055 - How Our Van Life Portfolio Mitigates A "Riskier" Investing Approach

Today we’re going to give you an update on your dividend focused portfolio. 

Our strategy combines high yielders with awesome tried and true dividend companies, 

many of which grow their dividends year over year. 

Even with 30%+ losses in 3 stocks, our portfolio is still out performing the current market.

So let’s cover which stocks we’re currently holding.  

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Ticker metrics change as markets and companies change, so always do your own research. The content in this podcast is based on personal experience and is for educational purposes, not financial advice. See full disclaimer here.

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Transcript

Welcome to Roaming Returns, a podcast about generating a passive income through investing so that you don't have to wait till retirement to live your passions. Today we're going to give you an update on the Get Busy Living portfolio. Our strategy combines high yielders with awesome tried and true dividend companies, many of which grow their dividends year over year.
Even with losses of 30 plus percent in three separate stocks, our portfolio is still outperforming the current market. So let's cover which stocks we're actually holding. What's up? All right.
So hopefully last week you guys got some awesome ideas for like a conservative to us, maybe not to everyone approach, but conservative to us, with a... While still beating the market. We're beating the market, yeah. And this week we are going to be giving you our Living in the Van Down by the River portfolio.
Living in the Van Down by the River. You got to remember that Saturday Night Live skit with Chris Farley when he was like, I'm living in a van down by the river. Is that where that came from? Yeah, it was a Chris Farley skit.
That's actually really funny. I had no idea that was a skit. It was a Chris Farley skit.
So what is your definition of living in a van? I think most people consider this more risky, but to us it's calculated risk. As I go through the portfolio, you'll see we have ones that we specifically use to generate income, and then we have other ones that we use that are less risky to create dividend reinvestment. I'll describe it, how it works all together, but 60% is in stocks, 40% is in ETFs, and we have 30% of the 40% is in risky money-making stuff, and then the other 10% are in dividend growers.
That's a strategy we'll actually be talking about in a couple episodes from now, why we do it that way. When we do the YieldMax episode again. Revamped.
Revamped. Now that we've learned a lot of stuff. When we have some data to go off of, like what's the best one, what's the worst one.
We'll get into that in that episode, but I'll explain it all. This is riskier. These five I'm going to mention at the top are riskier, and then everything else seems to be pretty good.
Except for we have ICON, and we have Camping World, and NPW Medical Properties. We still have those because- You always got to have losses somewhere. We lost it.
We'll explain why. The very first one, this is one that I found in April. April.
April. I watched it for a little while. I finally pulled the trigger in May and purchased shares of it in May.
It's called FEPI. It is similar to QQQY, if you're familiar with that one. It's like a high income yielding thing.
It's similar to the YieldMax's in that it has a pretty high yield. The biggest difference between this one and any other high yield ETFs that I've found is they actually hold stock in the companies that they hold. They hold stock.
They don't hold options. YieldMax is options. Bit.O is options.
They hold options on futures or options on ... If you do the Tesla TSLY, the Tesla YieldMax, they hold options on Tesla's stock, but they actually don't hold Tesla's stock, whereas FEPI actually holds the company's stock. I find that to be less risky and more sound. It's more sound financially.
Yes. That one, like I said, it's newish. We're only up 3% in that one as of now, but we did collect $1.16 per share dividend.
The first dividend was $1.16 per share. That was pretty tight. Like I said, I do really like that one because they actually hold the stock and it's not as volatile.
When you hold the stock, it holds Tesla's stock, whereas TSLY holds Tesla options. When Tesla has a down day, it seems to me that the Tesla options YieldMax really goes down, whereas the FEPI portion with Tesla doesn't go down there as much. It's just a guess.
I don't have any data to back it up. It's what it looks like when I look at it. FEPI doesn't have a lot of volatility, whereas the YieldMax ones do.
I like that. That's number one of our money makers. Like I said, we got $1.16, the first dividend.
The second dividend was, I believe, that's not coming out. I'll know more about that. I can mention that it will come out on the 20th of this month, 20th or 23rd or something like that.
Today is the 23rd. It will come out Monday, like the 24th. I don't know when it's going to announce its payment and its record day and its ex-dividend date because it goes month to month.
When they do the month to month to month, sometimes it's on the Friday and sometimes it's on the Monday. It's really confusing. The second one in our income portion, our money maker as I call it, is QQQY.
We've held that one for a while. I've actually took 25% of our holdings in that off the table. I don't like what it's doing.
I figured out why it's a covered put. Now, the difference between a covered call and a covered put, not to just get too technical, covered call is, I don't know. I really don't.
Don't know what a covered call is? I know what they are, but I don't know how to describe it. Covered call, you hold the stock and you're selling calls on it. A covered put, so I'm assuming a covered put, you hold the stock and you're putting a put.
Yeah. That's what that sounds like to me. Put goes down or a call goes up.
I don't know. All I know is the covered put ones, there's a couple of them. There's a QQQY and there's another one.
It's a D one. I forget. The same thing, but they actually don't go up.
They continue to go down because if you're doing covered puts, it'll just continue to go down and down and down and down. There's no price appreciation from what I've seen. We're in a bull market.
QQQYs went down every month. Why would you get into something that's continuously going down? That kind of sounds like that staking dilution of share type thing that a lot of the crypto We're up 6% now because what they do is they make so much income off their put that they can cover their losses for the month. But there's going to come a point when it can't go down anymore and then they're not going to be able to make more money off it.
But if they're covering their losses every month, how the hell is it going down? It should be a break even price wise. I don't know. Yeah, that sounds sketchy.
We're in one of those. Yep. Yep.
We're trying it out. Are we up in it? We're up 6%. Okay, then.
We've collected $2.45 in dividends. How long have we been in that? Since February. I mean, that's not a long track record.
That's four months. Okay. Is that how long that you feel good about? No, that's one that I'm probably going to dump.
I'm going to dump that one at some point. Get out while we're break even. That'll be in my email when I dump that one.
People will be like, what? What did you dump that one for? I mean, I'd like the high yield behind it. But like I said, there's going to come a point when they can't pay a high yield because they don't have the underlying money and assets to justify the yield. Yeah, that just sounds sketchy for sure.
Okay, the third moneymaker is ULTY. It's a yield max one. What this one does is it's strictly like the other ones.
If you read the yield max page, they'll say the Tesla yield max or the Coinbase yield max. Invest in Tesla and Coinbase and make money or make a dividend. ULTY one is literally an options trade.
They go in and they find good options plays. These are companies I'd never even heard of. Half of them.
They change every month. I like the fact that that's actually just an option one. They don't screw the whole just singular, singular stock focus of an options.
Well, I think there has to be some benefits of trading one stock because then you start to understand the patterns if you're hyper focused on it. That actually has some credo. But at the same time, if you're using a specific strategy, you should in theory be able to apply that to a whole bunch.
And this is another one that I found in April that we pulled the trigger on in May. And we're down 1% in this one, but that we actually got our first dividend this month and we're actually up 3%. But this is as of June 1st.
All these Delta data. And this is as of June 1st. But I like the concept of their trading options on smaller companies.
There's more involved. The more volatile the small company is, the better it is for options traders and the more the higher percentage, the higher probability that they make money on their options trade because of the volatility. So I actually like it.
It's strictly a smaller cap kind of options trade. I like ULTY a lot. I do see it actually, I think it just touched the lowest it's ever been.
So if you're a contrarian investor like me, it's time that I probably load up on more ULTY stocks because we got it at a really low price to begin with. We'll see how that one goes. We'll probably check back in at six months and be like, wow, ULTY had to sell all that one.
It happens. The next two are going to be in our portfolio. Like FEPI is going to be in the portfolio for like however long I want it to be in.
But these next two are going to be in the portfolio probably as long as I need money on the road. Be my guest. The first one is USOI.
It's the exchange traded note on oil. Yeah. So basically if you think that we're going to be using oil for the foreseeable future, which I do.
So I would load it up on it. So we got into that one in seven of 2023. So we have that one for a year now.
The difference between an exchange traded note and an exchange traded fund. Well, that was tough to say. Exchange traded note versus exchange traded fund.
The note, basically they will just buy options on paper of the commodity. Like there's one in silver, there's one in gold, and there's one in oil. I still don't completely understand this whole thing, but sure.
Sounds great. Not like USOI. Like I said, we've been in that one forever and we're up 12% in that one.
We've collected $12.57 in dividends in the last year. It's dividend yields and it's usually between 18% and 20% depending on the price of the ETN. Now, if you actually held this before and you sold it or you looked at it before and then you got back into it, you're probably surprised.
This is one where it was trading at like $7 or $8 and then they did some tinkering with the shares and they called a lot of them back and it now trades at like $70 a share. So it will open your eyes. When I got back into it, I was like, whoa.
And then the fifth moneymaker is the YMAX. It's the yield max of all their ETFs. This is the one we were talking about previously where anytime they come out with a new one, like they just came out with a new one a couple of weeks ago, the gold miners ETF.
And the week before that was like a Bitcoin shortage one, a Bitcoin short and a Bitcoin one. And anytime they add a new ETF, which I'm assuming they're going to be because these yield max ETFs are getting so much press on the social media and people are just dumping like millions of dollars into them. So they'll keep doing these.
Anytime a new one comes out, YMAX automatically picks it up. So you don't have to worry about trying to do I sell something to get the new one that I really like. It just picks it up.
I like that. And basically, it's basically an equal balance portfolio of all the yield maxes. We got that in four of 24 and we are up 8% in that one.
That would be really cool. They eventually get to like almost an index fund of yield. Okay.
We only collect two dividends in the YMAX so far, but I fully expect to be in this one forever. I like the concept. I don't think yield maxes are going anywhere anytime soon.
And I'd rather just have it. It's basically like a fund to fund type thing. So for example, you really like what they got going on with the JP Morgan one.
Or if you like what they got going on with the Magnificent 7 one, well, you don't have to worry about putting money into those because you already have money in YMAX and YMAX picks them up equally. So I like the concept of the equal distribution of all that. Yeah.
Like I just said, it kind of is like an index funding type thing at some point. I kind of think if it keeps going, it's going to be like index fund of options trading, which will be kind of really interesting, really cool. The difference between YMAX and FEPI, again, is YMAX has options on their options.
Options on their options. Whereas FEPI, I really like FEPI and I hope it does well just from the concept of they actually hold the stock. I can't get over that enough.
That's a huge difference. But those are our five money makers. And that's what we were kind of getting at last week.
Like I was running the numbers like once we sell the condo, I'm just going to dump $30,000 of the condo sales equally amongst those five. So $6,000 a piece. And once I do that, we'll be able to actually generate between $1,700 and $2,000 a month just on those five with $47,000 plus almost $48,000 in them.
So that way, everything else that I'm about to go over, we can just let compound. Yeah. And we'll explain that strategy down the road.
But that's something that we've discussed at length. And that's a risky decision that we decided is worth the trial and error. Okay.
So now we're going to go into ETFs that I am planning on holding long term. And I'm just letting compound. I let the drip on depending on the valuations.
And sometimes I turn the drip off if it gets too expensive. And there's a couple in here you'll see that I actually had to turn the drip off of. But I digress.
The first one is AMZY. It's the yield max that deals with Amazon. I just think whoever is running that one is doing a great job.
Its returns have been consistent. Its dividends have been consistent. And it's been a plus in the green.
Is that what they say? In the green. In the green. Ever since we bought it.
We got that in September of 2023. In the black? And we were up 43% in that one. So we've made a pretty good amount of money in the Amazon one.
Again, e-commerce isn't going anywhere anytime soon. And Amazon is like this is one of the ones. This is like the poster child if I was going to say, Why buy Amazon stock when you could own an Amazon options yield max? Where you get income every month from basically the price of Amazon going up.
This is one. We have two other ones that do the same. No, three other ones that do the same exact thing.
I probably won't ever get rid of them. We have three more yield maxes to go. But we'll get to them.
The next one is BITO. I did mention this, I forget, two weeks ago. Last week.
I don't remember. BITO is basically an ETF that trades on Bitcoin futures. And what Ymax just came out or YieldMax just came out with a ETF that trades on BITO options.
So if you want to get exposure to Bitcoin and you're thinking about the YieldMax approach, do your research on that one. Because you're basically, the YieldMax one is trading BITO options. And so you might as well just hold the underlying security in that regard.
Because BITO pays a pretty good dividend. We got that in 11 of 23. And we are up 96% in that one.
It yields 18% currently at the current 12 month backwards dividend thing or whatever. Year to date? No, how they do the yield. The growing 12? Yeah, the growing 12 yield.
Okay. The second YieldMax that I'm going to hold for probably at least another year, maybe 18 months, is the CONY. C-O-N-Y.
It's the Coinbase YieldMax. Oh, yeah. If you've listened to us, you know how bullish that we are on cryptocurrency.
And this being that the halving occurred in April, that crypto generally follows the pattern of after the halving, it goes up for 12 to 18 months after the halving date. And then it starts to do its crypto winter thing. So the Coinbase YieldMax ETF actually has an end date where I actually will have to sell it.
But in the meantime, I'm going to ride that. With this one here, I put $1,000 into it. I made my $1,000 in profit.
And I took the $1,000 out. So everything that's in Coinbase is all profit. How much do we have in that one right now for the example? Because again, we put the $1,000 in.
We took the $1,000 out because it went up so high valuation wise that we decided to take We have $780 right now. So we made 75% or put $1,000 in and we made $750. So technically we have no money in this.
So this is all house money. All profit. And it's continuing.
You have the drip on on that one, I assume. So it's continuing to pick up shares, which means that snowball, that cash cow keeps rolling, keeps rolling, keeps rolling. So our total return on the Coinbase one, we bought that in September.
So it's been 10 months, 9 months. It's 541%. We got that.
I got that one at ridiculously cheap price. And their dividend in that one, because crypto is all the rage right now, their dividend is usually between $2 and $3 per share. And how expensive is it? $23, something like that.
So that puts it at like... $23. That's like a 100% yield? Yeah, they do have a 100% yield. The last three or four months, it's been over 100% or over.
Yeah. So this is like when we bring up the YieldMax, this is a poster child of why YieldMax is a high reward. But if you curtail the risk, it's like a lower risk, higher reward than actually trying to find growth stocks.
Yeah, this is so much lower risk than bonds where your money's locked up. Speaking of bonds, well, that's a good segue. Did you know? No, I didn't.
I didn't even realize. I can't see that from here because I'm blind as a bat. Okay, the next ETF we have is DSU.
Basically, it's a bond fund. We got that in July, so we've had this one almost a year. This thing literally has just traded sideways for like a year.
Which is awesome, actually. It yields 10.36% and we are up 21% in this one. We bought it at $9.95 and it's currently at $10.99, so it's going up a dollar in like a year.
But that's with... If you got bonds when we banged the table about bonds, last year you would have made a shit ton more than what we've made in DSU. But I just like the whole concept. They just do all the work for you.
You don't have to like hunt through and find all the C-U-I or C-U-S-P, whatever the hell it is. Cusps. You have to find the bond and you have to trade and everything.
They do all that for me, so I just bought the fund. Like I said, it's yielding 10%. I like it.
I'll hold that one. This one is probably... We'll never get rid of it. Yeah.
DSU sounds like a hold for lifer type deal. And then the next one's a hold for lifer. Like this is one that there's a constant... If you research... It's a heated debate.
If you research this one, it always pulls up. It's sister one, which isJEPI. What's a really, really lame analogy where like nerds fight over something really stupid? It's like basically the lamest stuff.
I'm thinking of Big Bang Theory. JEPQ is the next one we hold. We've had this one since September of 2022.
We've had this one for two years now. And anytime you research JEPQ, JEPI is always the one that everyone's recommending. I don't know why.
So it's this like Ford versus Chevy crap. JEPQ or JEPI? And it's currently trading at 54. So it's really high.
We got this one at 44. So we've made $10 is all. But we've made $8 in dividends.
And then we're up 47%. So we're up like 23% per year. This one, they hold like Nvidia, Apple, Amazon.
They hold all the good shit. And I just like JEPQ. I'll never get rid of this one.
This is another one I've actually... I've actually taken out my initial investment already in JEPQ. So it's all profit. And we're at like $3,000.
We have so much money in this one. And it's all profit. It's all profit.
And you said it's 23% yield per year? Yeah. Jesus. That is like... I can see why.
Its current yield is 11% according to Yahoo and Schwab and all that. But if you actually look at the actual total returns, it's returning 23% per year. And the fact that we're up $3,000... With no money in.
With no money in. There's no reason to actually pull any money out of this one. So this one, I'm just going to let roll.
This is a... Ride or die. Keep making me money. Ride or die.
Okay. The third yield max that we're going to hold for probably ever is MSFO. It's the Microsoft yield max.
We got this in September of 23. I feel like this should have been my argument. Microsoft versus Apple.
I thought we overpaid at the time. We paid $20.69 for this and it's currently at $22.09. So it's not up a shit ton. I mean Mac.
But we're up 40% now because the dividends... The monthly dividends... This is like when we discussed monthly dividend payers versus quarterly dividend payers versus semi-annual and annual. The reason that I like... If I have two possible investment ideas in front of me and one's a monthly dividend and the numbers are similar and the other one's a quarterly or semi-annual, I will always go with the monthly one because it compounds faster. Yep.
It compounds more so you get a little edge. Because according to their website, the Microsoft one is only like a 23% yield but we're up 40% in less than a year. Well, did I tell you what I found out about credit cards? This is another thing.
I thought credit card interest was monthly. It's daily. It's daily.
I didn't know that. I don't know how I didn't know that. As many credit cards as I have.
No. We've tinkered around with some of those daily things. Like I did.
There's a... But I'm just saying that credit cards have an even bigger advantage over us who have debt. Because there are a couple of funds out there. ETS, if you're familiar with it, they're called zero DTEs.
Basically, they just do options every day and income they make, they give it to you every week. Those are the weekly ones. But you said you didn't... I didn't like that one.
We did try that out and Tim wasn't a fan. I tried that and like we lost like 2%. I had it for a month.
We lost like 2%. The dividends were only like I want to say maybe 80 cents for the month per share when I was like, well, fuck, dude. Yieldmax does better than that.
I'll just do Yieldmax. That's when I got into ULTY. Right on.
So Microsoft, we're at the point now where I have to start debating when I'm going to pull out the initial investment in Microsoft. It's probably going to be some point this year, but we're not up enough in it to justify that. If I took my thousand out now, it would only leave like $400 and $400 can't compound fast enough.
So now this next one is awfully similar to JEPQ. So we actually did double up on the tech ETF. It's MBXG.
We bought this in November of 23 or for the second time we had it and we had it back in 20, I want to say 2020, 2019, 2020. We made money on it and I got out of it because I was like, oh, everything's going to go down. We got it for 1041.
It's currently at 1224. It yields 10% and we are up 23.5% in this one. I've doubled up on tech and I wouldn't recommend that for everyone's thing unless you don't have any other tech exposure.
There are some differences between JEPQ and MBXG, but their top 10 holdings are awfully similar. But I just like how they both are really well ran and they just produce results, so screw it. So basically they hold the same things or similar things and it was an intentional move on Tim's part.
Because I know tech's like ice foresaw, I guess, or saged or whatever the AI being what it's going to be. And like both these JEPQ and XBG both own like NVIDIA and Microsoft and Apple, shit like that. So they already have the companies.
So I don't have to worry about putting money into the companies, although I did just put money into NVIDIA just for giggles. But then here's our last yield max, which is the NVIDIA yield max, NVDY. We got this in August of 2020.
Wait, this is our longest holded, our longest held. Holded? Longest holded. Yeah, our longest holded yield max.
We've had this one for almost a year and we are up 260% in this one. And this is another one I thought I overpaid for. I paid $22 for this one when they were initially $20 a share.
It was at 28 in June. It went down a little bit. I don't know what the price is currently, but their dividend is absurd.
Between Coinbase and NVIDIA, their dividends are like between a dollar and four dollars every month. So like. We've made all of our money back in NVIDIA and we're up like $1,200 in it.
So like, YOLO, man. YOLO. Just keep on rolling.
So like, that's the reason why they're going to be holds forever. I don't think NVIDIA and Microsoft and Kony and Amazon are all, Amazon I think will be around long, like. CONY, CONY may.
I don't think they're going to be super awesome for like years and years and years. But like the way I've actually done the yield maxes when we get into the yield max episode, I would tune into that one if I was you guys. The way I'm doing it, I pull out the initial investments.
Everything in it is just dividends. So it doesn't matter what the underlying security is doing. So we'll be in those forever.
And then like JEPQ, I don't like, I don't think tech is going to be crazy forever. At some point, it's going to like, there's going to be a pullback. But like a JEPQ, I pulled out my initial investment, right? So again, it doesn't matter.
I'm about to, at some point in the next probably six months, I'll pull out my initial investment in NBXG. And then again, it'll just be all dividends. So it doesn't matter.
Yeah, when you're playing with house money, do you just let it ride? It's like, if you remember the behavioral finance and psychological biases that we went over, like one of those was like, there is a bias that I'm using, but I'm using it actually in a different way. I'm not like, whenever you like, say you win the lottery, you're like, oh, I've won like $2,000. So it's free money.
So I can spend it on whatever I want. I actually have turned that into a positive as it's all dividends, all house money. It's all like, so it's free money, but I'm just going to let it keep compounding and actually give me more money.
And it takes away the fear and the anxiety of investing in things you wouldn't necessarily normally invest in with like your hard earned cash that you've had. So it's using the bias and actually turning it into a positive for your benefit, for your portfolio. Pretty freaking fantastic.
The next one is PDI. It's our second bonds ETF. We've had this one for a year, but we had it for two years prior than I sold it because bonds were doing what they were doing.
But then when I saw bonds were picking back up, I got back into PDI and DSU. PDI is like, if you look up bond funds or bond ETFs, like this one always comes up. It's like everyone's favorite.
I can see why. So be wary of that because it's everyone's favorite. That means you can overspend and whatever.
We got it for $1762 and it's currently at $1919. It yields 14% and we are up 16% in it. So like if you take out the dividends, we're only up 2%.
But the dividends are huge and they're monthly. I think all these are monthly. Every one of these ETFs we have is a monthly dividend.
That's interesting. Tim is more prone to the monthlies. And then we have our small cap cover call, which is our YLD.
We've had that one forever. We've had that since July of 2021. We got it at $25 and it's currently at $16.
You're like, holy shit, you're down a lot in it, right? Well, no, not really. We're only down like 10% because it pays a dividend every month in that compound. I don't know what the hell is going on with small caps.
Generally in a bull market, which we are on the cusp of, if not in a bull market, small caps outperform large caps in a bull market. So I fully anticipate our YLD being shebang our hair in a little bit. Oh wait, then we have another bond one.
We have three bond funds or ETFs. I didn't even realize that. What the heck is the other one? YYY.
That's a bond fund? Yeah. I didn't realize that. We got into that one in July.
So I got that one the same time I got the DSU. Like literally the same. You're like, all these bond things look good.
I must have just had like a premonition that bonds were going to be a banger. We got that one at $11.80 and it's currently trading at $12.01. It's only up 20 cents since we bought it, but we are up 12% total. So yeah.
So that's all. So yeah. So that's all just dividend because it yields 12%.
These are all trading sideways. I know I mentioned it previously. When the markets are trading sideways, I love it.
Yes. Because your price isn't going up or going down. You're just compounding your dividends at a decent price.
It gives you a very clear picture of your actual dividend growth like income or your principal increase. Now we're going to get into some what I call boring old stocks. We've had all these for like at least a year except for two.
First one is ABR. I've mentioned ABR numerous times. I love ABR.
I love what they do. I love how they do everything. It is a rate.
Is it still undervalued right now with all the weird whatever is happening with it? I think it's undervalued, but they don't think they think it's like we got it at $13.52. It's currently trading at $13.37. We're down a little bit, but we're actually up 8% because of the dividends over the whole. Right. Next one.
I'd like that one a lot. The next one is one AFCG. It's a mortgage REIT.
I'm sorry, ABR yields 13%, AFCG yields 15%. We're up 8.5% in this one, almost 10% in this one as well. AGNC is another REIT.
I think it's a mortgage REIT as well. It yields 15%. We're up only 5% in that one.
But that's one like if you research like high yield, what high yield companies are undervalued, this one that you generally comes up. So I think it'd be a good time to get into it if you don't already have it in your portfolio, just because most of these are interest rate sensitive. So they've all been like pushed down the last year, year and a half because interest rates went up.
Well, and usually if you're seeing news that says that they're undervalued, that typically will start putting that out there for the public, which then they'll start dumping into it. Now, as they dump into it, it's going to push the price up. So if you get in right at the beginning of that, you can ride that wave.
And the next one that we've held for over a year is ARLP. And like I've mentioned this before, I love ARLP. It's coal.
So if you have a problem with coal, sorry. Not sorry. It yields 12%.
Currently, we're up 32% in ARLP. Yeah, like I said, not sorry. It's a banger.
I like it. And the next one is one that I fully like we've mentioned numerous times, I fully expected to bounce back at some point, who the hell knows when it's going to be. It's Camping World.
We got it. And then like a month later, they cut the dividend by like, I forget 80%, something like that. So it only yields 3% currently, but I fully expect once they pay the debt off of acquiring all the different dealerships, they'll start to gradually increase the dividend back up as they become as they get more and more profit and their margins increase.
Yeah, get the debt paid down. But we're down 36% in that one. So that one's just a buy or I'm sorry, a hold until whatever happens, happens.
And that's why like, I never actually mentioned why I don't like trading, trailing stops. The one obvious is... Talking about stop orders? Stop losses. The main reason is because you like if you have it at say 25% stop loss, and it has a bad day, like you can actually lose 35%, 40% because it can shoot down so much in your F. The second one is because like every company has a reason why it has... Pullbacks? Drops.
Camping Worlds is because they have so much debt. And then they had so much debt, they cut their dividends. Everyone's like, Oh my God, the company's not good.
The company's fine. It's just that the dividend got cut. The public is overreacting or over predicting something because the company was a dividend payer.
We covered economic moats. And I'm sorry, Camping World owns like at least 25% of all RV dealerships. It might be more than that.
I don't know what I was trying to find that I couldn't find the best number I come up with. It was like years old and it was 23% of all... So like for example, I think somebody looking at their portfolio from different criteria, different metric might have cut Camping World, cut their losses and put it somewhere else. But like we don't see a reason to do that if we think it's going to rebound.
And all of our information and all of our whatever third tier thinking that we do, we both think Camping World is going to head up in the long run. Well, like you think about like the reason that I'm so... I've held on to medical properties as long as I have is the same reason I'm holding on to Camping World. It's not like it's not a wishful thinking.
Oh, it'll go up. It's gone down like 40%. It'll go up.
It'll go up. It's because the age of America is reaching a point where everyone's going to be older. What do older people do? They camp, they travel.
So I do believe Camping World is going to have much more profit from the boomer generation because they have trillions of dollars. So there's going to be the selling RVs left and right. I think it's cheaper to travel with an RV.
And the second thing old people do is they go, they need medical care. Yeah. So they're going to go to like these places.
So like medical property, Camping World, from the dynamics of how our age is situated in America makes sense to me. And until I see something otherwise, other than a problem with one of their tenants, or they have too much debt because they've taken on too many dealerships, it just doesn't, that doesn't mean crap for the whole, the moat that they have doesn't make sense to cut ties with that shit. It sucks because you've lost 30% or 40% or 50% of your money.
In the short term. But in the long term, you might end up with like thousand plus gain. And I'm not arrogant.
Like, like there's been ones that I've cut. I'm like, I messed up on that one. And so I just cut it out.
But these two, like these two in particular, Like these are not a hold and hope strategy. Like there's actually a lot of like intellectual analysis that's gone into it. Yes.
I got a Camping World down to 36%. You have been so annoying. So that one, it is what it is.
The next one's EPR. And EPR, I just love as a, as a REIT. It's thinking outside the box REIT.
Because most people think REITs, they think apartments, houses, multi-family units. EPR is the one that does movie theaters and like golf places and ski resorts and shit like that. Like they do, like they do the, they're like the entertainment REIT.
I like them. I do believe we're down. They only yield 8%.
We're down 5% on that one. But again, the way the population is aging, people are going to be doing more things for entertainment in the future. So I'm just accumulating shares of companies that I personally think are going to go up.
Now you might not like EPR. You might not like Camping World. You might not like medical property.
But there's, like she said, a well thought out reason to hold these. You're basically quick. They've been trading sideways for the most part, other than Camping World dropped a lot that first day.
Well, that week that they cut the dividend. Icon dropped a lot the week they cut the dividend and they had the short seller thing. But it's rebounded a good bit since then.
And had you had a stop loss, then you would have lost that rebound. But we'll get to Icon in a minute. That's another one of the ones that I actually have a logical train of thought as to why I'm holding it.
And it's actually starting to turn around. The next one is Fisker Capital. It's one of our new ones.
I bought it in May. I had FDUS forever. And I just didn't like what FDUS was doing.
So it was trading in a band. But the band, like it kept- The band kept incrementally getting lower. Yeah, like lower.
Like if you're familiar with technical trading, any time you have lower highs, that's bad. Yeah, that means it's trending down. FDUS did that for months and months and months where it was just trending down.
But it was slow. It was like a- Penny stocks. It was like a boat with a leak in it.
That's literally what penny stocks do. They slowly go to zero. It kept seeping in.
I was like, oh my God. So I got- I sold FDUS and I got FSK. It yields 13%.
And we are only up 1% in that as of now. But whatever. It's a really good BDC.
It's not as good as Hercules Capital. But it's a really good one. I'm guessing that one's next.
Yeah, Hercules Capital is the next one. Hercules Capital is like- The creme de la creme. One of my favorite stocks.
Boing. It yields 8%. I've been over this one so many times.
You guys know all the details of this. And we're up 97% in Hercules Capital. So like, dude, just- Right there is why we have boing.
There are certain ones that I say are- They should be part of your startup portfolio. Hercules Capital and Mainstreet Capital are both one of those. And there's a reason why.
Hercules Capital, all it does is it just goes up. It increases dividend every year. It pays a special dividend at least once a year.
It's the bomb. Next one's Icahn. Icahn, we've held since 2021.
We've held it through ups. We held it through downs. It yields 24%.
This one, we ad nauseum explained what happened with it. Short seller said it was overvalued. They were fudging the numbers.
So their dividend wasn't- Okay, so why do you- They've heard that story. Why do you think it's going to turn around? The reason that they lost money had nothing to do with what the short seller was talking about. Icahn even admitted it.
He admitted like he shorted the market during a bull market. Not so great to be contrarian. That's not smart.
Since then, he said that that was wrong. He's not shorting the market anymore. So they actually just started doing what they did to get their share price up to $80 per share, which is buying companies that he saw were shit but had potential, got rid of the board, put his own people in, turned them around.
That's what their start- So he went back to basics. They started doing that and it's up 5% for 2024. So it's on its way back.
And in the meantime, we were like, just do we have so many shares, Icahn? I can't even like- And that was after we sold. We took some actual selling out of that. So many shares, Icahn.
I don't even like- It might be what we have the most shares in. I actually believe in what they do though because they have- It's like a miniature Berkshire. Like it just has so many different fingers and so many different parts.
Pharmaceutical, automotive, grocery. But I like that it's making businesses better. So that's why I like it.
All right. What's next? Next is KRP. It is my small cap oil company.
It yields 11% and we've had this one for a while now, like a year, almost a year. And we are up 14% in it. I like small cap for our portfolio when it comes to energy more than large cap.
Like if you've listened to the retirement, when large cap is what you do with retirement because it's- Energy companies depend on the price of oil, small caps more so. But I don't see oil going anywhere for at least five to seven years. So small caps should be fine.
I like KRP. They're a royalty. They actually aren't as susceptible to energy prices because they're a royalty company.
They own the land that the other people mine the minerals and the oil from. And they just get a cut of the profits plus rent for the land. So I like the royalty approach to energy for this particular portfolio.
Next one's Main Street Capital. It's, again, only yields 6%. But it's one that if you have an income portfolio, you should have.
They raise their dividend pretty much every year. They have special dividends. It's just like Hercules Capital Part 2. Dividend grower.
We're up 20% in this one. And we had it years ago. I got out of it because I was tinkering with some stuff.
We got back into it in November of 2023. So we're up 20% in like six months. It's awesome.
Yeah, that's fantastic. Next one's another one. If you have problems with certain things, you might not like it.
It's MO. It's Altria. They make Marlboro cigarettes.
What do we have in that one? It yields 8%. We are up 18%. And that was our nethered, new one.
We got that in February this year. So we're up 18% in a month. Yeah, that is wow.
This is one that I was doing my weekly newsletter. I saw how undervalued it was. I was like, oh, shit, I might want to put money into that.
And then I looked at it more. I was like, oh. The reason the price was depressed is because like, oh, less people smoke.
But that doesn't matter. People that smoke are going to smoke. Yeah, they're the right lifers.
So they can raise the price of it, of the product, cigarettes in this case. They can raise it to whatever the hell they want to because these people are still going to buy. What they've also done is they've actually, they've branched out and they started doing like the vaping stuff, which people do that rather than smoking.
And they do the ONs. They're the ones that make my num-nums. That's what that clicking you hear in the background all the time is Tim's num-nums.
So you can get your nicotine through something that doesn't kill you and doesn't mess your mouth up. Like if you chew, it messes your teeth and your gums up. The num-nums don't.
And I believe Altria has something to do with snacks or something like that too. But they pull like a Pepsi. I don't know.
That's kind of a weird pivot, but all right. The next one's NPW. We've been to this one over and over and over and over and over.
We're down 34% in this one. It's not going anywhere in our portfolio. So we have some big gainers, but we also got three stinkers.
But the next one is one I beat the table on in November. Actually, October. I said, if you don't own it, you might want to consider owning it.
I don't know if I'm going to listen. People call me crazy. It's NEP.
It's the alternative energy offshoot of NEE, which is the biggest electrical utility company in Florida. And we got in it when we said beat the table. And we're up what? It yields 11%.
We're up 72% in that one. Yeah, right there. 72%.
Ha-ha. If you remember when I mentioned it, it's because they said they're only going to be growing the dividend 4% to 6% instead of 10% to 12% or something like that. And people are like... People panicked.
They thought it was like a dividend cut when it wasn't. It was just they were going to grow their dividend less. What? That's crazy.
Like that freaking dropped its face off. And then Triple M is like, oh, we're cutting our dividend. And the stock went up.
And this is like why some of these freaking quarterly reports just don't make any freaking sense to us. Like people's reactions. It's insane.
NEP is still a buy if anyone's interested. It's probably 50% undervalued still. Oh, so we got room to grow more? A lot more room to grow.
Yay. And I remember like I forget the fourth or fifth episode we mentioned preferred shares. I said we have QRTEP is our preferred share.
It makes no sense because it's the QVC channel. Like who the fuck shops online on the TV off the TV anymore? I bet you there's a lot of old people checking out that weird purses and stuff. It yields 16%.
And we've had this one since 2022. I can't believe it makes it. We're up 76% in this one.
That is freaking insane. Again, it was undervalued and then it has a $2 per share. All I have to say, you go grandma.
This one like it's currently trading at $50. It's a $100 preferred. So it's like this is easy to easy math.
It's 50% undervalued. Yeah. So we have a lot more room to grow on this bitch.
And the last boring old stock is Trinity Capital. I mentioned this a couple times aeons ago. Are you still contemplating when to get out, when to get out? Because it keeps going up, keeps going up.
This is one I've actually turned the drip off of. I no longer actually am accumulating shares in the short term because it's up way too much. We got this one in May of last year.
So we've had it for 13 months. We are up 52% and I've actually sold. I've actually taken profits at least four different times in this one.
And we're still like we're still up that much. Do we have all of our initial investment out? Almost. We have a 80%.
I was just curious. Trinity Capital is another one. It's interest rate sensitive.
But interest rates aren't going anywhere anytime soon. We might do a podcast on what we all got wrong about the interest rate things. And what's going on with them and where they're going to be.
But it is what it is. I want to see Powell's next report. And then we have 18% in cash slash bullet shares.
BSJQ or BSJS. And that's our money waiting for these dips. Oh, actually, well, at the time I did this, we had that.
Well, I know. I know. He said we did this beginning of the month.
Currently, we have $500 in bullet shares of cash. So I just put $1,000 in NVIDIA stock. I was like, why not? And we were talking about that, like when Walmart did their stock split.
NVIDIA just did the same thing. And typically when that happens, they usually get back up to the original price. And Tim was like, well, he's like, I wanted to buy it.
And then I hesitated. And I was like, just freaking pull the trigger. It's one of those ones.
We know it's going to get back up to $1,000. If you know when it happened, they did it for every. He didn't think it was going to rebound as fast as it did.
They did a stock split. For every share, you got 10 shares. It was trading at almost $1,000.
And when they did the stock split, it went down to $120 to make it so that more people can get into it. But that's not why they did it. They did it so that more institutional investors and pension funds and all those people could get into it.
But generally, when companies do that, they go up. Back to where they were. Back to where they were, like Apple's done it.
I fully expect Walmart to do it. There's so many cases when they've done a stock split, the prices went back to where it was before. Obviously, there's cases when they did a stock split, the prices just go down because they shouldn't have done a stock split.
But NVIDIA's not going anywhere for at least 20 years with the AI thing. Yeah. But we didn't think it was going to rebound as fast as it did until it had a little bit of FOMO.
And I was like, look, if you think it's literally going to shoot back up and it's still hovering at, like, what'd you say? It's like $125? Yeah. I was like, just freaking buy some. Just buy some.
See what happens. I think that was a better option than the Walmart one. So you can see the difference between the retirement one, which was... More conservative.
Dividend growth, aristocrats, achievers, capital preservation. Yeah. Versus what we're doing.
We're just like, all right, we're down 35%. Whatever. We're up shares.
Whereas we have part of our portfolio is literally structured to generate us monthly income, which is the moneymaker part, the top five. And then the rest of it is sprinkled in, like, low caps. And then you got BDCs.
At some point when they start lowering interest rates, I'm going to have to actually... Readjust. Adjust my BDC exposure because I have... Way a lot. A lot in BDCs.
I don't know if you caught that. REIT, REIT, REIT. BDC, BDC, BDC.
REITs I'm not worried about because once they lower the rates, they're going to go up. So what I'm doing is I'm like, well, anytime I have a couple hundred dollars, I'll, like, split half of it and I'll put it in the bullet shares for cash. But we're not super heavy on the utilities, are we? That was more conservative portfolio.
Yeah, that was your mom's. But yeah, so my mom's is more utility heavy. Ours is more BDC REIT heavy.
This one's actually... At the time I did this, it was actually beating the market and beating the retirement one by, like... It was beating the retirement one by, like, 2% and the market by 4%. That's even with the stinkers of NPW and... Yeah, and that's huge considering we have a 35% loss, like, another 30-some percent loss. So, like, that's big.
But again, we are more income-oriented and our whole goal is to accumulate as many shares as possible regardless of whatever the heck our principal's doing. That's why I was just saying, like, anytime I, like, say, like, QRTEP just had a dividend, I didn't reinvest it. So I took half the money and I put it in bullet shares and I took the other half and I put it into AFCG and AGNC because they're undervalued REITs.
And I know the REITs, once the interest rates start going down, the REITs are going to go up. So I just keep putting my extra money into those. But I do put some into cash in case something comes along where I just, like, have to... That doesn't include... We have a couple, like, in the retirement when we had PLTR and we had SoFi in that one.
And in this one, we have EXAI and I forget the other one. We have... Each portfolio has... A couple potential growth. Growth stocks.
We put, like, 1% to 2% of the total value of the portfolio into growth stocks that I foresee going super high. And I think EXAI, it's been trading sideways since I got into it. So whatever.
But it's AI and medicine. Well, it's one of those things where Tim's past stock history takes him four years, usually. Yeah.
For stuff to come to fruition. So we'll check back with you on that one. That's not everybody's game.
Again, we're in more of the dividend-income investing thing. But we like to catch a couple growth ones here and there when Tim's spidey sense goes off. But for the most part, we do have dividend growers like Main Street and Hercules and Trinity.
They've all grown their dividend and they have special dividends. NAP grows their dividend every... So we do have the similar... We have similar stocks, but they're just... They yield more. And we have a lot higher concentration of the yield max type cash cow.
I like the yield max. I do, too. I like what they... I like what they stand for.
I like what they do. I like what they're trying to do. So far, their performance has been excellent.
And that's why we agreed, like, when we get the proceeds... Is that the Tesla? Yeah, I know. I had to sell Tesla at a loss. I did that Tesla.
Like I said before, whoever's running that one's an idiot. Yeah. But that's why we agreed that when we get the proceeds from the condo, we're going to dump 30 grand.
30 Gs. Yeah. So 30... If I go... I just go to run the numbers.
If I do 30,000, we'll be able to actually afford all of our expenses, plus have money left over each month for experiences for traveling in the van. And that way, the rest of it... And just keep compounding and compounding and compounding. Because the thing is, it takes seven years to double, and then it takes even less years to double.
And then it takes even less years to double again and again and again. And it's the beginning years of the compoundings where you really don't want to touch it, as much as possible. So... So when we do the... Like when the YieldMax seps, we keep bringing that up.
Like I'll explain that whole... Yeah, we'll go over it more detailed in that. So that covers it for living in the van. That's the living in the van portfolio.
Down by the river, McConaughey style. So like now you know everything we're in. Everything that we're in.
Yeah, now you got the update. So the one from December, if you want to go back and look and see what the difference was between then and now, you can do that on your own. That was the Christmas episode we did.
Next week, we're coming back at you with five live examples of Tim walking through actual assessments, like what he does. To find valuations of what I do. What I do every week for the email as I find out what's going ex-dividend for the following week, I make a list and then I go through and do the research.
I'm just going to pick five at random from the list. And then I'm going to walk through exactly what I got. I'll type the ticker into Schwab and I'll like point out exactly what I'm looking for.
Yep. So you guys know exactly how to do it on your own. How I find NEP at dirt price or dirt cheaper.
How I find MO at dirt cheap. Yep. And how he decides if it's actually a buy price or if he wants to wait.
Yeah. So that'll be a really good episode. That'll be a banger.
That actually will be like real life showing you how I do what I do so that hopefully you can learn it and not have to listen to me anymore. No, hopefully you can learn it and go teach others. Like bring everybody up, guys.
We want everybody to be financially independent. And that's about a wrap for today. So hope you got something out of this.
See you next week. I'm going on the road here soon.