Twitter Works On Many Levels

Those of you who have been following TPCI for a while will remember the Daily Squawk page which goes back to a time when I had the time and the energy to post on a daily basis. From time-to-time readers mention missing these daily snippets. Fewer of you will remember the short lived Rants page to which I posted short blurbs about things that pi$$ed me off, most of which had little or nothing to do with investing. Eventually I removed these two pages.

Somewhere along the way I signed on with Twitter with the unimaginative handle of StuGauld. I didn't do much with Twitter except keep tabs on my kid who lives the good life in Calgary. He and his better half are regular tweeters and it's always fun to see what they're up to.

In the past week I turned on to Twitter as an outlet to voice some thoughts about the crazies south of the boarder and their guns. I believe that anyone with any kind of an audience should be taking a stand on this issue. Surely there's something very wrong when an entire nation has greater access to firearms than they have to mental health care. Stu Gauld, The Passive Canadian Investor, is not a political dude, but StuGauld the Tweeter may very well be!

If you enjoy TPCI you may like to follow along on Twitter.

Is It Christmas Yet?

Not quite, but close. One month 'til year end. Another chance to look back, review successes and near successes. Never admit to an outright failure.  Most importantly, a chance to thank our lucky stars for all that we enjoy in this country of ours!

I haven't posted for over a month. Busy, busy, busy! Our real estate search down south kept us occupied. Not to brag, but I've become quite an expert with Google Maps and Google Earth. Tremendous resources when looking at real estate from afar, and both free! I'm happy to say that we found our little dream condo in Fountain Hills, Arizona and look forward to a planned furniture shopping trip in the new year. As my buddy Captain Jack says, investing in Arizona real estate is exactly that, it's an investment, it's not like spending money.

Pretty quiet on the investment front although I did get back into Exchange Traded Funds with the purchase of XEG, the iShares energy fund. I'm working a theory that Saudi was pumping oil like crazy to keep energy costs down in the US to help Obama win the election. I'm guessing that after the election all bets are off and Saudi will slow things down and oil will get back to the $100.00 range. Just as I did back in 2006, and wrote about in My Home Run! (Part 2 of 2), I'm counting on the price of oil to increase and drag XEG up along with it.

October saw a tiny tick up for my portfolio value. November was better as my stuff ticked up eighteen of twenty-two trading days. The month ended with eleven consecutive daily increases and my stuff reached a new all time high each day in the final week of the month. I've been Bouncin' Along The Top for many months now and reach a new high on a regular basis. To the end of November I'm up 7.6% for the year.

Looking back, I see I've had gains every December since I began tracking my portfolio value.  Hopefully this month will be the sixth consecutive positive December.