RE:Wow! I didn't see that double whammy comingHey Dib
Congrats on the timing of both your NPI & AQN sells. We had also dumped NPI (see below) and considered trimmng half of AQN when the KPC deal was announced but I somehow talked myself out of it. So we held and to even top that off, we've actually added another $55k to it this year (5370 shares at average price of $10.25)
Here's a little history for those that might be interested. My wife & I are "generally" long term buy & hold dividend income/growth investors BUT as time has gone on and I look back, we have actually sold a number of holdings for various reasons.
I retired in 2013 and from 2011 to 2015, I spent a decent amount of time developing our dividend investment strategy. Before 2011, I had very little time for investing, so was in a 65%/35% mix of mutual funds and individual stocks. By the end of 2015, we had dumped all the mutual funds and held 2 ETFs and 26 stocks (including 7 REITs, 2 pure renewables (BEP.UN, NPI), and a number of utils (including AQN),banks, midstream, telcos, and a few others (BIP.UN, ECI, PKI, VNR).
I thought we'd stay around that 25-20 holdings but we are now down to 14 TSX kisted stocks and 1 ETF in just 4 sectors - banks (BMO,BNS,RY.TD,ZWB). utils (AQN,CPX,EMA,FTS), midstream (ENB,KEY,PPL,TRP), and telcos (BCE,T)
From 2018 to 2021, we had 8 take-overs. We also sold NPI & BEP.UN for huge profits ($151,2k & $140.2k respectvely) in late 2020/early 2021 when I could see how flawed renewables were. Also, the yield had gotten under 3% for both so I figured there was better places for the dough.
In 2020-2021, I was getting some bad vibes from Brookfield especially with all the financial engineering they were doing so we sold all our BIP.UN (again for a very nice $154k profit).
We also slowly reduced our REIT holdings and eventually sold the last two (NWH.UN at the end of last year and DIR.UN earlier this year). We had a very good run with REITs (total profit of $330k over a 12 or so year span) but I got tired of no dividend increases and them always seeming to be issuing more shares and carrying big debt.
To make a long story short - if a person has more than 25 holdgings, then I totally agree with your
"Sometimes one has to look at one's favourite stocks and act on your gut" comment and add that a person shoudl also do some research.
Now that we're down to just the 15 holdings, it would take a really major event for us to sell anything (... but we'll see :-)
Ciao
Sarge
Dibah420 wrote: For the longest of time ( decade or more) NPI together with FTS and AQN were among my bread and butter holdings. With DRIPs and healthy dividends they flourished obliging me to trim from time to time. Sometimes a singular event occurs and forces you to re-evaluate. In the case of AQN it was a dire winter in Texas, Ted Cruz was hammered in his Bermuda shorts in Cancun, and the company declared force majeure. I dumped my entire AQN holding around $21. There was no single event for NPI and nor did I think management was to blame, but other investments were more attractive over the past two years. I sold my last 1k NPI shares last August. I still hold FTS and pleased with its sturdy endurance but hold less than half of what I had once. Sometimes one has to look at one's favourite stocks and act on your gut. Keep in mind that at the best of times we are making decisions in the penumbra of whatever management or analysts choose to disclose.
I wish you all the best and especially Baywall whose posts are usually informative.
Cheers.