Month: June 2008

New Investment Strategy

It’s no secret that I like to dabble in the stock market, and that I’m trying to generate a decent income from dividend stocks.

With that in mind, I’ve decided to start taking the entire balance earned each month through my Passive Income Project and invest it in various dividend stocks. Now since I’m only making around $125 a month in passive income, I’m planning on setting that money aside on a month to month basis and investing it in a different stock every 3 to 6 months.

Since I’ll be making smaller trades than I usual do, I’m considering getting an account with Zecco so I can invest while avoiding that pesky $12.95 per trade fee with E*Trade.

The general idea is that I’ll be able to both expand my stock holdings as well as my return from passive income. I’ll post updates as I make purchases.

10.5.4 is live

Apple released 10.5.4 today, you can grab it from Software Update. Changes listed below.

General
Recent Apple security updates.
Resolves an issue with saving and reopening Adobe Creative Suite 3 ?les on a remote server.
Includes additional RAW image support for several cameras.
Addresses an issue that may result in a partially installed X11 application.
Improves L2TP VPN client reliability.
AirPort
Addresses AirPort reliability issues with 5GHz networks.
Addresses AirPort issues that may result in slower performance in Logic Studio or MainStage.
iCal
Improves overall iCal reliability for meeting requests, cancellation notices, delegation, and syncing with iPhone.
Resolves an issue that prevents deleting an iCal event without notifying the creator.
Addresses an issue in which events in all calendars affect availability. A checkbox now enables information-only calendars to be transparent from free/busy lookups.
Resolves a UI issue preventing delegated calendars from showing up as a separate window.
Addresses an issue with copying and pasting attendees from one event to another.
Resolves an issue in which iCal may not delete events after a speci?ed time interval, even when set to do so in iCal preferences.
Addresses an issue in which To Dos cannot be marked private.

Safari
Addresses a potential performance issue when loading secure web pages.
Resolves issues that may be encountered when accessing secure web pages with client certificates that reside on a smart card.
Spaces and Exposé
Addresses an issue in which switching from a space with a Finder window keeps the Finder as the active application instead of the application residing in the destination space.
Fixes an issue in which dragging an application from the list of application assignments in Spaces System Preferences does not assign the application to the desired space.
Resolves an Exposé issue that may result in only a subset of windows being shown.

Dividend Stocks

2006 was the first year I purchased a dividend yielding stock, and it was quite by accident, I didn’t even know it yielded a dividend when I bought it! I made a whopping $3 off of dividends that year.

In 2007 I did a bit better, I actually focused on buying a few small dividend stocks. My total gains (from dividends) for 2007 were $95.38.

Six solid months into the year and my quest for dividend stocks is proving far more fruitful. Thanks largely in part to a hefty jump start in investment collateral from selling off some shares of Apple and seeing a 63% return on a 12 month investment.

My goal for 2008 is to make close to $300 in dividends, in pursuit of that goal, I recently purchased 300 shares of a stock which is currently yielding a beautiful 18.80% dividend, paid out monthly. The stock itself has decent growth potential over the next few years as the market corrects itself, and in the meantime is setup in a dividend reinvestment program.

And while I’ve considered a lot of the bank stocks which yield decent dividends for my next purchase, I doubt I’ll invest in any of them considering the trouble the banking sector is in right now.

Anyone else trying their hand at dividend investing?

Apple Q3 Earnings Call Announced

It’s that time of year again, at 2pm Pacific time on July 21, 2008 Apple will rock the world with their earnings call.

As always though, if the guidance for the next quarter is at all conservative Apple stock will tank… again. Analysts will likely have high expectations for Q4 since the iPhone 3G will be on sale for all but 11 days of that quarter, so when Apple does what they always do and purposefully underestimates their earnings for the next quarter it won’t match up with the hype and their stock will drop like a stone.

Look for a great opportunity to pick up some shares of Apple a few days after the earnings call.