Stock Trading - Entry 53

Questions have been posed and here I will get into those I have been meaning to answer, but haven't yet. As usual, I am not dispensing financial advice. I am simply explaining my point of view as it relates to my current investment situation.

With so many business publications out there, which ones do you subscribe to?

For the past couple of years, I have been trying to figure out my own take and to develop my own analytical framework. With that, I can apply a certain amount of discernment (from inside of myself) on the judgements others put out in the world. For example, I have subscribed to simplywallst, but I completely ignore the narratives there, nor do I enter my own. Anyone could type anything in there - although I could see how that could be a tool to analyse trending thought patterns, but that is not a social experiment in which I would consider participating.

That said, I would like to subscribe to the logic as it seems interesting, but I haven't read much on it.

Why did you subscribe to simplywallst?

In short, I didn't want to have to develop my own analytical tool and theirs works fine for my purposes.

Speaking of tools, do you have any hacks?

The only really easy one turned out to be counters in my email. I setup folders for trades (buying and selling) as well as for dividends received because I get email confirmations every time that happens. This resulted in two things. First, I ended up paying closer attention to the impact of dividend stocks on my portfolio with the aim of building an income stream that way. (Mind you, it made it harder for me to sell them, but that's another issue.)

Second, with the number of small trades I have been doing, it became abundantly clear to me that $0 trading fees are paramount to my investing strategy. If I were making far fewer trades, perhaps some other stock trading platform with a limit of free trades per quarter or per year might work, but that is not my current situation (as at publishing this article).

Is that why you are sticking with Wealthsimple for now?

Yes. That and I would love to see readers take advantage of getting a free $25 for signing up (for free) via this link.

Why don't you do options trading?

Honestly, I am applying the keep-it-simple principle. Plus, at this time, I don't want to have to learn a whole other layer of financial trading contracts to my investing. I do not want another day job and am okay missing out on this at the moment.

How did you create your RRSP?

After the calculation I ran last autumn (see entry 51 for the juicy ROI) and the info I got from Wealthsimple, I chose to move money over to a self-directed RRSP with them. I had time on my side throughout December 2025, so whenever I sold something or received a dividend, I tapped a few times on my magical phone and I just moved it over and did trades in my RRSP.

That said, I did have the option of moving shares over directly. That would have involved a sell-then-buy in terms of calculating the cash value of the withdrawal from the TFSA and the deposit into the RRSP. That would have taken a few business days and I didn't really like that approach as it would have added unnecessary complexity to my ROI analysis.

Furthering the keep-it-simple principle, I will be putting money into my TFSA during the first two months of a calendar year, into my RRSP during the last two months of the year, and then a split between them for the other eight months. Fewer lines to fill out in my tax return when I do it this way.

How do your short-, medium-, and long-term investment strategies differ?

In the short term, I rely on my take on fundamental analysis as well as the analysis offered by simplywallst to know if I am not diversified enough.

In the medium term, I am sticking with the idea most recently popularized by Dave Ramsey about always being able to cover unexpected costs so as to maintain investment contributions. In other words, I don't throw every spare penny into my investments leaving me with nothing to cover any of life's surprises. (While I have not purchased anything from Ramsey Solutions, their YouTube channel is pretty interesting.)

In the long-term, I put effort into keeping my assumptions and any rosy pictures in check when it comes to making investing decisions.

As you can see, all very thoughtful as well as practical.

What is your crypto strategy and does it differ much from regular stock investing?

I aim to have 5% of my overall investment value invested in blockchains and I focus on use cases, except for Bitcoin. That and I don't go nuts on buying the dip. After all, it is still the wild west when it comes to investing in blockchain tokens!

What is your favourite of all the entries you have written to-date?

That would be entry 43 where I wrote about how Automotive Finco Corp. operates because that was very well designed to maximize cashflows through legit loopholes - and I was impressed! A very close second would have been the ones on the Helium blockchain (starting with entry 17) as I was equally impressed with its application.

What was your favourite business analysed to-date?

That is a toss up between Imperial Ginseng (in entry 15) and Liquid (in entry 33). I was impressed how the former re-imbursed shareholders by was of dividends when it closed up shop - a practice I would love to see standardized. For the latter, it was how they were structuring multiple businesses to build a mini-empire.

Are there any companies you are watching but have doubts about?

One company I just took off my watch list was Versabank due to a low dividend yield and me still don't knowing what they are up to even after all this time paying them some regular attention.... One company that is still on my radar is Green Rise Foods because they have a big contract renewal that will need to happen by January 2027 with a distributor that buys the lion's share (over 80%, I think) of their production. That is a potentially huge swing that could go either way.

I did have QNC on my watch list and when it dipped, I bought it and sold it for a ~40% ROI a few days later (thanks to notification alerts I setup). The quantum computing area is iffy and I have not found many Canadian publicly traded companies operating in that industry. We'll see.

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