My Financial Independence Journey » Entries tagged with "investing"
A Brief Primer on REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts) Part 2: The basics of evaluating a REIT
In part 1 of the REIT series, we discussed what REITs are, why we should be interested in investing in them, and compared them to being a more traditional landlord. Here, we’re going to review some of the basics of evaluating REITs. While REITs can be great dividend producing investments, they can’t be evaluated in exactly the same way as traditional stocks. … Read entire article »
Filed under: Investing
A Brief Primer on REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts) Part 1: What are REITs, why should you invest in them, and how do they compare to being a landlord.
Real estate investment trusts (REITs) are companies that specialize in investing in real estate by owning and renting commercial properties or by collecting mortgage interest. Investing in REITs is a great way to get your feet wet in real estate without becoming a landlord. You simply buy and sell shares of a REIT on a stock exchange like you would any other stock. Because REITs usually pay out almost all (>90%) of their taxable earnings you can earn substantially higher dividend yields through REITs than you could with traditional stocks. … Read entire article »
Filed under: Investing
A Brief Primer on Options: Part 3 (Two ways to enhance your dividend growth portfolio with cash-secured puts)
In part one, we discussed what options are and why you might want to use them. In part two, we discussed how to read an options table as well as how to open and close option positions. Now that we’ve made it to part 3, we’re going to look at two ways that you can use cash-secured puts to enhance your dividend growth portfolio. Cash-secured puts are my flavor of options, and after reading this, … Read entire article »
Filed under: Investing
A Brief Primer on Options: Part 2 (Reading an options table, opening and closing options)
Previously, in part 1 of our options primer we discussed what options are and why you might want to use them. Now it’s time that we move onto part 2, where we’ll focus on how to read an options listing and how to go about selling cash-secured puts and covered calls. We’ll also cover how to escape from an option that you no longer want and remind you once again of the risks of dabbling … Read entire article »
Filed under: Investing
A Brief Primer on Options: Part 1 (What are options?)
I love options. I particularly love selling cash-secured put options. But the best place to start is the beginning. So for the purposes of this post, I’m going to walk us through the basics of options. What they are, how do they work, and why you might be interested in them. A word of caution before we begin. Options trading can become super complicated. The more complicated the trades, the more sophisticated you need to be … Read entire article »
Filed under: Investing
A Brief Primer on Dividend Growth Stocks Part 2: Basic stock screening
I thought it would be a good idea to follow up part one of my primer on dividend growth stocks with second part, that is all about some of the basic criteria that can be used to evaluate a dividend growth stock that you’re interested in. If you are going to evaluate whether to buy an individual stock or not, you need to have some kind of objective criteria established. If the stock meets your … Read entire article »
Filed under: Investing
A Brief Primer on Dividend Growth Stocks Part 1: What are they and how do they make money?
In the opinion of this humble blogger, dividend growth investing is a great way to build wealth over time. Dividend growth investing is a branch of value investing, that focuses on buying shares of companies with a consistent history of raising dividends. As I was putting together the initial content for this blog, it dawned on me that readers green to the idea of financial independence, dividend growth investing, or investing in general might be … Read entire article »
Filed under: Investing
The Difference Between Yield and Yield On Cost
Yield is basically just a fancy term for return on investment. However, “Yield” and “Yield on Cost” (YOC for short) are two related terms that I see confused, conflated, and generally misunderstood by way too many people and way too often. This usually happens when someone fires off an article or blog post saying how dividend growth investing is a terrible idea. Familiarizing yourself with the difference between these two terms is easy and very … Read entire article »
Filed under: Investing
Getting to Know the S&P500
Everybody and their uncle is familiar with the S&P500 index as a indicator of how well the economy is doing and as a benchmark for their own success as an investor. But how much do people really know about the S&P500 and it’s component companies? … Read entire article »
Filed under: Investing
The Pitfalls of Ethical Investing
From time to time, I hear about people who are concerned about ethical investing. Ethical investing does not refer to avoiding the Goldman Sacs style of investing where you sell a product to one group of people while simultaneously placing bets against the product. That would definitely not be ethical, although it is a shrewd business model. Rather, ethical investing is all about making sure that your investments are properly aligned with your moral and … Read entire article »
Filed under: Investing
