What Did You Buy Today?

[Ron Ricco]

I think I am closest to RayRay’s philosophy, although I may have a few more “sells” in my account. I am almost entirely in a tax advantaged accounts, so the capital gains do not affect me.

About the only time I sell anything is basically I see a company where there is no path forward to continue growing the dividend. An example might be a company like Pitney Bowes. I look at where paper mailings are going and all I see is decline for a company like that. It doesn’t mean that they can’t go through a radical change, but that is a company I would not keep.

I also tend to sell a company that might have had a large run up in stock price, but doesn’t tend to have very large dividend increases. CAT was an example of a stock like that for me. It basically doubled for me, but I just didn’t see much growth from that price and with relatively small increases in the div, I felt it better to allocate the funds somewhere else. LMT would be the opposite. That stock is up 400% since I bought it, but they also tend to have large increases in the dividend, so it is a keeper for me.

But for me the most part, I am on autopilot and just let the dripping take care of itself. And that certainly isn’t the only/best way to skin the cat, it is just how I do it.