Posted by As I was looking at my brokerage account, I noticed that I only have stock in 3 companies. The remainder of my holdings are in either mutual funds or ETFs. One is a US based oil company, one is a financial services company, and the other is a radio frequency tech company. The oil company is up by 24% and the others are down by 14% and 18%. I decided last year to slowly move to sector based ETFs rather than holding individual stocks. This is mainly to reduce volatility and avoid getting stuck holding stock in a lame company. The 3 ETFs in my brokerage account are AIPO, CIBR, and SHLD. Since they were acquired in the last 6 months, none of them are showing double digit gains. Overall, the balance is flat so far this year. That is expected with the sector mix I created.
Update: The day after I posted this, the price of CIBR dropped from $65.66 to $62.56. I sold at $63.24 and bought 100 shares of VZ at $47.60. Verizon’s ex-dividend date is 4/10/26. CIRB went down to $60.78 today (4/10/26). VZ is at $46.36, which is a good entry point, but may be too late for the 6.11% dividend.
In my last post, I was complaining about the lack of televised presidential updates from Trump. Well, he must have heard me because he gave us a televised update last Wednesday. It was described as self-congratulatory, puzzling, divorced from reality, and left viewers with more questions than answers. In more recent posts, Trump has been using profane words in an attempt to intimidate Iran into opening the strait. It is shocking to hear language like this coming from our president. I remember hearing Nixon talk like this on his secret tapes. But we have never heard talk like this in a public statement from a president. I fear that talk like this will likely backfire on Trump and prolong hostilities in the middle east.
It feels like the stock market is looking for any early sign that the war is coming to an end. It worries me when I hear Trump asking to double the funding for his department of war. Then suggesting that states should be the ones who fund healthcare and education. He proposed boosting defense spending to $1.5 trillion in his 2027 budget, the largest request in decades, reflecting his emphasis on U.S. military investments over domestic programs. Luckly, Congress, which handles federal spending issues, is free to reject it and often does. The takeaway is that this is a clear reflection of the administration’s values. The following is a direct quote:
“We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of daycare,” Trump said at a private White House event Wednesday. “It’s not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare — all these individual things,” he said. “They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal.”