I didn’t time this to be one month from the post that inspired it, but welcome to the sequel to last month’s post: Time To Buy But What. Has it already been a month? That means I’ve been in my new old big tiny house for at least a twelfth of a year. (MyTinyExperiment.com Stay tuned for updates on tiny house life, like the fact that they announced the sale of the property just as I moved in.) In this sprint of a time, I managed to buy stocks based on the research I described in that earlier post. My portfolio has grown and is more diversified. My checking account has shrunk, but not as much as some expected/worried about. And I’m not done yet.

I regularly track companies, looking for ones that are publicly traded, can positively disrupt their industries, and might be overlooked. Overlooked can mean underpriced. Positively disrupt their industries usually means they’re in industries that should change but haven’t. Publicly traded means I can buy stock in them rather than simply be a cheerleader.

Months ago, I started producing my One Company One Story series on YouTube to pass along the little I’ve learned. That stopped about a month ago because I was moving from a small cottage with a view on an island to a new (to me), old (2006), big (360 square feet), tiny house (where the convention can be for 124 square feet.) Pardon the interruption, but one of the consequences of selling my home (which was more than a house) was turning the equity into cash, and my strategy of turning passive capital into active capital. Life is busy enough. Rather than re-research companies, I decided to pick from the companies I already profiled.

Let the buying begin.

Simply enough, I bought some of what I already have, and diversified by buying in more diverse industries.

• GERN – They were close to the FDA decision on a cancer drug. I bought some more. The FDA approved the treatment. Good news.
• LCTX – They aren’t as close to an FDA decision, so their price was much lower, and I bought much more. Staying tuned.
• MVIS, SOLO/XOS, WNDW – If they have anything in common it is poor execution. I’ll hold and watch, but don’t see any reason besides price and theoretical potential to buy more.

Newbies

• SLDP – I believe battery technology is ready for a technological shift from liquid Li-ion batteries to something more reliable, safer, cheaper, more productive, and less sensitive to geo-politics. There are many to pick from. Solid Power hit many of my criteria. Let’s try that one.
• QBTS – I think quantum computing is as mature as artificial intelligence was a few years ago, a familiar term that no one really knew what to do with, until they really, really, really did.
• LUNR – Space. Gotta love it, or at least respect that I have a masters in aerospace (and ocean) engineering, and was an aerospace engineer at Boeing for 18 years. I worked in space-related projects for years, which made it easy to appreciate the people who worked in it for decades and are now benefiting from those efforts – or about to. I don’t expect LUNR to be like SpaceX, but guessing the eventual victors in the lunar industry – well, LUNR has a head start.

Biotech, electrical components, energy storage, quantum computing, and lunar commercialization. Yeah. That’s diversified – in its own way.

But how did I do it?

How much to buy?

At a time like this, I strive for a somewhat balanced portfolio. I’m restarting from not much, so I picked an arbitrary value to target for initial purchases, or to leverage up existing positions. If there was no news, I’d apply that dollar amount to all. GERN had the potential for near-term news, so I elevated that one a bit. Note: I am not giving details because I do have some privacy. The main thing to notice may be that I set a common goal, and employed a simple too. I created a spreadsheet and played with the stock quantities until I had relatively equal dollar amounts. X shares of this. Y shares of that. Z shares for the other, etc.

Cool. I had a plan. Note: I also made life easy on myself by rounding off to quantities that ended in a few zeroes. I have some holdings that are 9 shares of this and 14 shares of that, but it is hard to track how a day went without doing math. A few years ago they all had similar (sad) share prices and held exactly the same number of shares of each stock. Handy, but also a bit silly.

When to buy?

I use Schwab. They aren’t perfect, but they’re pretty good. (Scroll through the years of this blog to find their few missteps – unless those old ones are now dead links.) If I had a full-service broker, I could just say, “Go buy X shares of this. Y shares of that. Z shares for the other, etc.”, but I don’t like having to explain myself repeatedly. (Years ago, one full-service broker wouldn’t let me buy SBUX, and had to be talked into AMER/AOL. Forget stock losses. I lost more because I wanted to buy more but couldn’t.)

I use Schwab, but I hate paperwork. Except I like paperwork for keeping records. Trust me. This matters. The only records I have for some of my shares (MVIS) are in the paper version of the transaction records, the settlement statements. So, silly happens again. I space out my purchases so I can handle each purchase separately. I do one per day. It takes days for USPS, but that’s okay. And I drop them into a folder after making sure the data is in my database.

I add one complication. I’ve learned from when I’ve had to sell shares that it is handy to sell in the same quantities that were on the settlement statement. It makes filling out taxes clearer, and I don’t underestimate how important it is to Not Confuse The IRS. So, if I buy enough shares, I might buy them in equal quantities over several days. Yes, it is more paperwork, but maybe not as much when I sell. Silly? Compare that to the anxiety of trying to report a sale on the tax forms when the records are lost. Been there. Don’t want to do that again.

Consequence? Take a look at the edited conclusion to last month’s post. It took thirteen trading days to complete that set of purchases. I’d modify that if a stock started moving quickly, but that wasn’t the case.

The bigger picture

These monies came from selling my house. I didn’t spend it all in one place. I didn’t spend it all on one stock. (Though I did playfully fantasize putting it all on MVIS and hoping. Stock market roulette. Nah.) Instead, I notionally split the funds into three general categories: re-invest, hold in reserve, live.

You’ve made it past the re-invest part. The hold in reserve part is static, though I may hunt for a no-load mutual fund, or not. The rest is for living expenses, and to reflect that changing addresses can be expensive.

I bought the house, but it is going to take thousands of dollars to fix various things. I’m willing to spend that (saying ouch anyway) because it was originally listed at over $110K and I bought it for $76.5K. Stingy would be hoarding that difference. A major trimming of the tree cost thousands. A compact washer/dryer may, too. The list is long enough that I posted it on the bathroom door. There are lots of checkmarks to go. Anyone in the Port Townsend area willing to bid on building two decks? Know a plumber? An electrician?

Buying and selling stocks can seem to be purely for buying and selling stocks. For those of us who live lives, it is necessary to responsibly know what else to do with the money, how to handle it, and know when having a new pair of work pants is more important than a few more shares of stock.

I plan to take a hiatus from buying stocks while I research healthcare providers, contractors, and chase down bureaucratic gremlins. I also plan to restart the video series. There are always new companies or new situations for existing companies. It never ends, but for me, it is important to visit that world but live in the broader one.