pWhen I first started investing in the stock market back in March 2008 I had one simple goal, to make some money. Being a beginner investor and not knowing much I bought some shares here, some shares there thinking than that would be enough but I soon realized that 10 shares were not going to do the trick and that is when I started to think a bit differently. /p pMy strategy changed and I became a fan of volume, I even wrote a post about it that you can read a href=”http://gainsnlosses.com/volume” target=”_blank”here./a The minimum number of shares I would buy from then on would be 40 and it would depend mostly on how much money I had available. Then I read about dividends which are “payments made by a corporation to its shareholder members” according to Wikipedia. I soon had an aha moment and then I went on a sell-off and got rid of some stocks and lost money in the process, different story for a different post. I then decided on two stocks based on how much in dividends they paid and went ahead and bought them. Now you know why I bought Allied Irish Banks PLC (AIB) and Dow Chemical (DOW) and why I didn’t sell Bank of America (BAC) or JP Morgan (JPM). Dividends now become a part of my strategy in future investing decisions I make. If I had only known that from the beginning./p

pMonday is here and I begin this week with a leaner and hopefully a lot meaner investing machine. Made a lot of moves last week that I hope will pay off in the long or short run. My account was down $157.36 for the week but hopefully I will be able to recoup that and more. This post is a bit late because the Scottrade graph, see below, didn’t update Friday as you can see it only shows Monday through Thursday but that is ok. I waited hoping that it would update but when it never did I decided to go with what I had./p pa href=”http://gainsnlosses.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/scottrade-account-37.png”img style=”border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px” height=”140″ alt=”Scottrade Account (37)” src=”http://gainsnlosses.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/scottrade-account-37-thumb.png” width=”204″ border=”0″/a /p pI had eight trades last week./p pMy investments look like this now, 40 JPMorgan (JPM) shares, 40 Bank of America (BAC) shares, 50 Dow Chemical Co (DOW) shares and 100 Allied Irish Banks PLC (AIB) shares./p pI start this week with a total account value of $3,527.81/p

pIt’s almost the end of the year and while everybody is shopping I continued with my personal sell-off last Friday or what I like to call, cleaning house baby. I sold my 10 shares of Ford (F), my 10 shares of Marvel (MVL), my 20 shares of Visa (V) and just like that I am down to two stocks, or am I?. My take home cash this time around was $1,333.97 and again I had to pay $21 for those three trades. /p pThat same Friday I decided to make some buys. Here we go, I bought 50 shared of Dow Chemical Co (DOW) for $957 and 100 shares of Allied Irish Banks PLC (AIB) for $537 and I paid $14 for the two trades. There is a specific reason why I bought those two stocks but more on that on another post. /p pNote: I will post the Weekly Investing Report at about 1pm./p

Here we go with the first 403-B/DCP of December and just like that there is only one more to go this year. No contribution was made to my 403-B because it was a “deduction holiday” and that is fine, I had a bit more money in my pockets and that is always welcome. I ended up making some money this time around and I was shocked to say the least. I sure hope that I am shocked with the results from the next report as well.

I finally decided to get rid of some of my stocks and even though I lost money when I sold them it had to be done. I sold my 10 shares of International Coal (ICO), Star Bulk Carriers (SBLK) and my 70 shares of National Bank of Greece (NBG). I am not finished yet because Ford (F) is a definite sell, I am just waiting for the bailout news to see how it will react. Marvel (MVL) is barely a hold and with this one there is a 50% chance that it will be sold as well. My take home cash in the end was $266.87 and all I had to pay was $21 for the three trades. That is just the way it is.