Sold: Kohl's

I'm always sad when I have to sell a piece of the portfolio but sometimes you need to know when to get out of a losing battle. If you remember, I acquired Kohl's when I moved out of my position with The Gap a few months ago. Thankfully I dodged the huge bullet that hit The Gap just a few days after I sold it but I was not as lucky with Kohl's.

I had thought that even with the weak Q1 results that even if they were marginally higher than their previous results that it might drive the price up and it would preserve the dividends but I was wrong. The stock has gone the complete opposite direction with the horrid Q1 results that were released. As the dividend appears that it may be in trouble soon, I sold my position at around a 25% loss this morning to preserve what was left of the stake.

At this time I am unsure where I will be putting the left overs from the sale of the stock but I will make sure to do just that much more homework on my next pick to try to ensure this doesn't happen again. However, as an investor it is very important to learn from the losses more than you learn from the gains. If there is no learning, one can hardly hope to get better for the future. The final results are as follows:

Sold Kohl's (KSS) - 12 shares - @35.21 - total price: $412.52

Investment Essentials: Stock Splits

Stock splits are something that I have been burned by in the past. That being said, I want to make sure to share what information I have about them so that all of you can learn what to look for when one is announced in a stock that you may own. Overlooking one could mean losing a large chunk of money in the future if you're not careful about what type of split is happening.

Investment Essentials: Diversification and Specialties

I have written about this many times in the blog before but I cannot state just how important diversification is and why it should also be taken with a grain of salt when you yourself have an expertise. Diversification, if you don't know, is the idea that you are better protected if you spread out your investments into many different areas. This could be diversification through different stocks, different sectors, or even different investments such as mutual funds, ETFs (exchange trade funds), or others.

Investment Essentials: Dividends

Income stocks are the bread and butter of any defensive investor's portfolio. When I talk about income stocks, I of course point towards dividend paying stocks. If you don't know what dividends are however, you may be a little confused.

Dividends are payments that are made to investors on behalf of the company they invest in. These payments are paid to the investor without the investor having to actually sell any part of their shares. By collecting these dividends, your portfolio can grow without having to worry about making capital gains. It can make gains just by the dividend payments that are issued.

How To Be Great At Anything

My wife knows that I love podcasts. They are definitely my newest obsession. My morning workouts just aren't the same without them. This morning I was listening to the Freakonomics Podcast that was reviewing the idea of talent - whether it really is a God given thing or if it is something that can be acquired. More specifically they discussed the idea of deliberate practice and how it can create what others see as talent.

Investment Essentials: Market Cap

Stock can be classified further than simply growth, value, etc. Most of the time, they are also classified by their market capitalization. It's a fancy term that means size. If you ever hear someone talking about a large cap or a mid-cap or even a small cap, this is what they are referring to.

A large-cap stock is a stock in a company that is worth over $10 billion. These are generally harder stocks to get a piece of for a value because they are generally stocks of well-known track record proven companies. Most believe that because a company has been around for a long time and because they are a large-cap, they are unsinkable. However, one only need remember the history of the Titanic to know that there is no such thing as unsinkable. I would however argue that they are harder to kill than a small-cap.

Investment Essentials: Stock Types

It is quite often that stocks will be categorized as either growth stocks, income stocks, or even value stocks. What these terms mean however can be quite confusing for someone who thinks that stocks are simply just stocks. That being said, let's go over what they are and how to use the terms if we want to use them in the future to describe prospective stocks.

A value stock is essentially a stock that is currently selling for far less than it is actually worth. Keep in mind however that this term can be used loosely as each stock is evaluated differently by each type of investor. What I may deem as a value stock may not necessarily be what another investor who has looked at the stock deems to be a value stock.

Investment Essentials: Market Directions

Bull market, bear market, sideways market - terms that are often referred to when investors are trying to describe what the market is doing. Like with all activities, terms that are unique to that specific activity are created over time. That is exactly where bull, bear, and sideways have sprung forth.

When someone says that the market is very bullish, they are stating that we are in a bull market. This generally means that prices are going up and "charging" forward like a bull. Investors are throwing more and more money into the market. By doing so, the market goes up and investments generally look really good. This is a great time to already have your investments in place because you can simply watch your money go up, seemingly with any investment. Even the bad investments can still see small upward mobility in a bull market.

New SA Post: GGP REIT Review

Another post has been made by yours truly on Seeking Alpha. This time I chose to review a competitor of my last review. In this article, I review General Growth Properties (GGP).

General Growth Properties (GGP) is another retail REIT that could potentially represent a future investment. They are a much smaller scale operation than Simon Property Group Inc. but with the smaller scale can come a price advantage when buying into it.

The stock unfortunately offers a smaller yield than the REIT that I last reviewed but remember that diversification is the name of the game if you don't want to get stung.

If you don't want to read the full article, understand the General Growth Properties offers a solid purchase idea if you are looking for a retail REIT with a much smaller NAV ratio than Simon Property Group Inc. (SPG). As the yield is lower than SPG however, it would be important that the investor who chooses to add GGP to their portfolio would probably best find it used in a tax differed portfolio as the tax advantages would be well used with a yield as small as SPG offers at current rates. Full article linked below:

Purchase General Growth Properties: Solid Retail REIT

Investment Essentials: Status of the Market

We know what the market is and we know that stocks are sold there but how does one actually gauge how the market is doing? And what are points? Aren't we trading dollars?

These are common questions for new investors. Just like anything else, there is a score kept on Wall Street. One just needs to know where to find it. For Wall Street, the easiest way to find your gauge of how the market is doing is to look towards the Dow Jones Industrial Average - often referred by the acronym DJIA. Or, if you don't like the DJIA, you can look towards the S&P 500 (which is what I like to use instead). The DJIA includes some of the most well known companies in the United States. There are 30 companies in the DJIA all together. It is a collection of these stocks that are brought together to tell investors how the market is doing on any given day as it is supposedly seen as an average.

New SA Post: SPG REIT Review

I have made another post recently on Seeking Alpha. As it is an exclusive article published through their site, I will simply leave a link below.

This time I have chosen to write a full review of Simon Property Group Inc (SPG). The RIET is intriguing and my review goes into good detail of the entire business as whole. I go over their price, yield, net asset value, funds from operations, and of course debt to equity ratio.

If you have ever been interested in owning a piece of a retail REIT, it may be good to become aware of Simon Property Group Inc (SPG) as it is one of if not the biggest of them out there. This does of course come with a premium price but the stock still does boast some good FFO. Full review at the link below:

Simon Property Group Inc.: Cautious Buy

Investment Essentials: The Stock Market

It has come to my attention through emails that were sent to me that my investing 101/102/103 "courses" that I put on the side of my page weren't quite basic enough for a starting investor to learn bit by bit. That being said, it appears that I really need to back up to square one - the basic of the basics. If you have absolutely no interest in knowing the basics step by step, I will label them as "investment essentials" when a post is going to be discussing them. I will also be removing the investing 101/102/103 series and replacing it with a much smaller link that will contain a page for investment education specifically.

**Note: please read the disclaimer listed before continuing**

Investment Essentials: The Stock Market

What is the stock market? The stock market for all intents and purposes is a place where traders and businesses buy and sell stocks and other forms of investments. Different stock of different companies are listed on the exchange under ticker symbols which are basically just short forms of the company name in most cases so that buyers can locate them. For example, General Electric trades under the ticker symbol of GE. If you were looking to buy a portion of GE stock, one only have to search GE on a stock exchange and place a bid for however many shares you want.