Scottrade FRIP Purchases – April 2016

I have been making Scottrade FRIP purchases at the beginning of each quarter for a few quarters now. My last quarter purchases was little over $550.00. This quarter, my purchases ended up being higher at $677.08. The following are the FRIP purchases I made on 4/4/2016.

Scottrade FRIP Purchases – January 2016

I have been making Scottrade FRIP purchases at the beginning of each quarter for a few quarters now. My last quarter purchases was little over $660.00. This quarter, my purchases ended up being lower at $554.40. The following are the FRIP purchases I made on 1/4/2016.

Scottrade FRIP Purchases – July 2015

My last FRIP purchases were in March 2015 and I had mentioned that I plan to do quarterly FRIP purchases going forward. My last quarter purchases totaled close to $620.00. This quarter, my purchases ended up being little over $660.00. The following are the FRIP purchases I made on 7/1/2015.

Goals update – March 2015

I like to review the progress at least once a month to determine where I am with respect to meeting/achieving my goals.

These are the goals for 2015:

• Invest at least $35,000
  • New investments in March amounted to $5,130.45. After a slow start to the year in January and February, I made up some lost ground in March through these purchases.
    • Weekly sharebuilder purchases amounted to $1,500
    • Added to my Philip Morris (PM) position earlier in the month.
    • Added to my PM, BP and F positions though Scottrade FRIP purchases.
    • Initiated new position in National-Oilwell Varco, Inc (NOV)
  • Total investments in 2015 so far equals $7,530.45 which amounts to about 21.51% of my goal. While March helped me catch up, I am still behind on the goal. With 25% of the year gone by, I have only achieved 21.51% of my goal. Hoping to be caught up by April.
• Receive at least $2,500 in dividends
  • I received $261.00 in dividends in March. So far I have received $597.27 in dividends this year. This represents 23.89% of my annual goal.
  • Additional investments through the rest of the year and dividend increases will help me achieve this goal.
• Achieve at least $3,200 in projected annual dividends
  • My projected annual dividends stand at $$2,569.29 at the end of March. That’s an increase of over $225 in a single month. This is definitely a nice improvement due to the new investments. Need to keep pace at the new investments to achieve this goal.
• DO NOT have a portfolio of more than 45 stocks/ETFs
  • Currently hold 40 stocks/ETFs. I initiated one new position in National-Oilwell Varco, Inc (NOV) in March.

The goals page will be updated to reflect the progress.

Recent Purchase – National-Oilwell Varco, Inc (NOV)

It has been over 3 months since I made any big energy related purchase. The last ones were in November and December when I purchased ConocoPhillips. Since then the energy sector has been range bound and continues to be weak and hasn’t come out of the woods yet. These COP purchases are still in negative territory. But the energy sector still provides one of the most attractive valuations in these market conditions. So I ended up coming back to energy sector with this purchase.

Scottrade FRIP Purchases – March 2015

A while back I had posted about DRIP vs FRIP and why I participate in the FRIP program in Scottrade. I started participating in FRIP early last year and my dividends have been accumulating in FRIP for all my 3 Scottrade accounts. My first set of FRIP purchases were in early December and I purchased PG, PM and BP. I invested close to $1,150 across these 3 stocks without paying any commission. I had also mentioned that I will be making FRIP purchases about twice a year.

But when I checked my FRIP balance early last week, it was little over $600 across my three accounts. So I decided to make my next set of FRIP purchases on Friday last week (3/6/2015). The following are the FRIP purchases I made on 3/6/2015. 

Scottrade FRIP Purchases

A while back I had posted about DRIP vs FRIP and why I participate in the FRIP program in Scottrade. My dividends have been accumulating in FRIP for all my 3 Scottrade accounts since around the beginning of the year. By last week, I had accumulated over $1200 combined across all 3 accounts. I decided to make the purchase using the FRIP dollars and hence placed the orders on Friday to be executed on Monday. The following are the FRIP purchases I made on 12/8/2014. 

Recent Purchase – COP

The oil price continues to slide down and this is putting pressure on oil and energy stocks. This has open up buying opportunities in this sector.

COP is one of the stocks that I purchased when I first started investing back in 2009. I still hold it, even though it is not a lot of shares. Since then, COP spun off PSX and I continue to hold that too. Also, in the past few months, I have invested in other stocks in the Oil/Energy sector like CVX, KMP and BP. But I always wanted to add more to my COP holdings. Few months back, I almost placed an order for COP at around $67.00, but instead purchased CVX. Since then COP went from $67.00 to about $87.00 in a span of few months. I was kicking myself thinking that I would never be able to get more COP at $60s.

But like they say – Never say never. The oil price decline has bought the stock back to high 60s for now and I didn’t want to miss this time.

Recent Purchase – BP

BP had a bad day yesterday with the news that they could be liable for additional damages up to $18B in the oil spill from 2010. This is in addition to the penalties and damages already paid out. The stock dropped close to 6%.