FedEx has been known to be a bellweather stock for the economy. If the economy is indeed slowing down then FedEx will be the first to show it. The stock has been taking a hit, so I thought this may be good time to take a look at it. In this episode I walk through my thought process that led me to buy shares in FedEx.

Stock Talk

Stock Talk - Investment Decision - FedEx

Stock Talk - Investment Decision - Shopify

With summer in the rear-view mirror, the markets hustle and bustle resumed in September, not that this past summer was sedate as I was making a fair number of investment decisions. The roller coaster continued. More trade trash talking. Flip-flops on a daily basis, Threats to delist companies from stock exchanges. More and more in the Mad King world this is becoming the norm and so it has and will continue to become very difficult for investors to process the information flowing. It’s easy to hide, but we have to continue and stay true to our investing playbook. Despite the chaos, I continued to build positions and even added new ones. In this episode I share my thought processes that led to my decisions below: Decisions Taken Bought more shares in iShares Pharmaceuticals ETF (Ticker: XPH) New Position: Bought shares in Shopify (Ticker: SHOP) Sold partial position in Goldman Sachs (Ticker: GS) for 18.5% gain (Net Forex) New Position: Bought shares in Fedex (Ticker: FEDX) Sold position in iShares US Financials ETF (Ticker: XLF) for 10.1% gain (Net Forex) Bought more shares in Square (Ticker: SQ) Bought more shares in Amazon (Ticker: AMZN)

Stock Talk - Investment Decisions - September 2019

We’re half-way through the year and so I thought it would be a good time to check back into my ROBO portfolio to see how it’s doing and if there is anything interesting going on.   I was all good to go on writing a very pedestrian update as the portfolio had not undergone any significant changes in over a year. Then I got a couple of emails.

Stock Talk - My ROBO portfolio -mid-year review 2019

Under Armour shares had been taking a beating recently, so I decided to take a look and see if there may be a good entry point.

Stock Talk - Investment Decision - Under Armour

What got me interested in Square was that it recently got beaten down on a “bad” earnings report, but when I took a bit of dive into it, I saw some interesting items.  They recently sold it’s online food delivery platform Caviar. It was a money loser and burning a lot of cash and to get $400 million back and getting rid of the cash burn meant to me that SQ would not be going cash flow positive.  Next, SQ is a pure North American play. Very little in the way sales outside, so any of the trade war rhetoric doesn’t really play into SQ’s wheelhouse. Finally, the new Cash App appears to be a big money maker, especially in the crypto space. In this episode, I share my analysis of Square which you can check out below.

Stock Talk - Investment Decision - Square

I really wasn’t looking at buying in to Amazon. I have been a bit of a critic of the company in the past, but a recent pull back in the stock combined with rumblings of regulatory oversight compelled me to take a look at the stock and weigh the possibility to buy in. Here is my mind map analysis that led me to my decision to buy shares.

Stock Talk - Investment Decision - Amazon

Google or Alphabet has been on my wish list for a long time, so when the stock started languishing in the low $1100’s, I thought I should take a look. There has been a lot of chatter of more regulatory oversight of the big tech companies including Alphabet. That being said the company is a juggernaut and is one of the most profitable companies on the planet. It is in fierce competition to control the ecosystem of many important industries so I couldn’t avoid an opportunity to pick it up at a bit of discount. In this episode I share my analysis that led me to open a position. Sure enough the day I bought it the earnings report came and the stock popped 10 percent!

Stock Talk - Investment Decision - Alphabet

One of ongoing challenges with my portfolio is I hold too much cash. A big reason is my ongoing pessimism on the valuation of stocks, so my risk tolerance has skewed to holding more cash. Given where I am in my life that’s not good. With the introduction of Asset Allocation based ETF’s, it’s now easier and cheaper to get a diversified equity exposure by holding a single ETF. I decided that I want put some of this cash into these types of ETF’s. I put together a video and podcast that walks through my analysis and thought process of evaluating a few ETF products.

Stock Talk - Mind Mapping Asset Allocation Growth ETF's

The cornerstone of my investment coaching practice is to teach and engage with people on how to educated and ultimately successful investment decisions involving stocks and Exchange Traded Funds (ETF’s). It’s one thing to teach this stuff. It’s another thing to model the behavior and it’s a totally different thing to actually demonstrate tangible results.  There are tons of people out there who write and podcast some wonderful, thought provoking ideas about investing. They really know their stuff and often do more justice than I could ever do. I’m not a financial philosopher.  I usually defer to their thinking. That’s the thing. There are a lot of people who write ABOUT investing, but I wonder at the back of my mind if they PRACTICE it just was well as they write about it? In this episode I share the results of my most recent and updated my list of my last 100 investment decisions I’ve taken and to see what were the outcome of those decisions and see if I can discover any interesting patterns or observations in my behaviours, both bad and good.

Stock Talk - My Last 100 Decisions 2019

August arrived with a bang. The market barely had a chance to digest the recent lowering of interest rates by the Federal Reserve, and the subsequent strange messaging that this would be a one time deal. The market did not like that. To make this even more crazy, the Mad King decided to drop the bomb of threatening to put tarrifs on all China imports, only to see China counter with lowering the Yuan and triggering a trade/currency war. The market threw up on the possible scenarios. Then the Mad King walked back the threat. Essentially he blinked, leaving with US with no cohesive strategy. The Chinese are now fine to wait the whole thing out which is may put more pressure on stock prices…until…they started to walk it back and then the market got all happy again. If that’s not enough the US 2yr-10yr yield curve inverted and all of a sudden the countdown to the impending recession was joined. The Dow Jones plunged 800 points, marking the 4th worst daily drop in history. In early August the Dow dropped the first 6 sessions. Are you following this? What a time to be investing! Stocks? Who wants stocks? I started to go through my wish list to see if anything appealing. There were a lot of stocks on my wish list that started to look really good.  A few items popped up and despite the roller coaster ride the markets were going through, I decided to dip my toe in a few names and I also decided to bank some profits in a few other names. In this episode I share my thought process that went into these decisions. DECISIONS TAKEN New Position: Bought shares in Square Inc. (Ticker: SQ) Bought more shares of Canadian Natural Resources (Ticker: CNQ) Sold shares in iShares Gold Bullion ETF (Ticker: CGL.C) Sold shares in Vanguard Consumer Staples ETF (Ticker: VDC) for 19.5% gain (net Forex) New Position: Bought Shares in Under Armour (Ticker: UAA)

Stock Talk - Summer Investment Decisions - Part 3

After several uneventful months where I stood on the sidelines, I decided to make a fair number of decisions in July, even with all the trade-trash-talking going on. The big trigger for me I think was that it was becoming very clear that interest rates are going to track downward and that may put a floor on stock prices in the short to medium term. So I thought this would be a good time to build up some positions. I still think stock prices are overvalued and continue to have a short position, however we can’t fight the Fed. Maybe I decided to jump in because I haven’t done anything in the past few months and I was itching to put some more money to work? I’m not going to deny that emotions and a certain level of a Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) could be at play here.  Decisions Taken Added to position in iShares Long Term Bonds (Ticker: XLB)New Position: Bought shares in Vanguard Growth Asset Allocation ETF (Ticker: VGRO) New Position: Bought shares in Alphabet (Ticker: GOOGL) New Posiition: Bought shares in Amazon (Ticker: AMZN) Bought more shares in iShares Pharmaceutical ETF (Ticker: XPH) Bought more shares in JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs (Ticker: JPM and GS) New Position: Bought shares in CVS Health (Ticker: CVS) Bought more shares in iShares Germany ETF (Ticker: EWG) Bought more shares in Vanguard Emerging Markets ETF (Ticker: VEE)

Stock Talk - Summer Investment Decisions - Part 2

In this first of a 3 part series, I share the thought processes that went into my investment decisions I made over the summer. In this episode I walk through the decisions I made in June. Investment Decisions Taken: Opened position in iShares Long Term Bonds (Ticker: XLB) Sold position in Electronic Arts (Ticker: EA) for 11.6 percent gain (net Forex)

Stock Talk - Summer Investment Decisions - Part 1

With the Federal Reserve signalling that they intend to lower interest rates in the very near future, I thought I would do a quick mind map and scratch what the impact would be on the types of investment decisions I would make going forward.

Mind Mapping Impact of Falling Interest Rates

For the second month this year, the only investment decision I made was…to make no decisions. I decided to stand pat. In this post I share my thought process that led me to decide to stand pat.

Stock Talk - Investment Decisions - May 2019

Investment Coach and Founder of Sage Investors, Aman Raina chats about investing in stocks and ETF's and other interesting stock market observations.

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Stock Talk

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