First Week Completed

As many of you saw in my previous post, I started my trading with $500 in capital and invested it in the following positions:

Company Name	Symbol	Shares	Price	Investment
Target	TGT	1	$63.75	$63.75
Globus Medical	GMED	1	$26.03	$26.03
Luxoft Holding	LXFT	1	$59.35	$59.35
Anika Therapeutics	ANIK	1	$49.51	$49.51
SPDR S&P 500 Dividend ETF	SDY	2	$85.79	$171.58
Advanced Micro Devices	AMD	5	$10.56	$52.80
AT&T	T	1	$41.71	$41.71
CoreCivic	CXW	1	$28.97	$28.97
Pro-Dex	DEX	1	$5.25	$5.25

A lot of this was based off of a quick analysis that wasn't as thorough as I would want. The core holdings that I have are Target, the S&P 500 Dividend ETF, AT&T, and AMD. The first three stocks that I listed are ones that I want to build into solid holdings for the long position. AMD is a stock that I saw as being undervalued and would allow me to get some gains.

After holding these positions for a week, they produced the following results:

Company Name	Symbol	Shares	Price	Investment	Current Price	Dollar Gain/Loss	Percent Change
Target	TGT	1	$63.75	$63.75	$63.71	-$0.04	-0.06%
Globus Medical	GMED	1	$26.03	$26.03	$26.26	+$0.23	+0.88%
Luxoft Holding	LXFT	1	$59.35	$59.35	$59.95	+$0.60	+1.01%
Anika Therapeutics	ANIK	1	$49.51	$49.51	$50.35	+$0.84	+1.70%
SPDR S&P 500 Dividend ETF	SDY	2	$85.79	$171.58	$86.23	+$0.88	+0.51%
Advanced Micro Devices	AMD	5	$10.56	$52.80	$12.18	+$8.10	+15.34%
AT&T	T	1	$41.71	$41.71	$41.20	-$0.51	-1.22%
CoreCivic	CXW	1	$28.97	$28.97	$29.49	+$0.52	+1.79%
Pro-Dex	DEX	1	$5.25	$5.25	$5.40	+$0.15	+2.86%
Cash Holdings				$1.05	$1.05	$0.00	0.00%
Portfolio Value:					$510.77	+$10.77	+2.15%

Now, this wasn't a very exciting week, but I was quite pleased with how AMD performed. I will be holding my five shares for a while longer and will possibly expand my share. My other three long position holdings didn't really produce much, netting a total loss of only $0.03 or -0.01%. I'm okay with that because I'm not holding them for short term growth.

The next thing that I'm going to be trying as I learn to swim in the world of stocks is swing trading. Now, to properly execute swing trading on Robinhood, I'm going to need more capital so that I don't mess with my long positions. If I exclude TGT, SDY, AMD, and T from my portfolio value and consider the rest liquid, I'm only looking at $172.50 of working capital. Because I'm using a cash account on Robinhood, I would need to let my cash settle after a sale before I could use it to buy a new stock. So, what I'm going to try sometime in the next couple of weeks is putting in more money and then investing it in short term stocks and let it appreciated for 2-4 days each and then pull it out in batches so that I always have cash on hand as the market changes patterns.

Next week, I'm going to touch more on some of my filters that I use when choosing a stock.

Initial Investment in Robinhood

When selecting a portfolio, one of the most important things to seek is a profit. We're not investing money for it to stay stable or lose value but instead we're looking for it to appreciate in value.

So, in order to give us a chance to get gains on our investments is looking at companies that are going to grow. Either a company is already established and their product will keep on growing or they are under valued and will grow to their actual worth.

One of my first guidelines is that a company has a market cap of over 300M so that I know that it's an established company. Anything lower than this means that the company's stock is going to be more volatile while its value is determined. Because I'm trading on Robinhood, I don't have access to day trading so I'm going to stay away from these because a company might grow by 100% and then drop by 100%.

The next guideline that I was looking for was a P/E ratio of between 10 and 15. The current P/E ratio of the S&P is around 17. If a company is just below the index ratio, there's a good chance that its stock will grow to be over the ratio of the index. This can be because of two reasons:

1. The price of the stock grows while the earnings remain the same
2. The earnings shrink while the price remains the same

From my point of view, number one is more likely out of the two options. If the price is going to drop, there is a reason for it and the price will probably start trending downwards before any large decrease. Number one occurs when people realize that the stock is under-priced which is what I'm looking at getting on.

The third guide that I'm looking at is the moving average of the stock must be trending upwards within the last 50 days. This helps to mitigate the risk that can happen from number two on my previous risk.

So, I recently deposited a measly $500 into Robinhood and began trading. My portfolio is as follows:

• Target (TGT) 1 share @ $63.75
• Globus Medical (GMED) 1 share @ $26.03
• Luxoft Holding (LXFT) 1 share @ $59.35
• Anika Therapeutics (ANIK) 1 share @ $49.51
• SPDR S&P 500 Dividend ETF (SDY) 2 shares @ $ 85.79
• Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) 5 shares @ $10.56
• AT&T (T) 1 share @ $41.71
• CoreCivic (CXW) 1 share @ $28.97
• Pro-Dex (DEX) 1 share @ $5.25

This portfolio comes up to $498.95 invested and $1.05 left in cash. The reason why I did not invest more than one share in each stock was so that I could have diversification between the different sectors. 

Up next will be my weekly review of how I've done during week one of my stock market adventures. Stay tuned!

Welcome to Sherwood Forest

I would like to offer up a big thank you to everyone who has decided to join me on this wonderful adventure. The point of this blog is two part:

1. First and foremost, I am writing this blog to keep me accountable
2. The second purpose of this blog is to provide a medium in which I can have conversation with the masses

Accountability

I am part of the average population when it comes to making new year resolutions. I've picked up new hobbies (and dropped them), I've promised to lose weight (and gained it back); you name it, I've done it (and given up). This year I'm trying to do something that I've always been interested in and feel like I'm finally in a place where I can actually try it. This year (and hopefully for the rest of my life) I am sticking my toe into the investing world. 

I am doing this as a means to secure my own financial independence and also to live with the thrills of the ups and downs of the stock market. This opportunity was made possible by the creation of the Robinhood investing app. In case you don't know about Robinhood, it's a mobile based broker that draws people into its platform by offering the benefit of no trading fees and no minimum balance. The only drawback of this free program is that you cannot day trade or trade on margin without upgrading to Robinhood instant.