Compound Interest Calculator

On my day job, I had some free time, so I created a web site to calculate both loan payment interest and a compound interest calculator.  Going to eventually add charts, and maybe some additional calculators.

It's at http://www.actualinterestrate.com/

First Doubling

I bought some stock of M - Mosaic Capital in August 2012 for $4.60 a share.  It was my first purchase on the TSXV. 

It's stock is currently being traded at $9.25 a share.  It's my first stock pick that has doubled.

Now if only all my stock picks would double in 6 months.  :)

Nasty price drop - Thankfully I'm not in it.

Last year I owned shares in PSN - Poseiden Concepts.  I sold them in April for $13.68 a share, which for me was a small profit.  Haven't really looked at them since then.

Happened across a news article that says they halted trading due to an accounting mess.  I checked the stock price and before it was halted, it was trading at 27 cents.  Ouch!

Happy New Year

Time to get back to trading.  Haven't done much the last few months - two reasons.  My RRSP's tanked and I got discouraged, and I got busy in my day job.  But as the beginning of the year is the time for resolutions, I'm going to try to renew my effort at trading.

RRSP

Well, with the somewhat successful trading year in my TSFA, I decided I'd move some of my RRSP money into a Questrade account and use it to trade as well.  Instead of Canadian stocks, I'm going to devote this account to trading in American stocks, and have converted all the money to Canadian dollars.  I'm taking a bit of a risk on the currency exchange here, but I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that the Canadian dollar isn't going to go much above par with the American dollar.  And if the Canadian dollar falls, I'm laughing.

I just put a bunch of buy orders to stocks on the NasDaq exchange: ALXN, ARIA, BDSI, CMCSK, CYBX, HCII, HCIIW, HSNI, HTLF, SBAC, TCBI, ULTI.  Between fees and slippage between ask/bid prices, I'm already down a bit, but hopefully that will turn around soon.  All of these stocks have been in a trend recently.

I've noticed on the American exchange there is a lot more variety of stocks that are potential candidates for me.  In the TSX, the bulk of the stocks that have been moving up recently are REITs.

I'm not planning to add any money to the RRSP account, so calculating my yield will be easy.  My goal is to make 10%.

Year End Review

I started actively trading my TSFA account in October of 2011, so it seems like a good time to do an approximate year end review.

I've calculated my yield at 11.3%.  Dividends made up 4.5% of that, with price gains making up 6.8%.

Two obvious mistakes I made:

• Investing in RIM to sell covered calls.  Lost some money on RIM because I wanted to hold on to it until the option expired.  It fell faster than the money I made on the option.
• Around March, the market dipped (or at least my stocks did).  I got discouraged and left my account largely in cash for a few months while I ignored it.  Should have kept at it.

Observations:

• Setting stops is emotionally difficult.  It's like admitting you're going to lose money on a trade.  I know it's important to do, but it's not easy.
• It's annoying when you sell a stock when it hits your stop and then watch it turn around and rise without you.  I've had that happen a couple times.  On the other hand, stocks have hit my stop, sold, and kept going down, so I know the stops are working.

Income Fund

Bought a bunch of stock in CTF.UN - Citidel Income Fund.  BIP.UN hit my stop and sold last week. I owned that one since May and between price and dividends, I made 7.23% on that trade.

The income fund is from a Canadian mutual fund company out of Toronto.  The 50 day moving average has only been above the 100 day moving average about a month, so hopefully it has some more price appreciation to go.  It's got a dividend yield of over 8% which is nice.