Quick Update: September blues, stocks I bought this week
A list of the stocks I added to this week
In case you missed it, last month I posted the stocks I hold in my after-tax stock portfolio, which you can view here.
As noted, I usually buy stocks that I plan to hold long-term. In most of my accounts, I automatically invest. In my ETF account at SoFi which is primarily for dividend income, I invest weekly (you can see my ETF holdings here). However in my after-tax stock account at Charles Schwab, I manually invest, although I try to keep investing and try to add to my positions at least twice a month.
The September Effect
September historically has been the worst-performing month for stocks. Since 1980, if you were to average monthly returns, September has been the only negative month historically.
Of course, you can’t just blame a down month on seasonality, but September has been down 0.9% since 1980 while all the other months have been positive.
Buying During Down Markets
I’ll go more into detail in my next newsletter about how I deal with investing when the market is down, but it’s something I’ve been doing for decades. I don’t try to time the market, but I do try to buy more during market pullbacks. I mentioned that I try to add to my stock positions once a month, but during a down month, like this one has been, I try to add on at least twice a month, if not more.
Over the past 7 days, I bought BRK/B (which I buy anytime I buy or add to any stock), COST, KO, BAC, O, META, GOOGL, and XOM, as seen below.
In my next personal finance newsletter, I’ll discuss investing when the market is down, the “4800 rule” I use with investing and more.
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