Your Biggest Individual Stock Holding & Why ?

[Henry Lili]

Clorox

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[Senator]

IVW at 46% of the portfolio
IVV at 19% of the portfolio

I am accumulating more IVV every month.

 

[Rick_Head]

Individual stock or ETF, now or in the past?

My largest is XIU ( Canadian market). Second is VTI.

Individual stocks?
- currently CNR tripled since I bought it in 2009
- earlier, my former megacorp. Sold most options at 18X strike price, some more and some less. At one time these options were 90% of my NW.

Before you try to subscribe to my newsletter, I also have a few$ in stocks that have gone kaput and been delisted. I do get to write them off as a tax loss so it's only "really bad", not "incredibly really f...ing bad"..

 

[Cat-tirement]

Bought a little bit of Apple in a small "play money" account in late 2000. Bought and sold a handful of times over subsequent years, taking some profits and a couple of losses. At the high point it was (unintentionally) up to about 22% of portfolio. After additional sales, and growth of other holdings, that is down to about 13% now. I plan to have it under 10% before the end of the year as having that large a chunk in a single stock makes me a bit nervous after ER last year.

 

[Coolius]

Mulligan & I share a similar income investment strategy; I have 70% of my portfolio in income issues, including individual corporate bonds. The rest are in Vanguard Wellington & Wellesley funds.

Largest position is WFC-PL, formerly a Wachovia Preferred absorbed by Wells Fargo. Giving a 6.3% yield, qualified dividend, investment grade. Convertible, so non-callable.

Other large positions are some Utility Preferred Issues.

 

[clifp]

Right now it is Berkshire <11% Intel is 9% Berkshire because I think it will (and has) respond uniquely to a financial crisis. Intel because my cost basis is so low I hate pay tax. I am donating my Intel shares gradually to a charitable trust.

 

[Totoro]

Mine is Philip Morris International (PM). 2% of my net worth (roughly).

[Edit] Forgot to mention why: high cash flow, loyal consumers, internationally diverse so less legal risk, growing customer base in some countries, government depends on high but legal prices. Tobacco has a fantastic performance too vs. S&P-500 in the past 100 years. And extremely stable in market meltdowns.

Only moral downside is I own part of a business that kills.

 

[RE2Boys]

Taxable account individual stock? Lowes 1999 at around (split adjusted) $15 per share basis. Now about $60

 

[jfn111]

About 9% in MO
I started acquiring shares in 1979 as part of the ESOP plan and then added on in the company 401K plan.
I keep planning on cutting back to no more then 5% but they keep sending me those pesky dividend checks.

 

[aaronc879]

About 9% in MO
I started acquiring shares in 1979 as part of the ESOP plan and then added on in the company 401K plan.
I keep planning on cutting back to no more then 5% but they keep sending me those pesky dividend checks.

Don't you just hate that. PM gives me a whole dollar for every one of their shares every quarter. Those bastards

 

[unclemick]

Chevron 1.8% originally a Mobile DRIP circa 1990. AT&T bought as a baby bell DRIP about 1989 - .3% of portfolio. After 22 years of ER 1993 to present index funds are 95-96% of total portfolio depending on Mr Market.

However male ego/lust springs a turtle so I may/probably will dabble in 'a few good stocks' for old age(read when I croak) bragging rights type donations.

heh heh heh - however the new wife has some er remodeling ideas . Makes for interesting discussions. Just finished a kitchen remodel so we know how the last one went. Hindsight back to 1966 says that index funds and don't look were my best choice. And that's including ten baggers which my crystal ball didn't buy enough of.

 

[kcowan]

Apple 8%. I bought it (just last year) because I think it still has excellent growth potential. It also has a growing dividend that isn't at risk of dropping given they have a larger cash reserve than any other company.

2100 shares after selling off half a few years ago.

A large Canadian bank that I used to work for. Acquired shares through option exercises and low cost loans. Much too big a part of my portfolio but total return over the last 18 years has been about 12.5% CAGR. Over time my plan is to continue to diversify more but the tax hit will be significant.

I have just invested in RY and NA and topped up TD last Tuesday. Partly this is because of your success with sticking to the knitting. Incidentally they are all up.
200 TD at 51.37 up 2.73%
345 NA at 44.29 up 5.66%
370 RY at 73.81 up 3.32%
to fill up $21000 in TFSAs and $27000 in RESP. TD seems to be the laggard.

But I do have the feeling it was too soon...is there anything we do not know about at this point?
Greece old news
China old news
Oil patch old news
US Politics probably positive for Canada

Of course I now have a buffer for some bad news...

Apple. Because Apple!

Well, really because I knew I wanted to buy it back in 2002 when I heard about the iPod and thought, "this will change everything", but didn't have means. I waited until 2008 and again 2011 when I thought it was undervalued, and it turns out I was right so far.

I'm an Apple guy. Apple stuff everywhere, and the old adage goes "buy what you are." That said, it's somewhere around 2% of total holdings, not including what's accounted for in Total Market Index funds.

It is our most successful holding since 2001. We had no Apple products back then. Now we have three. Still hanging onto an HP laptop that I was worth $300 a few years ago when the telco was giving them away along with a PVR to get new subscribers.

Bought a little bit of Apple in a small "play money" account in late 2000. Bought and sold a handful of times over subsequent years, taking some profits and a couple of losses. At the high point it was (unintentionally) up to about 22% of portfolio. After additional sales, and growth of other holdings, that is down to about 13% now. I plan to have it under 10% before the end of the year as having that large a chunk in a single stock makes me a bit nervous after ER last year.

We sold all of our holding when it reached $75 and bought back half when it dropped to $52 and decided to let it ride. We are still holding that for better or worse, although we cannot believe the PE of 14. Zero premium for growth. 2100 shares. And a dividend too! Our most lucrative holding since Jones Soda.

 

[gomo]

Altria -MO


In May of 2009 I sold off all the stocks that I had a loss on and put most of that into MO. Now we own over 9,600 shares with a cost basis under $20. Currently about 23% of our taxable portfolio and 25% of our dividend income in the taxable portfolio.


MO is nice enough to give us a raise every year and later this month we'll get another. I am thinking $2.24. Owning MO is one of the biggest reasons I was able to retire 3 years ago at 37.

 

[eta2020]

KO
It will be around and paying ever increasing dividends loooong time from now.

Fairly big amounts of PM, MO, JNJ, CL, PG, HD, LOW for a same reasons.....

 

[eta2020]

Berkshire Hathaway. I bought it for the generous dividends.

It is actually loaded exclusively with Dividend growers or acquired companies which were dividend growers not to mention huge amount of KO

Good choice!!!

 

[googily]

It used to be Amazon, bought for $35ish in 2000/2001, but finally decided to take some profits earlier this year when our ROI got to the 1100% mark.

(Kept a few shares, though, just for the fun of it)

 

[gcgang]

Stock-MDU. Bot in 1981 to take advantage of tax break for reinvested dividends. Kept doing it after tax break expired. Haven't sold cuz my tax bracket won't drop for another year, and it's less than 5% of total portfolio. Now take dividends in cash.

Fund-IVWAX. About 6% of portfolio. I like their objective of lower volatility. Execution by managers has been credible.


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[Fermion]

Amazing that everyone made an excellent choice in their biggest individual stock holding and nobody listed Radio Shack as their largest holding.

Are we all just excellent stock pickers? Makes me wonder why we index...

 

[aaronc879]

Amazing that everyone made an excellent choice in their biggest individual stock holding and nobody listed Radio Shack as their largest holding.

Are we all just excellent stock pickers? Makes me wonder why we index...

My second largest position is CVX and I paid $109/share. Not all good picks.

 

[nuke_diver]

Not exactly sure...it used to be IBM but since it's off it's highs it might not be. I bought it years ago (I think my post split pps is $5-6 ). In terms of numbers of shares it's either TXN since I used to work for them and bought stock with an ESPP or CY my last company which I had RSU from.

Prior to moving my TI 401K to my Spansion (now CY) one it was TXN since I also has about 7% of that 401K in TXN stock but I cashed that out in order to move it over

 

[splitwdw]

Amazing that everyone made an excellent choice in their biggest individual stock holding and nobody listed Radio Shack as their largest holding.

Are we all just excellent stock pickers? Makes me wonder why we index...

I'm a common sense stock picker. I've always had my core of 10 to 15 blue chip stocks and 1 or 2 speculative stocks. I'm almost all in the stock market with individual stocks in all our accounts (taxable and non-taxable). Granted I'm younger than some of the people on this forum and maybe I'll change my asset allocation when I'm older. For now, I enjoy the stock market.

 

[Totoro]

Are we all just excellent stock pickers? Makes me wonder why we index...

Survivorship bias?

If a stock goes up x2 it takes up a bigger portion of the total.

Arcelormittal was my second biggest buy, went down with 30% in the last three years. So by no means my biggest holding anymore

 

[Lucantes]

Facebook, representing 3.7% of my total stock investments (only 1.55% of our total investable net worth). Bought it cheap after the IPO and really just holding it as a longterm potential big winner (hopefully?).

 

[Danmar]

I have just invested in RY and NA and topped up TD last Tuesday. Partly this is because of your success with sticking to the knitting. Incidentally they are all up.
200 TD at 51.37 up 2.73%
345 NA at 44.29 up 5.66%
370 RY at 73.81 up 3.32%
to fill up $21000 in TFSAs and $27000 in RESP. TD seems to be the laggard.

But I do have the feeling it was too soon...is there anything we do not know about at this point?
Greece old news
China old news
Oil patch old news
US Politics probably positive for Canada

Of course I now have a buffer for some bad news...

Looks like this might be very good timing. I think the banks were oversold at those levels. More bad news, maybe, but I'm more inclined to think the U.S. results especially for TD will be strong when they release Q3 on Aug 27. As you know I haven't bought a bank share since the crises, but if I was buying this would have been a good time I think. 4% div yield and very low payouts create a pretty good support floor in this envireonment as well. Cheers

 

[audreyh1]

Apple. We've owned it since the 90s. Has grown to around 5% of net worth, I think, finally surpassing the leftovers from my old company stock.