October

Hello everyone and welcome to the start of the 4th quarter! In my opinion, the most exciting quarter. 

There are a couple of things I want to go over;

1. The Evergrande debacle

2. USA possibe fefault

3. Even more worries over a stock market crash.... or the crash of everything

In all honesty, I purposefully decided to ignore the entire Evergrande mess. I wanted to see how badly my portfolio would be affected after whatever trouble would occur. Over the last month, I was down -$478.23. Over the last quarter, I was down -$16.41. Meaning the entirety of the last 3 months worth of profits were completely wiped out. That's not to say I am doing bad though, As of October 3rd, 2021, I am up +$1,261.05. To be frank, I considered this Evergrande event to be temporary and one where you would take advantage of the cheaper prices that followed. Many people panicked and immediately started selling due to the idea that this was going to be a second Great Recession what with debt being the main problem tied with housing. Which leads to my second topic; USA possibly defaulting. Now I for one look at this and I just can't believe that this is possible at all. Yeah 2008 happened and everything but to haver an entire COUNTRY default... That, In my opnion, would cause en extreme chaos at a global scale not seen since ever. I highly doubt the US will default and even if it does, there's no way they are just going to let not only americans but the entire planet go through such trouble. If you have the monetary reserve, this would be am amazing long term buying opportunity. That's overall how I would treat this, just one big buying opportunity even if the market crashes. I mean so what if it crashes? You get to buy in cheaper, you only lose money if you sell, and I am still being paid dividends. Have a strong stomach people!

It's currently the 8th of October. Markets will be closed this coming Monday for Columbus Day which means my investing day will be pushed to Tuesday on the 12th. Stock market has made a bit of a recovery this week following the grim outlook that started the month though that's not to say people aren't cautious still. The FED still has yet to increase interest rates yet and a government debt ceiling deadline is looming. Lots of tension but it seems the markets have temporarily cooled off. Real world news aside, I've added two more companies to the portfolio. I haven't yet added a position on them but hopefully they get bought in Tuesday's coming $250 buy. Introducing American Electric Power Company Inc. (AEP), an all-electric utility company supplying electricity to 11 states in the USA. And Automatic Data Processing Inc. (ADP), a global cloud-based processing unit providing solutions to all things management (the place where I work at actually uses ADP to manage payrolls)! Now I like ADP quite a bit more than AEP for a few reasons;

1. It has been increasing it's dividend for a longer time compared to AEP (over 3 decades)

2. It has a substantial amount of less debt compared to AEP (over $30 BILLION less)

3. ADP has about$2 Billion more than AEP in cash reserves

4. Finally, ADP, on top of increasing its dividend for a longer time compared to AEP, it also has a higher dividend growth rate.

Now that's not to say that these reasons are here to knock off AEP as a stock to just throw to the wayside. By all means, there are definitely great things about AEP that not many other companies offer. 

1. AEP has been paying out a dividend for 32 years putting it at aristocrat status

2. Has been increasing its dividend for over a decade now

3. AEP's payout ratio is little high in my opinion but for the past couple of years, it has been stable (ADP has roughly the same payout ratio)

4. AEP has a higher dividend yield and costs about $120 less to buy