With so much news that has come out our "Team Alpha" portfolio update is a bit late this month but still is showing good results vs the recent declines in the overall markets.
Our "Team Alpha" portfolio consists of ExxonMobil (XOM), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), AT&T (T), General Electric (GE), Annaly Capital (NLY), Southern Company (SO), Procter & Gamble (PG), Philip Morris (PM), Intel (INTC), Realty Income (O), Chevron (CVX), E.I. du Pont (DD), Duke Energy (DUK), Coca-Cola (KO), Bank of America (BAC), and McDonald's (MCD) (McDonald's position will be opened if put sale fills).
Results And Actions Taken
The S&P declined roughly 10% since our last update and fell into correction territory. As a result, our portfolio also lost some of it's value:
| Stock | #Shares | 6-6-PPS | TotValue |
| XOM | 100 | 78/shr | 7800 |
| JNJ | 100 | 62/shr | 6200 |
| T | 100 | 34/shr | 3400 |
| GE | 100 | 18/shr | 1800 |
| NLY | 110 | 17/shr | 1870 |
| BAC | 500 | 7/shr | 3500 |
| PG | 200 | 62/shr | 12400 |
| KO | 50 | 73/shr | 3650 |
| PM | 140 | 82/shr | 11580 |
| INTC | 300 | 26/shr | 7800 |
| O | 100 | 39/shr | 3900 |
| CVX | 100 | 97/shr | 9700 |
| DD | 100 | 47/shr | 4700 |
| DUK | 100 | 23/shr | 2300 |
| SO | 300 | 46/shr | 13800 |
| Cash Rsv | 0 | 18849 | |
| Total | x | x | 113249 |
"Team Alpha" dipped by roughly 4% overall which still outperformed the S&P by about 6%. Obviously we always want to increase our value, but the bumps along the way are inevitable.
That being said, we were able to increase our Cash Reserves slightly by the following actions:
- $170 in dividends received from XOM, BAC, CVX, DD, SO
- $227 in premiums from the sale of MCD, XOM, JNJ naked puts
While this is not very much at first glance, the overall portfolio is up 13.25% as of this date, and the S&P has given up most of its gains from the time we developed our portfolio back in mid October 2011.
My Opinion
Each time we are ready to pull the trigger on some purchases, the market seems to bounce back up, so orders go unfilled. I decided to take a bit more conservative approach and sell a few puts at lower prices for the shares of the stocks we want to buy, and that way at least we can generate some cash.
The Puts expire on the 16th of this month and they will not get filled in my opinion. In the next month I will sell some covered calls and just hang on to the shares and positions we have until some of this unpredictable sideways, up and down, starts and stops of a market finally calms down a bit.
In the meantime, we will monitor all the stocks and add more to our cash reserves.
If you had been copying this portfolio, you would be well ahead of the game and in really good shape right now.
