Annual Report September 2012

Months ago I stated my intention to update this blog weekly.  Every Monday, I assured my readers, I would have a new column about what I'd been doing and / or thinking, investment-wise.

I have failed.  Multiple Mondays have gone by without any update from me.  My last post, as of this writing, was nearly six months ago.

For a while I wasn't posting because I couldn't seem to find anything about which to write.  Things were static.  I had made my investments.  I received the occasional dividend.  That was it.

There was one investment that occupied a certain number of my waking thoughts throughout the month of March, and I wrote at some length about the Cunning Plan I had regarding MIND CTI (MNDO), how I needed to rework said Cunning Plan, and the temporary failure of the Cunning Plan in question.  At this point I will revisit that particular Cunning Plan as we approach March 2013, assuming that our collective understanding of the Mayans is wrong and we get all the way through 2012.

That said, I do need to update my loyal readers on what I've bought and sold in the last six months.  In addition to this overdue update, I'd also like to present to you all something akin to an annual report.

Yes, an annual report.  I first opened the investment IRA account about which I've been blogging on September 16th, 2011.  My first actual purchase of stock was on September 19th, 2011.  So it's been just over a year.  Let's do this.

Quick and dirty version:

On September 16th, 2011, I opened the account with $6,240 from a rollover 401K.

In November 2011, I doubled down.  I transferred an additional $6,220 into the IRA, making my total investment $12,460.

As of the September 16th, 2012, my investment was worth $17,877.

(Actually, it was worth $17,956.89, but I figure I would have had to pay $9.99 per trade in order to liquidate my positions in the 8 equities in which I am currently invested, should I have been so lucky as to sell at the closing prices on Friday September 14th.  Anyway, those fees for cashing out would reduce my total by $79.92, leaving me with $17,876.97, which is close enough to $17,877 that I feel justified in rounding up by 3 cents.)

That's an increase of over 43%.  That's a pretty good yield for the year.  Only time will tell if I can keep it up.

I've updated my list of holdings over on the right.  In the near future I'll provide a summary of my trades over the past six months.  Maybe I'll manage to get back in the habit of writing weekly updates.

We'll see.

My Cunning Plan Will Take Longer Than I Thought

I could just as easily have titled this week's post as My Cunning Plan Has Failed, but it hasn't failed permanently.  It's just failed for now

The Plan was to buy MIND CTI Ltd (hereafter referred to as MNDO) at a low price in September of 2011 and sell my shares in March or April for roughly twice the purchase price.  A simple, two-part plan.

Part 1 went swimmingly.  I bought 1,600 shares of MNDO at $1.85 a share in September.  Yay.

Part 2 never quite coalesced.  The stock didn't peak in March and didn't double this year to $3.70 a share.  It did, however, peak in February and increase by nearly 50% to $2.76 a share.  Had I sold at that time then my cunning plan would have been a success.  Not the success that I had hoped, but a significant success nonetheless.

But I wasn't ready to sell in February.  I missed the peak, just barely.  The day it peaked I did reduce the price of my sell order to $2.78 a share, but the stock never went to $2.78 a share.  Not this year anyway.

But there's always next year.  That's what I'm telling myself, anyway.  My revised cunning plan is that I don't have to buy shares in MNDO in September because I already own shares.  In fact I now own 1,749 shares in MNDO thanks to the magic of dividend reinvestment.  MNDO paid its dividend last week, and 149 additional shares were purchased for me without me spending an extra dime.

My sell order is in.  I'll be selling my 1,749 shares for $2.75 a share.  I'll have to renew that sell order a few times between now and March of 2013, and somewhere in there I may have reason to increase or decrease the price per share.  But if something unexpected happens and the stock price shoots up sufficiently between now and next year then the sale should go through automatically at $2.75 a share.

And my cunning plan will succeed.  It will just take longer than I originally thought.

Meanwhile I will have the distinct displeasure of staring at another item in my portfolio that is worth less than I paid for it.  As of this writing my shares in MNDO are worth $1.81 each. 

Bugger.

But at least I still have a cunning plan.