Starting Speculative Portfolio

On my latest Updates post I talked about some more speculative investments that I have been making and will be making in the future. I just wanted to provide a little update regarding that.

Soon there will be a page called Speculative Portfolio keeping track of all of this under the Scott tab above. To get ready for that I have now removed all none dividend paying investments from my main Portfolio page. This includes Berkshire-Hathaway. Essentially any none dividend payers I’m classifying as speculative and/or growth.

This portfolio will be a relatively small portion of my total investments, as it should be given the much more risky nature of this kind of investing. Why do it then? Well, these also have the potential to become life-changing.

As an example, take First Mining Finance, traded on the pink sheets as FFMGF and also under the TSX Venture, as FF.V. It is up 150% right now since my two investments in it on 9/2015 and 3/2016. At one point I was up over 300%. Currently on a $2865 investment, I’m up $4260. In less than a year FFMGF is now my second largest profit investment outside of Apple. At one point this was up $8000!

The goal is to find more of these. The winners will hopefully cancel out the losers. I have 35% stop losses on the majority of these in case they move against me.

The speculative portfolio also includes foreign currency (Canadian dollars so far in a different mining stock) and will include direct investment into other foreign exchanges on Schwab’s Global Investing account. I also have a small position in Bitcoin (1.28759409 to be exact), worth about $820 right now (at $613/BTC). My cost basis in that is around $744.

Options, while they can be used in speculative manner, will be catalogued separately under the Scott’s Options page. I mostly use these to sell calls and puts to generate income, something I don’t consider speculative in nature.

Here’s my current speculative investments and current market value:

Company Sector Cost Basis USD Market Value (as of 9/9/2016)
Berkshire-Hathaway Financials $1631.87 $1759.44
First Mining Finance Materials $2864.94 $7131.84
Inovio Pharmaceuticals Healthcare $2002.12 $1899.96
Radware LTD Information Technology $1184.94 $1074.40
Uranium Energy Corporation Energy $369.67 $177.02
Brazil Resources Inc Materials $2468.95 $3953.60
Blackbird Energy Inc (traded in CAN$) Energy $2881.02 $3020.40
Bitcoin Currency $744.35 (578.10/BTC) $800.61
Total Profit $5541.85

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11 Responses

  1. Doug says:

    All investing is speculative. Just some more than others. I have a lot of stocks that I bought that looked good but didn’t end up that way. Now that I know more about DGI I will still add the speculative play especially if it looks good. I’ve actually done quite well though some didn’t turn out well. My most recent buy was one of those stocks small cap which have wide variances but it was up 300 percent lost a little on that but with lots of room to grow a few more adds it will continue to impress.
    Doug recently posted…Another BUY(add)My Profile

    • scott says:

      Thanks for commenting, Doug. It’s always fun to get those 300+% gains. In retrospect it would have been great to invest everything in that one stock! But, hindsight is always 20-20. Out of curiosity, what was the small cap stock you invested in?

      • Doug says:

        I’ve invested in a few UVE, MGIC and EVOL. They have all done decent but Evol missed earning but did make a profit and dropped a bunch so was able to add to that one also recently. I sold one early a non dividend player it was up big but had dropped down black diamond. Helped buy KO
        Doug recently posted…Another Dividend raiseMy Profile

  2. Amber tree says:

    Having a speculative portfolio is a great thing. I have one and i am loving it.

    I like the fact that you call options non speculative. I look at them in the same way.

    • scott says:

      Amber tree, thanks for commenting. I’m looking forward to investing more in my speculative account too! Options can go either way. I’d considering buying calls at earnings time to be on the more speculative nature…selling premium, definitely non-speculative.

  3. Interesting idea Scott. Do you have a methodology for selecting speculative plays? It isn’t my cup of tea, but I can’t imagine you are just firing from the hip and investing in companies based off of tips/articles from the news. What metrics have you added to your screener compared to your dividend screeners? Very interested to see how this plays out and I’m excited to see the results for you.

    Bert

    • scott says:

      Hey Bert,

      I just keep an open ear at the clubhouse and learn what all the rich people are investing in. No, just kidding. I don’t really have any added metrics to a screener per se. I get many of the ideas from listening to the twice weekly podcasts that Frank Curzio puts out (http://www.frankcurzio.com and iTunes). He and his interview guests provide very insightful information and education. He’s an entertaining guy to listen to as well, especially during the football season. I don’t blindly invest it what he recommends but instead research the companies beforehand and read about them on the resources available at Schwab as well as places like Seeking Alpha.

      Frank advocates a total return approach, which does include dividend payers (IBM was one of his more recent ones). While he is coming out with a paid newsletter, he definitely does not use the podcast platform as an advertisement at all. I highly recommend you guys check him out.

      Scott

  4. DivHut says:

    Wow, talk about a portfolio I would never feel comfortable with. And pink sheets listed stocks??? No thanks. While it’s nice to see some impressive gains with these names I fear the losses, over time, will outweigh any gains made. As I always say, personal finance is personal and if there is some methodology to picking these stocks and your risk tolerance is high enough then good for you. Thanks for sharing.
    DivHut recently posted…Dividend Portfolio Sector Allocation September 2016My Profile

    • scott says:

      Hi DivHut,

      That’s why it is considered speculative and will remain a small initial percentage of my total portfolio. However, don’t shy away from the pink sheets completely. Nestle, Daimler (maker of Mercedes), and SABMiller are all examples of big name companies that trade on the pink sheets, and I don’t consider those names speculative. Thanks for commenting!

  5. I guess I missed your last few posts. Sorry about that. I’m glad I saw this one. I’ve been doing the same thing the past few months. Not a bunch, maybe $15k invested in speculative stocks, mostly in mining, Silver and Lithium. Anyway, I like you idea to track these separately.
    Investment Hunting recently posted…Target Stock BuyMy Profile

    • scott says:

      No worries! I’ve already had quite a few nice winners in mining and the resource sector. I bet you’re doing quite well there now too. I had initially included these speculative stocks on my personal spreadsheet, but it started to get a little too messy. I’ll be creating another spreadsheet for my non-dividend payers pretty soon.

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