Weekly Roundup - March 12, 2016


Despite some rocky moments during the week the S&P 500 closed higher with just over a 1% gain for the week.  That makes 4 straight weeks of gains after the first month and half saw went almost straight down.  Even after all of the disruption in the stock markets to start the year the S&P 500 has now clawed its way back higher and sits just 1% off the close from 2015.

It's great to see the markets moving back higher while I'm having to sit on the sidelines and even better to see is oil, via WTI, climbing higher as well.  I don't know if the $38 handle will be maintained and wouldn't be surprised at all to see the low $30's at least one more time.  However, for work it's good to see oil near $40.

On Thursday of this week I drove back up to College Station to go meet up with Bryan (Income Surfer).  It was great to sit down and talk with someone about business, investing and blogging and all sorts of other topics.  I don't know about most of you but I know I rarely get to talk shop about these things with people in my everyday life so I'm glad we were able to meet up during his road trip.  As big bonus to the chat was that I added several more ideas to my potential article list and some future things to do to develop the blog.  If any of you are ever in Texas let me know because I'd love to meet up with y'all as well.  Although my wife thought my "online date" was a little bizarre.

I've been reading a lot of Pat Dorsey's book on successful stock investing and I highly recommend it so far.  Even though it's not about dividend growth investing there's a lot of great information in there in regards to both quantitative and qualitative evaluation of companies.  I'm not sure what book I want to tackle next but I have at least another 8-10 in the running.


I'm also reading, well browsing, The Devil's Financial Dictionary by Jason Zweig (affiliate link) which is a brutally honest look at the financial/investment industry.  The book gives the true definition of financial terms often in humorous ways.

Each week during my Weekly Roundup I will highlight one of the terms.

"EBITDA, n. Called 'bullsh*t earnings' by the great investor Charles T. Munger, EBITDA is an acronym for 'earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization,' a method of reporting net income as if expenses like interest and taxes didn't matter.  One company could spend twice as much on its borrowings as another and still report the same EBITDA.  If Mr. Munger's term is too impolite for you, try thinking of EBITDA as standing for 'earnings before including the decisive adjustments.'"

Blogging/Writing

My productivity and focus is seriously lacking whenever I'm at home which means that I get much less writing done.  This is something that I need to work on since work is likely to continue to be slow which leads to more time at home.  While I can't complain too much about being home I do need to figure out a way to maintain my writing schedule.

I have some pretty good ideas for posts as well as some other tools for all of you to use.  So be on the lookout for more things over the next few months.

Self Improvement

After making some good progress over the last month and a half I ended up taking a break this past week.  It wasn't really planned but the weather played a big part in that since we had 4 straight days of rain this week which was a real bummer.  I love when it rains but not when it's all day every day back to back to back.  At least I didn't go overboard on my diet although I did loosen up the reins a bit so it's time to get back on track.

Portfolio News

Once again it was another fairly boring week for my portfolio.  While there were no dividend increases announced this past week a lot more dividends were paid out.

On Friday though I did close one of my positions and I'll highlight the reasons why early next week.

On to the Roundup

In case you missed them, here's the posts from Passive-Income-Pursuit this past week.
Also, be sure to sign up to receive posts via email and to follow me on Twitter@JC_PIP so you don't miss anything.  I also started a Facebook page to give people another option for keeping up to date on posts and happenings with the blog.

Once again I'd like to say thanks to each and every one of you that read, commented, and shared posts from here this past week.  I think this dividend growth investing and financial independence community is amazing and the openness from everyone is awesome.  Thanks again!

Now on to the links!

Financial Independence: Maybe You Don't Want It Bad Enough by Financial Samurai

Sector Overview - Financial Market Operators by Roadmap2Retire

I Quit My Job - The Next Chapter Begins NOW by FI Fighter

How to be wrong as an investor by A Wealth of Common Sense

Baby DivHut turns one! by DivHut

Dreaming in maximum bigness by Our Next Life

First leg of the trip by Income Surfer

30 songs inspired by financial independence by Dividend Life

Five dividend growth investing lessons I've learned over the years by Dividend Growth Investor

Financial Swagger by Modest Money

My Rental Portfolio: The Tenant Responds by Financially Integrated

Also, if you're looking for investment ideas, A Frugal Family's Journey keeps a list of stock analyses and recent buys from fellow bloggers.

I hope you all have a great weekend!

Image courtesy of Gubgib on FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Comments

  1. Thanks for meeting up buddy. I enjoyed it as well. My wife was teasing me also, but I had a great time. Thanks for linking to my recap as well. I hope you have a great weekend.
    -Bryan

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Bryan,

      It was great to meet up and talk about business/investing/blogging. I never get to do that during a regular day. My wife's on Spring Break this week so at least if I don't work I get to spend a lot of time with her.

      Thanks for stopping by!

      Delete
  2. Thanks for including me, JC. Great to hear you and Bryan met up -- id love to meet up and chat with other bloggers too. If I'm ever in Texas (I've never been) I'll be sure to give you a shout.
    R2R

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Roadmap,

      Please give me a shout if you make it down to Texas. I might be working at the time so who knows if I can meet up but I'll give it my best shot. If I make it up your way I'll let you know.

      Thanks for stopping by!

      Delete
  3. Thanks for sharing the link, appreciate it buddy!

    Yeah, great to hear you and Bryan were able to meet up and talk shop. Sometime down the road, would have an opportunity to get to meet you guys. Hopefully the road takes me to Texas at some point...

    Have a great weekend!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. FI,

      I"m so excited for you and for finally making the jump.

      I'm pretty jealous of the big road trip that Bryan is on right now. I can't wait to finally get some real time off to take a 2-3 month long road trip around the US. There's such a wide array of features and people that I want to explore. If your travels bring you to the Houston area let me know.

      Thanks for stopping by!

      Delete
  4. PIP,

    I know all about your problem of not having many friends IRL to talk shop with. I feel like any time I meet with friends and they ask me about what I'm doing, I try to bring the topic of investing up and it just gets shot down. People my age just don't have it in them to look towards the future yet.

    As for blogging, you'll have up weeks and down weeks. the important thing is to not force your writing. Some seriously horrible posts can come out of forced writing. On the other hand, it's better to have something down at least once a week to keep your actively thinking about it rather than nothing at all.

    Keep trucking forward!

    -Dividend Monster

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Dividend Monster,

      Yeah I very rarely get a chance to talk business/investing with anyone let alone for nearly 4 hours like I did with Bryan last week. It's a shame but at least we have the blogging community to get our fill in a bit.

      It's really just a focus thing. At work I'm kind of forced to focus for 12 hours but at home I have many more things to draw my attention away. So I really just need to sit down and make myself write for an hour or two each day at a minimum just to get into the flow of writing.

      Thanks for stopping by!

      Delete
  5. Hi JC,

    Thanks for mentioning my post in your weekly roundup! I wanted to have some fun after a stressful week :)

    Have a great weekend and Happy PIe day for Monday,
    -DL

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Dividend Life,

      It was definitely a different take on the normal finance post and I found it interesting to see all the songs that relate to FI in some way.

      Hope your weekend is relaxing.

      Delete
  6. It seems like we all have some type of connection to other bloggers as we interact with one another at least once a week. I think your "online date" is perfectly normal. Sometimes it's nice to put a face to a blog. Find a way to get our of that writing funk. I think we all suffer from that once in a while. Thanks for the DivHut mention too by the way. Have a great rest of the weekend.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. DivHut,

      I've tried to meet up with other bloggers before but it just haven't happened. So I had to take advantage of the opportunity since I had it. She was just giving me a hard time about it all in good fun.

      I really just need to sit down and make myself write because I have plenty of ideas but I just need to get started writing. My productivity is always much lower when I'm home but that might be the case more often now as long as the patch is slow so I need to figure out a way to work around it.

      Thanks for stopping by!

      Delete
  7. Awesome to hear you met up with Income Surf, there are certainly a few bloggers out there that I would not hesitate to meet up with if given the opportunity. :) Thanks for sharing your current reads, weekly roundup, and of course our two collections. Your online friendship and support is truly appreciated! AFFJ

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AFFJ,

      There's several bloggers that even though I've never met them in person I feel like I know them as friends. I'd really like to make it over to FinCon at some point to meet up with even more bloggers.

      Thanks for stopping by!

      Delete
  8. Thank you for mentioning my article. I am glad you are being proactive about meeting other bloggers, and learning from them. I have never done that.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. DGI,

      This is the first time I've ever met up with someone although I've tried in the past but schedules just didn't work out. I think it's a great opportunity since many of us don't get a chance to talk business/investing/blogging face to face with most people that we interact with in our daily lives.

      Thanks for stopping by!

      Delete
  9. Hi PIP, thanks for this list of links... some great articles there and worth the read!

    Cheers
    FerdiS, DivGro

    ReplyDelete

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