My Stock Holdings

More than half of our taxable investment assets are in individual stocks. Currently I have 14 stocks/ETFs at four discount brokerage firms plus ComputerShare, the DRIP program provider. Following is a list of stocks I own:

By far, LFC is my biggest gainer, up more than 270% since I purchased the stock on its IPO day at $25.16 per share. Actually, LFC is also my biggest single holding in all my investments, including mutual funds and stocks, in both taxable accounts and retirement accounts. With a market value of more than $50,000 as of yesterday, LFC accounts for nearly half of the total values and a quarter of all my taxable investments. Despite the huge gain, I have no plan to cash in any time soon as we don’t need the money. The biggest loser is, no surprise, NT, which has lost half of the market value since I purchased half of the shares I currently own in early 2004 at $6.67/share.

I add new shares of BAC, PGN, PEY, and PFM every month. The first two are through DRIP programs at ComputerShare, PEY is at Firstrade, and PFM is at ShareBuilder. The reason I continue to buy these stocks is that they are dividend-paying equities and I’d like to see them generate more passive income in the future. For rest of the holdings, I didn’t make any additional purchase after the initial investment, mainly because I don’t know how long I will hold them, though I no longer make any short-term trading as I used to. Unlike mutual funds, which I plan to use as a supplement to our retirement savings so we can start withdraw with these funds first and let our investments in tax deferred accounts such as IRAs and 401(k) grow as long as possible, these stocks, at least some of them, are short-term investments (though I have own some for several years) and I may sell them if we need cash.