🎉 $100,000 Portfolio Milestone! 🎉 I finally reached $100K in my investment portfolio! 🥹📈 My journey started in April 2022, when I was still studying. I didn’t have a huge income or a perfect investment strategy. I simply started by saving money, cutting unnecessary expenses, and investing whatever I could. I still remember my first-ever monthly dividend: $19.52. At the time, it felt like such a small amount, but it was the beginning of something much bigger. Fast forward to today… my portfolio generates around $1,100/month in dividends. 💰 My goal isn’t just to build wealth for the sake of having a big number. I’m building this portfolio with a purpose — financial freedom and eventually helping fund a future home purchase. 🏡 I’ve definitely made a few mistakes along the way. Some investments worked out, some didn’t, and I’ve changed my strategy many times as I learned more. But I’m actually grateful for those mistakes because they taught me lessons that no book could. Looking back at where I started in 2022, I’m really happy with the progress. ❤️ $19.52/month → ~$1,100/month $0 → $100,000 portfolio The next goal? $250K. Then $500K. Then $1M. 🚀 Still a long way to go, but I’m enjoying the journey. One dollar, one dividend, and one investment at a time. Here’s to the next chapter! 🥂📈 #Investing #DividendInvesting #100KPortfolio #FinancialFreedom #PersonalFinance #WealthBuilding #InvestingJourneyread more
I see many beginners posting that they’re new to investing and don’t know where to start. 🤔 As someone who was in a similar situation just a few months ago and learned, here are the 4 ETF types (& ETFs) that are popular among long term investors 😃 : 1) S&P 500: US: $VOO / $SPY / $SPLG Canadian: $VFV / $ZSP / $TPU 2) GROWTH / TECH: US: $QQQ / $VUG / $VGT / $SCHG Canadian: $QQC / $HXQ / $TEC / $ZUQ 3) DIVIDENDS: US: $SCHD / $VYM / $DGRO Canadian: $VDY / $XEI 4) ALL IN ONE / BASKET / Global Exposure: US: $VT / $AVGE Canadian: $ZEQT / $XEQT / $TGRO / $VEQT / $ZGQ I noticed many people following this type of a basic / uncomplicated portfolio and are doing really well for themselves 🔥 For % allocation, you can divide evenly among the ETF categories or allocate a higher % based on your preferences. Just DCA regularly and you should be good. 😎 Some people even just put it all into an all in one etf like $XEQT. This is also a good approach - it is much simpler and it works. Ultimately, it comes to whatever you prefer 🙂 Oh and yea, there are overlaps, but I don’t think there is anything wrong in that though - it would just count as doubling down on good things. 💯 I’m sharing with you all what helped me, but don’t forget to do your own research too! 🙏🏼 read more
August Portfolio Update YTD = 20.42% vs 12.81% (S&P 500) My portfolio is split into two parts: core long-term holdings that I accumulate and rarely sell, and moonshot/high-beta stocks where I’m more active with tactical trades. My moonshot strategy is much more dependent on macro conditions, market momentum, and hot themes, so positioning can change quickly. I like to keep this 10% of my total portfolio. My core portfolio also includes ETFs like $VFV$QQC , $VCN , $VDY and $ZGLD . I like ETFs to make up around 10-20% of my total portfolio, acting as the foundation and helping lower overall risk. As a stock picker, I still want a healthy balance in case my individual stocks don’t perform as well as the broader market. Over time, I plan to gradually increase my ETF exposure toward 50% of my portfolio due to increased volatility in the market. Top 3: $AMD — AI is increasing demand for powerful server CPUs. As AI agents handle more tasks, data centers need more processing power. AMD benefits from growing EPYC server demand and continued market-share gains against Intel. $GOOG — Gemini is becoming a bigger part of Google’s products and revenue. Google Cloud keeps growing, more companies are using its AI chips, and YouTube remains very strong. Google owns many pieces of the AI ecosystem. $MU — AI data centers need huge amounts of memory, keeping demand strong and supply tight. Micron is spending heavily to increase production, while future growth could also come from robots, vehicles and other AI-powered machines. Bottom 3: (new buys) $KLAC — Makes the inspection equipment chipmakers use to find tiny defects during manufacturing. As AI chips, HBM memory and advanced packaging become more complex, manufacturers need more inspection steps, creating higher demand for KLA’s tools. $MRVL — Builds custom AI chips and the networking technology that moves data between GPUs, CPUs and memory. Growth is being driven by hyperscaler custom silicon, faster AI networking, optical connectivity and its expanding NVIDIA partnership. $CRDO — Makes high-speed connectivity chips and active electrical cables that connect servers, GPUs and switches inside AI data centers. As AI clusters get larger, Credo benefits from the need for faster, lower-power and more reliable connections. Moonshots: $NBIS — AI companies need more computing power, and Nebius is rapidly building data centers to meet that demand. Its partnership with Nvidia, growing customer base and plans for much more capacity give it a long runway for growth. $RKLB — Rocket Lab is growing beyond simply launching rockets. Electron launches bring steady business, its space systems division keeps expanding, and Neutron could unlock much larger missions, government contracts and satellite launches if execution goes well. $AAOI — AI data centers need faster connections between their chips and servers. AAOI makes the optical equipment that moves this data. Demand for its faster 800G and 1.6T products is rising, while the company is expanding production. Not financial advice; always do your own research. read more
A late night gift for fellow investors on Blossom who might be starting out their journey… this is a post about all the wonderful tools I use to research and monitor stocks, ETFs, Market News, Sector rotations and Insider/institutional Trading activity. I call it my investment tech stack, and here is my list: 1. OpenInsider Every Form 4 filing in one clean searchable database. When a CEO buys $1M of their own stock on the open market this is where I see it. I actually go on every week and look at open market purchase activity especially when it’s a cluster and then research those companies further. openinsider.com 2. Whale Wisdom 13F institutional holdings tracker I use it to track the hedge funds I like so I know what Driehaus, Hood River or Renaissance are holding and what they just bought or sold. It’s how I found many amazing small caps early on like ONDS, BBOT, ATAI, etc. Updated every quarter after the 45-day filing deadline and I will use it to write up my post about “Going Behind Enemy Lines to Uncover What happened with Situational Awareness’s rise and fall” in about 10 days when they submit quarterly filings. whalewisdom.com 3. Unusual Whales Ok this one I have deep love for, it’s how I landed SO MANY successful options trades and I check it every day for UOAs. I subscribe to the premium version for full access. Options flow and congressional trading tracker. When unusually large options activity hits a ticker before a catalyst Unusual Whales catches it. Also tracks what your elected officials are trading, make of that what you will. 😏 unusualwhales.com 4. Quartr Beautiful App that delivers Earnings calls, investor presentations and transcripts in one place. I use this to listen to management on quarterly earnings calls, I can search through transcripts for specific keywords and it pulls press releases for companies you track faster than any other source. I used it to write my post on banks exposure to private credit. quartr.com 5 .Portfolio Visualizer This one is Amazing for backtesting to see if logic held up historically, correlation analysis, factor exposure. When I want to understand how two assets move relative to each other this is where I go. My posts on ETF correlation were built using this tool. portfoliovisualizer.com 6. Seeking Alpha I love this platform and I subscribe to the premium version for full access. The best Sector dashboards, earnings calendars, and analyst reviews. The Seeking Alpha screener is where the sector ETF performance data in my rotation posts comes from and it does it through a great user experience. seekingalpha.com 7. FinViz My morning ritual, covers futures, sector heatmaps, screeners, and technical data. If you’ve seen any of my Before the Open posts a lot of that data is sourced from Finviz. It’s simple, to the point and free. Finviz.com Now for my favorite sources of market updates and news: 1. Barron’s I think it’s on of the most thoughtful long-form financial journalism sources available to retail investors. barrons.com 2. Bloomberg Breaking market news and macro analysis. This one is the only news app where I have notifications on 😅 bloomberg.com 3. WSJ The paper of record for business and economics. Primary source journalism on Fed policy, corporate earnings and geopolitics. wsj.com 4. Motley Fool Good for accessible company-level analysis. I read it for perspective not a primary source. A tip on here is how I got interested to look into INTC again in March and went in at $49 which turned into a Multibagger by May. Fool.com 5. Substack It’s an amazing jungle of great writers and if you can find the ones that have real substance you’re in for some great insights. I’d recommend “The Dark Side of The Boom” exceptional financial analysis. The Holy Grail of Platforms for me though is SEC EDGAR. Nothing for me replaces reading through official filings, pulling data out of balance sheets, reading about business segments, company risks, and understanding how a company is progressing YoY/QoQ. The bulk of my posts as you guys might already know are sourced from data points I traced back to a primary source filings like 10-Q, 8-K, 13F. The tools help me find the signal and I usually confirm everything from filings. So, there you have it my full stack of tools in one posts, if you found this useful I invite you to follow my account for more. Have a great weekend!read more
BlackRock, Fidelity, Morgan Stanley, Franklin Templeton, Bank of America/Merrill, VanEck and WisdomTree are all now publishing research or guidance around adding relatively small Bitcoin or crypto allocations to traditional portfolios. Generally, the discussion is somewhere in the 1–4% range, depending on the investor, portfolio and risk tolerance. If Bitcoin moves from a default allocation of 0% to even 1–3% across a meaningful portion of traditional portfolios, the amount of capital seeking exposure to a fixed-supply asset could be enormous. That could end up being one of the biggest institutional catalysts Bitcoin has ever had. All this is happening and retail demand appears relatively low,while institutional adoption continues to expand through spot ETFs, new investment funds, model portfolios and increasingly explicit portfolio-allocation guidance. The next major Bitcoin cycle may look very different from the ones that came before it. It is hard not to be bullish.
Oftentimes the conversation of finance comes up when I'm just chatting with people cause I'm passionate about finance...however most of the time when I talk to people and talk about investing more often than not the people I talk to dont invest or are scared of the stock market or have "a guy" at the bank. I had a friend flat out told me he doesnt believe in the stock market...The stock market has probably created more millionaires than any other investment vehicle in history. Yet 38% of Americans/ 37% of Canaidans own zero stocks...ZERO I honestly find that crazy. You don’t have to be an expert. You don’t have to pick the next big stock. You don’t even need a lot of money to start. Just consistently invest and give it time. But the reality is, a lot of people just don’t care about investing. And that’s okay. However those are the same people that are surprised when they look back 20 years from now and wish you had started. read more
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After reaching the critical level of 10,000 followers (KTS #21 😉), we decided it was TIME to share the knowledge and our daily actions with incredible detail and insight on an adaptive platform that could handle stocks and options while sharing the specific tools that we use to monitor. A platform that would allow us more proximity with our community in a fun, interactive learning environment that can simplify the complex - all while allowing us to share even more content with more depth and latitude. Since launching this website in February, our most dedicated and invested followers have had the chance to enjoy: 📖 Weekly, relevant KTS posts - so 24 new KTS posts (without length restriction! 😂) 📝All of our trades & rationale (which have been transitioning in new areas and asset classes 😉) 🧙 Our views on this high period of volatility to be expected in the final stage of the meltup phase of the Real Estate/Banking crisis cycle ⚒️Access to our full tool suite (see our pinned post) These members have formed the first tranche of subscribers and have enjoyed incredible insights on the current state of the real estate/banking crisis cycle while observing the major accumulation in secular trend hidden gems 💎. These members have also been privy to how we are investing in a crosscurrent market where some equities are buys and some are sells. As we continue to transition the portfolio as inflection point peaks are set, we also share how to embrace the bear by demonstrating how to profit when markets head in the opposite direction. Ask yourself, why should the Wall Street Wolves be the only ones that earn outsized returns over a short period of TIME when markets fall? 😂 Our members have also been incredibly patient and resourceful with us while we were improving and fixing the usability of our website. And we are extremely grateful and thankful for their input. 🙏 Now we have a website loaded with content so it’s TIME for us to come back here, on Blossom - where this amazing journey started - as a genuine offer to further your financial acumen along the learning curve faster in this critical TIME. This was supposed to be the year of the most volatility, remember? 😉 So I intend to start posting content on Blossom again. 🤑🌊🏄 And I heard I won a Blossom award while away? So thank you to Max and for whomever is behind that! 🏆🙏 Our goal is, and will always be, to help you all learn and apply strategies to realize absolutely amazing, double-digit annualized returns. I want you to WIN 🏆 I will resume giving insights on our current view of the markets with our brand of proven unconventionalism (please tell me you finally discovered commodities by now? See our first post from March 9, 2024: “They are telling us so what are you waiting for?” post! Natural selection is alive and well! 😂🤣 Speaking of which, I see the conventionalists are still preaching their gospel in full force mode, right here on Blossom! 🤢🤣 As a gesture of the good TIMES of the past, I am sharing one of the KTS posts from the website - and in true Beskar fashion….. a true gem 💎 It’s also the very first KTS posted on the opening of our website. I find it particularly…..TIMEly! 😂 And it will give my conscience resolve. 😎👍 So here you go! https://www.beskarcapitalkts.com/featuredktspost The conventionalist script is everywhere - now more than ever as the institutions line up the retail bagholders. Regurgitated by the masses everywhere… investors are indoctrinated to think that the best investment strategy is to buy and hold a dilutive aggregate index fund to generate a meager average annualized real return of 9% - without any respect for the real estate/banking crisis cycle. We’ve proved it to ourselves countless TIMES over. With over 35+ years of investing experience, we know that an active investment approach can outperform with the right tool for the right market. Adapting is critical especially when markets are in a process of setting inflection points. 😉🏆😎 We have now reopened the membership window again: https://www.beskarcapitalkts.com/ I always give you my best! This is the way! 🌊🏄 Beskar read more
$MU Morgan Stanley’s gross profit ramp for Micron: $43.2B → $50.7B → $55.9B → $62.0B → $70.0B That’s $281.8B in gross profit across five quarters …..five straight quarters of growth. This is what happens when memory stops being a commodity and becomes AI cognitive infrastructure.
🔥 On Saturday over 2,000 Blossomers came out from all across Canada for an incredible day of learning and connection! I was shocked to see close to 1/3 of folks travelled from outside of Toronto to join us, huge thanks to everyone who made the trip! ⚡️ The energy during the day was absolutely buzzing and it was so awesome to meet so many members of the Blossom community! Special shout out to Blossom's Creator of the Year @jacobb and Blossom's Rising Star @nettspend who won our community-nominated Blossom awards 👏 🌱 Blossom has grown from an idea, to an app, to a movement and BlossomCon is the biggest testament to that. To see 2,000 folks from all different walks of life take time out of their weekend to connect, learn, and build financial literacy together is exactly what Blossom is all about and I am so fired up to keep building for this amazing community 💕 😍 Can't wait for BlossomCon Vancouver and New York!!! (https://www.blossomsocial.com/blossomcon2026) 👏 Special shout out to the Harvest ETFs team for being our Headline sponsor for the 3rd year in a row and to all our amazing sponsors for making this event possible 🙏
I am currently 47 years old. Unfortunately in that time frame I have lost a lot of family members. Some (most) were accidents, some to age, some to cancer, and one to suicide. That’s 11 deaths total. Only 1 person out of 11 had a will. When you are grieving the last thing you want to do is close an estate up. It’s even harder if nothing has been prepared in advance. After the initial shock of the death settles (the phase where everyone is usually nice), greed comes through in a most alarming manner. I’ve watched people turn into monsters. Make sure you have a will!!!! or people will fight.  I know most people hate thinking about their death or their spouses death but honestly it’s just a fact of life. I’ve personally been the executor of 2 estates now. This is my advice: 1. If your young get life insurance. If you’re retired it’s not worth it. 2. Make sure you have a will. 3. Make sure you have a personal directive. 4. Make sure you have a power of attorney set up. 5. If your married make your spouse the beneficiary of your TFSA and RRSP(has to be done through the account not the will), they will roll into the spouses account without taxation. 6. If you’re married, and you own a house, make sure both names are on the title, joint tenant, NOT tenant in common. This activates right of survivorship on property and doesn’t have to go through the estate. 7. If you’re married, both people should have their name on all the vehicles, joint, otherwise it’s a headache after death. 8. Buy a file folding system. I have a plastic one that has a clasp and handle. 9. Put EVERYTHING in this file folder that would be needed if you died tomorrow. a) all land titles B) information on house insurance so it can either be eventually canceled or name changed over. C) your will (or the location of your will),  power of attorney, and personal directive D) the information for your car, car insurance, and registration on vehicles. E) information on life insurance. F) all current year papers needed for filing your taxes. Because the survivor will have to do it and will need that information. G) where your household bills are. ALL OF THEM, electricity, gas, Netflix, magazine, subscriptions everything you can think of that is in their name. Because you are going to have to cancel them. H) their credit card information where to contact to cancel the cards I) birth certificate, SIN numbers, marriage, license, etc. J) information on all your investments accounts, bank accounts, etc. K) anything else you can think of for your situation If you’re married, I’d have one box per person. When you die, the funeral home will issue many death certificates. And your lawyer will give you copies of the will. These will be needed to change over any accounts. Everything else goes through the estate which is taxed and the lawyers take their fees so I’d avoid this as much as possible especially if you’re married. This is why having property in both people‘s names is so important because it doesn’t have to go through probate. I am widowed now and I have my black file folder and my two remaining children know if something happens to me, all they have to do is grab the folder. Everything they need to take care of my estate will be located in this folder. At the beginning of every year, I open this file up and go through everything to make sure it’s up-to-date. If you are young and do not own much or can’t afford a will, you can draft one up but it must be handwritten to be classified as a legal document. You cannot type it out!! If you’re not worth much, everything will most likely be sold to pay your bills and cover your funeral expenses. But you can state who your executor will be in your handwritten will.  Disclaimer I’m not a lawyer or an accountant and this is not legal advice. Talk to a lawyer and talk to an accountant. Make sure everything is set up for you and your situation. These are situations that I personally ran into. Good luck Also I’ll add in. IF you have a lot of assets make an appointment with your accountant first. They will tell you how to properly set things up. Then take that information to your lawyer. read more
At 8:30 this morning, Washington time, the Bureau of Labor Statistics will publish a single number, and everything this market has done for two weeks will either get validated or unwound. That is not drama for effect. Consensus says 3.4% headline inflation. After a negative payrolls print on Friday, a cool number today buries the September hike and greenlights the melt up. A hot one hands this market weak growth and sticky prices at record valuations, the one combination nobody owns a playbook for. There is no boring outcome priced anymore. Even boring is a bet. While we wait, something quietly changed in the tape this week, and it matters. Last week, every earnings beat got sold. AMD beat and fell. SpaceX beat and fell. SanDisk beat and fell. This week, $SMCI missed slightly on revenue and still jumped 9% because it disclosed more than $60 billion of new orders and a fiscal 2027 target near $70 billion, almost double this year. $CRWV rose 10% on a $104 billion backlog and, more importantly, told the street its NEW contracts carry margins 5 to 10 points fatter than the old ones. $LITE said demand for the optics that wire these data centers is sold out into 2027 with visibility stretching to 2028. Read those three together: the AI demand book no longer ends at next quarter, it now extends two years out, and the market has started paying for beats again instead of punishing them. When the reaction function flips like that, positioning has reset. That is what a digestion phase ending looks like. Even the dilution is getting bought. $INTC went out to raise $15 billion on Monday, was met with so much demand it upsized to $20 billion, and the market shrugged. Two weeks ago that raise would have been read as desperation. This week it reads as capacity. The counterweight sits in Mountain View. $GOOGL has bled almost 9% in a week, roughly $250 billion of value, not on earnings but on departures. When Jeff Dean walks after 27 years and the market takes a quarter trillion off the price, it is telling you something uncomfortable: in this era, the scarce asset is not compute or cash, it is the twenty people who know how to build the next model. Google still has the data, the chips and the distribution. What the market is repricing is the assumption that it keeps the people. And because Wall Street remains the greatest show on earth, consider what else happened this week. Trump Media revealed that more than ten customers have signed up for Truth API, its paid feed offering the fastest possible access to the President's posts, and the buyers are mostly high frequency trading firms paying between $60,000 and $100,000 a month. The product has been around for weeks. What is new is the confirmation that Wall Street actually wrote the checks. Sit with that. The words of the man who says "we have total control over the Hormuz Strait, we own it" are now literally a market data subscription, and the buyers are high frequency traders who intend to trade on them before you can read them. The same week, reports surfaced that the White House is weighing a capital gains tax cut as a midterm sweetener, and the SEC meets Friday to consider a framework that could put tokenized stocks on chains trading around the clock. The rules of the casino are being rewritten in real time, and speed to the croupier's lips now has a rate card. So here is the day. A cool CPI and this broadening, better financed rally probably runs into September with the demand book behind it. A hot CPI and we find out very quickly how much of the last two weeks was conviction and how much was relief. I am positioned for the range and insured for the tails, which is the only honest posture on a morning like this.read more
TIME! 😄 Are you still a $LULU lunatic? 🤣 ...or a buy-the-dip $META$ZETA beta? 😂 I no longer have TIME to update my portfolio on Blossom and I'm not linking my life savings to a 3rd party app that isn't federally insured. So I add today's portfolio return here as an image. 🏆😎 If interested, you can find the portfolio and returns at the Beskar Capital KTS website or here: https://www.blossomsocial.com/posts/The-Beskar-Capital-Comeback__POST-1786198266000-Yno9TsB4_qoQV3QbaHcPIAvML This is the Way! 🏄♀️🌊🏄♂️🌊🏄🌊read more
The wonderful world of personal finance allows for so many different iterations and ideas on how to essentially solve the same problem: how do you consume your portfolio when you get to retirement? Different tools allow for different ways to monetize a portfolio, and you can manage around all kinds of problems. Your own biases and investor behaviour matter. Do you like consistent monthly payments? Are you comfortable selling investments in down markets? Do you have the stomach for volatility? There are all kinds of financial tools available that can help shape a retirement strategy around those preferences. However, what those tools do not do is magically create additional return. There is no free financial transformation happening when an ETF converts uncertain future equity appreciation into current option premium. You are changing the shape and timing of the return, not creating return from nothing. I think this is one of the things many investors in covered-call ETFs don't fully understand. They see the monthly distribution hitting their account and naturally view that as income generated by the portfolio, but they don't always understand where that cash flow is actually coming from or what is being traded away to generate it. Now, some investors absolutely understand this. They understand the mechanics, accept the trade-offs and intentionally choose that type of strategy. But when you read many of the posts and comments around these products, there are clearly also investors who don't fully understand what is happening underneath the distribution. One common theme is people saying they like covered-call ETFs because they don't have to sell shares. However not selling shares does not mean you aren't consuming the portfolio. Cash leaving the portfolio is still cash leaving the portfolio. Whether that happens because you manually sell shares or because a fund distributes dividends, option premium, realized gains or return of capital, you still have to look at what is happening to the total value of the portfolio over time. Another common argument is that the income will protect them during a major market drawdown. What seems to get left out is that the amount of cash a portfolio can generate is still connected to the value of the underlying assets. If a $100,000 portfolio yields 15%, that represents $15,000 a year in cash flow not return. If the portfolio falls to $50,000 and still yields 15%, that same yield now represents only $7,500 a year in cash flow. The percentage didn't change, but the cash flow got cut in half. Now, covered-call premiums don't mechanically fall dollar-for-dollar with the market because volatility, strike selection, option pricing and the fund's strategy all matter. But the point remains: a high yield does not make a portfolio immune to falling asset values. Options have been used inside investment funds for decades, long before covered-call ETFs became popular with retail investors. There is no new magic formula being discovered here. These are established financial tools that have been used for years to monetize portions of a portfolio, manage risk, reshape return profiles and generate cash flow. They can be useful, and they will continue to be useful, but they are still just tools. What matters is understanding what the tool is doing, what you are giving up in exchange, and how it behaves in different markets conditions.read more
A lot of people say young investors should focus only on growth. I get it. The Growth on something like $SCHG is great But I still think ETFs like $SCHD, $VIG, or $VDY can make sense while you’re young You get great quality companies, growing dividends, and income you can reinvest I’m not saying dividends should be your whole portfolio. I personally am building about a 10% allocation I just don’t think you have to wait until retirement to care about them. Would you own dividend ETFs in your 20s, or focus only on growth? 👇 read more
One of the best parts about the Blossom community is how open everyone is sharing knowledge and experiences. To make things easier for anyone just starting their investing journey, here’s a simple glossary to help understand and simplify various terms. Common Terms: Dividend: A share of a company’s profits paid to shareholders, usually quarterly. Ex-Dividend Date: The cutoff date by which you must own a stock to receive its next dividend. ETF (Exchange-Traded Fund): A fund that holds multiple stocks or bonds, traded like a single stock. Covered Call ETF: An ETF that owns stocks and sells call options to generate extra income (higher yield, limited / capped upside). Earnings Report: A company’s quarterly financial performance summary. EPS (Earnings Per Share): A company’s profit divided by its number of shares. Market Cap: A company’s total value (share price × number of shares). ACB: The total amount you’ve paid for an investment, including the purchase price plus any fees or commissions. Book Value: The value of a company according to its financial statements (assets minus liabilities). Yield: Annual dividend as a percentage of the stock/ETF price. Liquidity: How easily an asset can be bought or sold without impacting its price. Volatility: The degree of price fluctuations in a stock or market. Index: A benchmark of stocks (e.g., S&P 500, Nasdaq, TSX). Bull Market: A period of rising stock prices and optimism. Bear Market: A period of declining stock prices and pessimism. False Breakout: When a stock’s price moves above (or below) a key level, making it look like a new trend is starting, but then quickly reverses back. P/E Ratio: Price-to-earnings ratio (stock price ÷ EPS), used to assess valuation. Blue Chip: Well-established, financially strong companies with a track record of stability. Diversification: Spreading investments across assets to reduce risk. Broker: A platform or firm that facilitates buying and selling investments. Limit Order: An order to buy/sell a stock at a specific price or better. Market Order: An order to buy/sell a stock immediately at the current market price. Bid/Ask Spread: The difference between the highest price buyers offer and the lowest price sellers accept. Dollar-Cost Averaging (DCA): Investing a fixed amount regularly to reduce the impact of market swings. Capital Gain/Loss: Profit or loss from selling an investment for more/less than its purchase price. IPO: When a company first sells shares to the public. Index Fund: A fund designed to mirror the performance of a market index. Short Selling: Selling borrowed shares, hoping to buy them back cheaper. Margin: Borrowing money from a broker to buy investments, which amplifies gains and losses. Margin Requirement: The minimum amount of your own money (equity) you must maintain in a margin account to open or keep a leveraged investment position. Margin Call: A demand from your broker to deposit more funds or sell assets because your account equity has fallen below the required margin level. Time Horizon: The length of time you plan to hold an investment before needing the money. Short horizons = more risk-sensitive, long horizons = more room to ride out volatility. Stock Split / Reverse Split: A split increases the number of shares (e.g., 2-for-1) while lowering the price per share. A reverse split reduces the number of shares (e.g., 1-for-10) while raising the price per share. Your overall value doesn’t change just the math. Long (Being Long): Buying a stock or asset because you expect the price to go up. Short (Being Short): Selling a stock you don’t own because you expect the price to go down, so you can buy it back cheaper later. TER: The total yearly cost of owning a fund, including the management fee plus other costs like administration, audits, and legal fees. MER: The annual cost that a fund charges for management (includes any leverage costs if used). Management Fee: A portion of the MER that goes directly to the fund managers for running the fund. Withholding Tax: A tax deducted on dividends/distributions from foreign investments (e.g., U.S. dividends to Canadian investors face a 15% withholding in TFSA/Non-Registered accounts). Total Returns: The full picture of an investment’s performance, including both price gains and dividends/distributions. CAGR: The average yearly growth of an investment over time. NAV: The price of one share of a fund (stock or etf) NAV Depreciation: When the fund’s share price goes down over time. Mutual Fund: A pool of money from many investors used to buy a mix of stocks, bonds, or other assets. Bond: A loan you give to a company or government, and they pay you back with interest. Asset: Anything valuable you own that can generate money. Portfolio: Your collection of investments. Option: A contract that gives you the right (but not the obligation) to buy or sell a stock at a set price. Future: A contract to buy or sell something at a set price on a future date. REIT: A company that owns real estate and pays investors income from rent. Alpha: A measure of how much better (or worse) an investment did compared to the market. Beta: A measure of how much an investment moves compared to the market. Sharpe Ratio: A way to see if returns are worth the risk taken. Hedging: Protecting your investments from risk. Rebalancing: Adjusting your portfolio back to your target mix of assets. FCF: Free Cash Flow Understanding these terms makes investing far less intimidating. If anyone feels other terms should be included, please share in the comments. I’ll update this post so we can build a complete beginner-friendly resource together! *Sorry tagged a few etfs for reach 🫣read more
Do You Feel Urged to Act? I was listening to episode 421 of the Rational Reminder podcast, and one part of their conversation with Barry Ritholtz really stood out to me. The idea was pretty simple. Financial media, news and social media create an environment of action. There always seems to be something we should be doing. Someone called a stock correctly. Someone found the next great ETF. Someone changed strategies and is outperforming. Markets are falling. Markets are climbing. Interest rates are changing. And then the algorithm keeps feeding us more of it. It creates FOMO. It makes us wonder what everyone else knows that we don’t. Eventually, doing nothing can start to feel like we’re making a mistake. I’m definitely guilty of this. I’m constantly trying to learn more, and I’ve changed my investing style over time as I’ve learned. I see investments doing well and wonder if I’m missing something. I look for that next piece of information that might give me an edge. I’m human. I feel that same pull toward action. But this conversation made me ask myself a really simple question: Does my portfolio actually need me to do anything? Because sometimes that action can actually be detrimental to our long-term results. That’s also why I try to consume information from a wide range of sources. I don’t think the answer is to stop learning or ignore good financial advice. Even as a DIY investor, having a financial plan and understanding why I’m investing the way I am matters to me. There’s even some irony in posting this on Blossom. Blossom is an amazing place to learn. But every day we’re also exposed to other people’s portfolios, returns, stock picks and strategies. Someone is always doing better somewhere. Seeing that doesn’t mean we need to change what we’re doing. When I started investing, I really wasn’t sure where to begin. My investing has certainly evolved since then, and I’ve made mistakes along the way. But the more I learn, the more I keep coming back to some pretty basic things. Starting matters. How much I contribute matters. Having a plan matters. Time matters. And compounding needs time to actually compound. Maybe constantly searching for the next edge can sometimes get in the way of the very thing we’re trying to accomplish. So I’m curious: Do you think the financial information you consume creates FOMO or makes you feel like you need to take action with your portfolio? https://open.spotify.com/episode/4toYGV6MW1hGz8Wn18CkjG?si=rMEHhQo1SQe77smoLw-c9A&utm_source=copy-linkread more
🎢As we enter the major earnings season in July, my portfolio has experienced extreme volatility with some major holdings experiencing daily price swings of more than 5%. It is during periods like this that a long-term investment approach becomes especially important, which will help investors take emotions out of the short-term price movements and focus instead on the long-term performance of the underlying businesses. The companies in my portfolio that have reported earnings so far are mostly showing steady growth in revenue and earnings, with some continuing to invest heavily in AI infrastructure to support future business expansions. I view this as a positive development and will discuss the details in the individual stock updates in the full post (see link in the comment). Software stocks experienced a moderate recovery in July which have helped increase my total portfolio value, but I believe my software stocks are still trading at levels far below their intrinsic values. I have continued to increase my positions in top quality holdings such as Constellation Software and Vitec Software to take advantage of these attractive valuations. Going forward as I enter the next stage of my FIRE plan, I will limit additional investments only to my registered accounts and the Smith Maneuver portfolio. All remaining excess cash flow will be redirected toward debt repayment, with the goal of reducing my fixed costs and strengthening my financial position. 📊 Here is a breakdown of my portfolio: TFSA: $193,013 -> $201,601 RRSP: $180,190 -> $194,231 ($5207 new contribution) Taxable: $582,439 -> $600,467 ---- Total: $955,642 -> $996,299 (excluding margin and options) You can find my full portfolio update using the link below, which includes additional information you may find interesting: - Updated DCF valuation based on latest earnings: $GOOGL$META$AMZN$MSCI$UNH$V$VIT.B - My Smith Maneuver Portfolio Update - All stock & option trades I made in the past month Here is the link to the full update in the pinned comment 👇read more
