Re re re ObscureI understand why you're investing in BK.PA.
One thing I've found over the past several decades is markets flucuate constantly. If they don't, something isn't working properly.
I will be straight up, I'm not a rich man in the financial meaning of the word.
I'm very comfortable but I still have to be cautious.
I'm also in my seventies and make more money in retirement than I did working or could make if I wanted to work in my field, which paid very well.
When the price of BK commons drops off, so does the price of BK.P.A.
When that happens, you are losing money.
Yes, I know you don't lose money unless you sell.
Still, I have to be able to live and hopefully maintain the comfortable and relatively worry free lifestyle I'm accustomed to.
I strive to increase my cash and investment holdings to beat inflation, plus a good profit.
I'm not overly greedy and am quite happy at the end of the year if I end up with 10-15% more cash and holdings than I started the year with, after taxes of course.
At this stage in my life, I could cash out and live very well on the cash on hand. But there's no fun in that.
Invested cash or even cash parked in an interest bearing account is at risk.
I've seen banks, such as Bank of America fail, when no one thought it was possible. I lost a lot of money because I didn't see the signs and frankly didn't have access to the information that would have told me.
BK is bleeding cash right now. Mostly because of what I would term an obscene distribution.
The folks at Quadravest don't appear to be hiding anything and I believe they know they will have to cut the distribution rate, if they want this trust to stay solvent.
The big distribution was started shortly before the due date of the trust's mandate for payout and they had a lot of cash on hand to distribute to the unit holders.
The mandate of the fund was extended for another ten years but they didn't reduce the distribution and IMHO, that's bad news for both the preffereds and commons.
My investments are very similar in quantity to those you mentioned and I bought back in again around 13.04 but I've already got my sell point in, which is significantly more than the disrtribution.
I'm fully expecting the distribution to be cut back to the previous 10% level and when it does, the price of both the commons and preferreds will waterfall.
Then, I'll pick up more and hold for a while.
I do like your in depth posts and investing style though and if I were younger, I would be doing something similar.
Right now, preserving capital is very important in the scheme of things.
Quite a while back, I was never very successful with my investments. I made more than I invested but nothing really special.
I took a chance and while watching an MSNBC program with a very prestigious, extremely wealthy investor not only being interviewed by taking calls.
I asked him what I was doing wrong, fully invested, with around 20 different holdings in my portfolios.
He didn't answer my question on the air and asked that I leave my phone number with the programs receptionist and that he would get back to me.
This man charges over $100K for a lunch meeting to be donated to a charity of his choice, so I didn't really expect to hear from him.
To my surprise, about two weeks after making the call, he phoned me at 2am. At first I thought it was a ruse. It wasn't.
This is what he told me.
Small retail investors, such as yourself are important to the markets but they are also the grist of the markets.
Having a diversified portfolio, that you pay someone else to take care of is not a good way to invest, if you can do it yourself and have the ability to do some due diligence, while understanding a corporate or fund financial perspectus.
Then, don't have any more investments in your portfolio than you can pay attention to, at least an hour or two per week each. Most people are best off with no more than a half dozen and even better with ONE OR TWO.
The reason behind this was that the investor can put significant sums into GOOD investment vehicles.
Always use a stop loss that is in your comfort zone.
When you're stressed over an investment you can't evaluate it properly.
Always keep reserve capital and increase the amount in that reserve to keep up with the times.
When markets are volatile is not always a good time to buy or hold. Fortunes are lost every day.
So my strategy now, is to keep cash on hand when I can't keep up with the market fluctuations and always have a capital reserve on hand to pick up the golden dregs when the markets crash or a good investment vehicle crashes.
Thanx again.
GLTA the good folks here.