Shell

I never owned shares in Shell... but I got them by default.

When we were living in the UK, Maggie Thatcher was privatizing many state-owned enterprise, including British Gas.  Eventually, that was swallowed up by Shell.

I am still hoping that renewable energy will take centre stage soon but it certainly is nice to get a good dividend!

XRO

Yesterday, XRO plunged way below my top up price at $41.41 which I thought was too low to quote!  In fact, it plunged even lower.  However, I don't have spare money as I have to keep some cash.  As a consequence, I had to sell another stock although it didn't make up for the purchase as GTE had plunged a long time ago!

Suddenly today, XRO jumped up by $3.51 to $43.53 at close so it wasn't a bad buy after all!  Nice to have luck on my side as there was no announcement to account for that other than one or more keen investors.  Maybe, it was like most of my tech stocks today, following NASDAQ performance yesterday.

TNE

After I bought this stock, nothing other than a downward trend prevailed for a long time.  But there has been no terrible announcement.  But then it started to rise to my entry price and it has been an upward journey.

What is nice is it also gives dividend!  So this will be one of my favourite top-ups of the future especially it is continues its upward trajectory!  I like growth stock which gives income, too.

AMI

I must be pretty dumb at reading a company report.  Share price of AMI plunged after announcing its half yearly report.  I collected a small parcel because I had put a very low buy price at 71c days earlier and had not changed it.  And that was the lowest price today!

Well, by the close of trading, I made a ~10% profit :-)

I thought the result was not superb but it wasn't bad either.  I was wrong but who cares when I got in at the trough today and the share price has recovered to 78c but below yesterday's 80.5c.  Obviously other investors read like me!

HotCopper lack of interest in my tech (online/software) stocks

Nothing much said about JIN, HUB, APT, Z1P, WTC, NWL, NXT or XRO in HotCopper.  Is this a good sign that speculators/gamblers are not keen on tech stocks?

Yet, looking at mining and financial stocks, in term of relative of trend, I am very glad that I have diverged into tech stocks.  It is not common to get bad reports but I have had a couple of non-performers which can drag the overall performance down.

Some of these stocks are possibly over-rated but how does one measure 'over-ratedness' especially when the volume of business is rising very fast (but no profit is shown yet)?  Amazon is biggest in market capitalization but has yet to show a profit!

Volatility means something is amiss

Yesterday, while the market was falling, I was buying a lot of top-ups, with preference for companies that pay a dividend.

ZIP at $1.065, WTC at $16.47, TNE at $5.99, AD8 at $3.58, HUB at over $11.15, JIN at $7.05 and XRO at $40.90.  On the days before HUB at $11.75, JIN at $6.75, ALK at $0.19 and NWL at $7.50.

Have I gone crazy?  In theory none of these stocks should be ruffled badly by the clown at the White House, other than due to sentiment.  However, what is worrying is the unprecedented degree of volatility.  That is something I don't understand, ie, the aetiology and implication with the wild massive swings from day to day.  Perhaps it has due to automated trading on an industrial scale.

I buy for long term investment, with income having some priority now rather than risky/speculative stocks.  Rephrase that, growth with INCOME.  At some point, perhaps 5 years from now, I expect WTC to start paying out of the profit from its logistic software.

ALK was bought for its ignored gold income.  Big gold miners have been rallying up but this small one had been dumped.  However, it does not have a long life gold mine.  Its income from gold is used towards its future rare earth mining in the same area in NSW.

Wish me luck!  I have recently dumped my lithium miners (GXY and NMT).  Lithium price is falling as more mines are producing it.  That created some fund for the splurge in the last few days.

Gold as a hedge

I sold off a lot of my pure gold explorers but not gold producers.  Well, all are still exploring, irrespective of the stage they are in, and some are starting production soon.

For a while now, gold as a hedge seems ridiculous as falling world economy made no logical effect on the price of gold.  With a half-wit running the USA, trade will start to drop.

Suddenly with major volatility in the world stock markets and significant drops in the value of share prices, gold has reappeared as a hedge again!  I could never sell off NST because it kept rising and it kept giving dividends.  But neither could I buy more!

One of my bigger gold stock B2G is listed only in Toronto when it took over an Aussie miner/producer.  It is too difficult to trade in it so I left it there.

Meanwhile GOR will be producing soon and that will make a nice impact on its share price.

Recently, I topped up, a small amount, in ALK.  Surprise, surprise, no one seems to see it as a gold producer as its main target is other minerals.  In fact, its share price has been falling!  Price of gold is approaching USD$1300 per ounce and the AUD has fallen to its lowest in the last 2 years against the USD.  So today, if it falls again, I would be a buyer!