Recent Stock Purchase November 2016

Well, the unexpected happened, and I’m not talking about the U.S. election results. I’m talking about the wrong, wrong, wrong headlines “predicting” a market meltdown should Donald Trump be elected president. Sure, all the pollsters have egg on their faces as their crystal balls all failed them at predicting a Hillary win and the “educated economists” with their failed crystal balls would foresee a huge correction should Donald Trump win which did not happen either.

Just look at these headlines from prominent news sources, “Mark Cuban: ‘Huge, huge’ losses for stocks if Trump wins,” “Could a Donald Trump Presidency Spark a Stock Market Crash?,” and “The stock market could crash if Donald Trump is elected president.” Maybe yes and maybe no but one thing is for sure, and that’s maybe. All I see when I read these headlines is mass media fear mongering at its best (or worst). There was a time when the news was simple reporting of events and facts that already happened. Today, “news” is all about asking ‘what if’ questions and sensationalism and fear. After all, predicting a major market meltdown gets a lot more attention than predicting a rosy all is well picture. That’s no fun.

Again, could the market crash 10%, 20%, 30% or more? Of course. But it’s of no concern to me as I cannot, nor pollsters, economists or anyone for that matter, predict when or how severe a meltdown will be. I have said it before, all you can do as an individual dividend investor is tune out the noise, stay diversified among your holdings and make sure the dividend remains covered. That’s it. Pretty simple. As many of us already know, diversifying is of utmost importance. Just look what happened in the last few days as financial and industrial names really shot to the moon while REITs (health REITs mostly) and even our coveted consumer staples took it on the chin.

If you are a real long term investor then you must accept the fact that the market will swing from highs to lows constantly. There will be periods of growth and recession. There will be wars, changes in government, politics and finance. The stock market has survived several crashes, World Wars, double digit inflation and interest rates as well as (near) zero percent interest rates. It has seen the dollar weaken and strengthen against world currencies and saw gold and silver shoot up from obscurity only to fall back to earth in recent years. The market has seen oil at $20 a barrel and at $150 a barrel and yet somehow continues to move on. In other words, during the best of times and the during the worst of times, there will always be a reason to buy or sell stocks, to fear or embrace the market. The question then becomes, which type of investor are you. OK. On to the reason you clicked on this post:

I have added to my ROTH account 12.0000 shares at $39.79 for a total investment of $477.48 in Unilever PLC (ADR) (NYSE:UL). With this recent purchase my ROTH account holdings in Unilever PLC (ADR) (NYSE:UL) now totals 70.5645 shares for a value of $2,831.75.

Unilever PLC (ADR) (NYSE:UL) was one of my picks in my November stock considerations and under $40 a share is a price I like. After seeing a lot of our favorite consumer staples drop significantly in recent days I would expect to see more buys coming in that sector and the REITs as well.

What do you think about my recent buy? Are you planning to rotate into the newly “hot” sectors or pick up some beaten down dividend stalwarts instead. Please let me know.

Disclosure: Long UL

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