I do with the funds received.
I posted a new article with some very basic math on how to value cash flows from things like safe bonds and safe preferred shares where the cash flows to be received are known with close to 100% certainty.
I plan to write another article extending this valuation to stocks where the cash flows are always uncertain (but sometimes can be conservatively estimated).