Trades and Portfolio Updates

It was another volatile week with interest rates rising in Canada and Trump once again threatening tariffs and new trade wars with Britain and China. Who knows where this all ends but it is a tough environment to pick stocks for my gambling portfolio and to even make adjustments on where to deploy new money.

The biggest decision I made this week was to sell most of my wife's ETFs and buy dividend growth stocks. She now holds SJR, T, CP, CNR, BMO, BIP, CM, TRP, TD, FTS, RY, ENB, BNS, CU, BCE and XAW. Gone are her positions in XQB, ZPR, XIC and half her position in XAW.

I am hoping that this will provide a growing and reliable income for her retirement. The problem with ETFs in retirement is selling units to meet minimum withdrawal rates. I really don't want to sell any stocks, only collect the income it spits out. That is mainly why I decided to make the switch.

Further to this in another month I may bring her LIRA to this type of allocation. That would require selling MAW104 and using the proceeds to buy dividend growth stocks. She still holds small positions in FTS and RY in this account.

My Gambling Portfolio

I also decided to liquidate all positions Friday.

SOLD - GSV, APH and THO.

Total loss was $8 so basically flat for a holding period of 3 weeks. Not a very good record and I'm not happy about the lack of volume and action on the stocks I decided to buy. The good news is money lost was kept to a minimum, I just have run out of patience.

On Monday I am going to implement my 1 stock strategy at 5K investment and sell it on Friday. This will relieve some of my anxiety of waiting so long to make a profit. To be clear once again this is done with money that you can afford to lose and kept separately from any money you have set aside for retirement.

I am much better at compiling a watchlist and doing just that with it.

Updated Watchlist 

Added OSK @ $2.14 on Thursday up 5%

Added IVN @ $2.61 on 10 July down 5%

ALO up 2%

PONY up 31.4%

ACB down 3.3%

MUX up 4.2%

Dropped HIKU after buyout Total Return = 17.5%

Total Watchlist up 5.8%

I will pick a stock on Monday probably from this list. It looks like PONY has run away from me. Closed friday @ $2.84 and has a 52 week high price of $5.03. It has room to run but I like that ratio to be a little better in our favour. IOW a 52 week high of around $6 so we would have a runway of at least 100%.

Did you buy any stocks this week?

Related Post: My Gambling Portfolio

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