Holidays, and further share purchases

After having bought shares in Tesla and Apple I had holidays coming up. Thus I had plenty of time to read, study shares and learn more. A few weeks before travelling, I had requested The Naked Trader by Robbie Burns from my local library, but I am still waiting for it. So I had to make do with So Anyway by John Cleese instead, which I rather enjoyed. Another book on my To Read list is Millionaire Teacher by Andrew Hallam, which I have just ordered from kennys.ie. The price was very good and delivery is free. Both books can be sampled from the Apple Book Store.

But enough about books for now. On September 24, I bought one share in Facebook (FB) at $92.98 (priced $93.24 at close on Friday). Facebook is completely dominating social media and is making lots of money from targeted advertising. Just take a look at these numbers:

Facebook also owns Pinterest, with 100 million monthly users, 85% of them female.

I believe both Facebook and Pinterest will continue to grow over the coming years.

I also bought shares in a few other companies at a time when there was a lot of turmoil and falling prices:
2x Netflix (NFLX) ($99 and €99.50)
4x Spectra Energy (SE) ($25.70)
2x Verizon (VZ) ($43.50)
1x PowerShares QQQ Trust (QQQ) ($100.89)

I subscribe to Netflix and as they're creating more and more original content and expanding to new countries, I think NFLX shares will keep appreciating. The current price is $113.33.

Spectra Energy was not on my radar. I think I heard about SE in a newsletter or podcast, possibly Motley Fool. They've had a bad year overall but hopefully things will improve. As I bought pretty much at the bottom, I am very happy with the current price, $29.85. In addition, the current dividend yield is 5.55%, paid quarterly. The next ex-dividend date is in about one month.

I bought Verizon for similar reasons to Spectra Energy. VZ shares are now worth $44.16 with a dividend yield of 5.12%. The ex-dividend date was just a few days ago, so I will receive $0.79 (after tax) in the beginning of November. Both Verizon and Spectra Energy improves the diversification of my small portfolio.

I bought PowerShares QQQ Trust as I thought the price was good (I first bought QQQ at $107), as QQQ is now worth $106.53. I now hold 2 QQQ shares. I will receive a small dividend from my first QQQ share at the end of this month.

I am looking into buying more ETFs in future transactions and also companies paying monthly dividends. Regular income is a good financial backbone.