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What I’m Buying: Energy Stocks

I normally like to have around $20 000-40 000 invested on the margin (money borrowed from my broker), which I can get at a really low interest rate (1.62% for the first $100 000 with Interactive Brokers) and then invested in dividend paying stocks that pay 3-5%, which leaves me with a nice profit of around 1-3% (after taxes) on that money. Except lately the markets have been going up and up and I’ve been…

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Some of my favorite dividend paying stocks

When you invest in dividend paying stocks, you invest like an old lady. It’s considered one of the most conservative ways that you could invest in individual stocks and in order to be effective, it has to be done over the very long-term. 10 years would be the absolute minimum I’d recommend and “forever” is even better. The hope is that I’ll eventually just be able to live well off the dividends I receive and…

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Ethical Investing

When I talk to friends and acquaintances about investing and personal finance related things, one of the questions that I’m often asked is about what kinds of companies I hold stock in. I list things like Mcondalds, Chevron, Pfizer and Wal-mart and one of the comments is inevitably, “Those companies are evil and harmful to the world!” My short answer is that nothing is black and white and that the world I live in is…

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Investing in Oil and Gas Stocks

Why I Love Investing in Oil and Gas Stocks A significant portion (~20%) of my portfolio can be found within this category.  While it is a big portion to have invested in one industry, I’ve done it for the following reasons: 1. Oil/Gas companies have a proven history of paying increasing dividends 2. They are some of the biggest/most profitable companies in the world 3. They are not going out of business in my lifetime…

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