LET'S TALK TRADES

Earlier this year I purchased shares of 5 big blue chip stocks, with the intention of doing some trading for quick profits.  Well they haven't been quick profits in the sense that most people in investing think of them, but it works for me.  I just sold my stake in INTC for an after commission profit of 14% and reinvested the cash in shares of GAIN for my IRA account.  Not only did I make the 14%, but I sold at just the right time to collect a final dividend from INTC in December.  I also bought GAIN in time to collect both the special dividend and the regular monthly dividend in December.  The profit I made on Intel is roughly equal to what I would have gotten in four years worth of dividend payments.  The dividends I'll earn from investing this money in GAIN are more than 3 times what I was earning from Intel!

Was so happy with the results of this trade, that I'm going to do it again.  As soon as I'm past the record date for QCOM's next dividend on the 29th of this month, I'll sell my shares for a small profit of 10 to 12%.  Once again I'll collect the December dividend from QCOM and I'll be able to purchase NLY for my Roth IRA in time to catch their next quarterly dividend in January 2018.  Purchasing NLY with the money from QCOM will triple the amount I was earning in dividends per dollars invested!  So what I've done is take my quick gains from trading and used them to make a big boost in monthly dividend income.

I still have my stakes PFE, MRK and VZ to make future trades, should share prices increase enough to do so.  In the mean time, I'm satisfied with collecting their quarterly dividends.  The icing on the cake here is that all five individual stocks (INTC, QCOM, PFE, MRK and VZ) are major holdings in several of my stock funds and etf's, so even when I sell them I'll still benefit from future growth.  I'm going to repeat this process in 2018, since I believe it can add great value to my investments in a shorter period of time, as compared to just adding cash out of pocket.