August 2024 Stock Portfolio Update ($9,248)

| Stocks | 131 seen

At the end of August 2024, the total value of our stock portfolio was USD 9,248 (€8,360 ). What is about 5% decrease or USD -478 loss, if compared to the previous month. Fundamental mistake with options trade on INTC stock took us there.

Just like previous month, also August we spent some time in Latvia, some time in Georgia. At the start of August we took a short few days trip to Croatia, staying in town of Omiš celebrating my 39 birthday. Awesome.

You can read mora bout our adventures in Omiš, Croatia here: Top Family-Friendly Things to Do in Omiš, Croatia: Beaches, Dining, and Adventure or see my video: Birthday in Croatia

Now back to the stock portfolio

The decrease in the stock portfolio comes from the market appreciation itself and additionally from options trades, while small part of the growth can be attributed to the dividends. 

One of my short-term goals is to grow our portfolio to USD 10,000. With USD 752 to go, I believe this target could be crashed already this Fall, especially if we recover just form a few options trades, but you never know, market can take a steep correction.

The main longer-term goal for our portfolio is to grow our portfolio 100 fully covered Morgan Stanley (MS) shares, supported by an additional 100 British Petroleum (BP) shares. This strategy will enable us to sell covered calls on these shares while also benefiting from dividend payments. At the end of August we had 2 MS shares and 15 BP shares. I decided to take some profit from unloading MS shares and started over.

Stock Portfolio

YTD our stock portfolio has gained 8.75%, what underperforms SP500 significantly (19.09%). 

Options trades

To grow our portfolio I actively sell put options on MS and BP and few other stocks, while reinvesting the premiums back into stocks. Besides these two, last month I was selling options on few other tickers, like.

The biggest problem turned out INTC stock, which dropped from $30 to $20, while we were holding 29 short put. A this moment I have rolled out this position to November expiry. Additionally I rolled out MS and NVDA to January expiry, these trades seems safe, but we just have less capital to make new options trades. Maybe thats good. 

Last but not least I added Credit Spreads on BMY stock

Dividend income

Last August, in dividend payments we received $8.58, which is about $0.27 daily. Following tickers paid us dividend in August

Ticker

Dividend

AGNC

$0.51

BTI

$0.74

MS

$7.33

 

$8.58

Our current yearly dividend from the portfolio stands at USD 185.83 (-$7.63) , yielding 3.44%. The small decrease in total dividend comes from, because we sold MS shares. 

While the total dividend is not yet enough to retire comfortably, it is a solid foundation upon which we can build.

I believe by the end of the year we should be able to push our dividend portfolio to $250-300/yearly

Plans for September 2024

For the month of September, we are looking to dollar cost average buying shares on MS, BMY and maybe some other ticker. Not planning lots of options trades as we are still recovering few options. 

How was your investments performing in the month of August? Leave a comment!