Rocky’s Weekly Stock Picks

Late this last week we saw the release of the first BitCoin ETFs!

Wait, don’t we already have that in our portfolio? What the heck? Let’s investigate!

…. Okay so we looked into it between the last line and this line. Turns out, we own BTCFX. This is a mutual fund that holds Bitcoin. Presumably it will buy and sell internally, but we really haven’t looked into it. Our main thing is that the it’s got no fees and no load. Also, no leveraging.

That’s not to say that fees and load can’t be worthwhile in a mutual fund, as they tend to be lower risk and often involve municipal bonds (which are tax-free, yum!). Just throwing that out there.

Regarding BTCFX, we bought in when BTC was at $60,000. Obviously ATH is the best time to invest in a high-risk asset. Thanks to the power of DRIP, our over 50% loss has been reduced to only ~30% loss.

None of that really matters, since we intend to hold forever. Pretty much every asset over 20 years will increase in nominal value (because fractional reserve banking). It’s not even a secret; Warren Buffet routinely goes on TV and radio (and social media), and always says the same thing -buy and hold forever.

Anyway, on to our stock picks! ..oh and markets are closed on Monday for, uh…. MLK day?! Shouldn’t that be in February? Is this some kind of sick CERN-induced Mandela-effect joke?! (Could be, actually).

1. ET - $14/share, quarterly distributions annualized at 8.92%. Options trade weekly.
   
   We basically have given up hope that there will be any kind of pullback on price (we are soooo getting assigned on some calls we wrote), and desperately want to expand our holdings. This does generate a K-1, but so far has not triggered any state tax liabilities. (Texas doesn’t have state income tax).
   
   

2. LITM - $1.23/share, this is a company that explores for lithium in Canada. We like mineral resources. Yay! The price does seem to be moving slightly upwards, and we are led to believe that North American lithium mining is going to be expanding dramatically.
   
   Somehow we strongly doubt that Africa will start imposing Green Policy writ large (which would make lithium mining significantly more profitable in the civilized world overnight). All the same, we do expect ultimately to see a profit here over the next decade.
   
   Options trade monthly.
   
   

3. CPNG - $16.43/share, options trade weekly. This Washington-based Korean company will be acquiring Farfetch.
   
   We do expect a further drop in price, but most of that has already occurred. Farfetch isn’t exactly the most popular company right now.
   
   Now, if you’ve got thousands of dollars of unrealized loss because of Farfetch, you aren’t alone! At the same time, someone has to produce overpriced luxury goods and creepy knick-knacks; and there are no creepier knick-knacks than those offered by Farfetch.
   
   
   

4. DLY - $14.99/share, monthly distributions, ex-div 1/17. 3.42% expense against a 9.34% annualized yield. Ouch.
   
   What do we like most? The name. DoubleLine Yield Opportunities. The price also seems to be trending up from a low point in its history. Fundamentals indicate strong bullish trend.
   
   Frankly we don’t much care fundamentals. What we’re looking at, basically, is a leveraged fund yielding 6% with a strong likelihood if increasing in value in the near-term.
   
   …Sometimes our own judgement aligns with fundamentals.
   
   

5. CBRL - $72.42/share, quarterly dividends annualized at 7.22%, options trade monthly.
   
   This is Cracker Barrel. The price seems to be coming back up from a 5-year low. Even if it doesn’t, a 7% yield is solid.
   
   Similar to T (AT&T), we aren’t particular fans of the company per se. We are fans of a proven company with a consistently high rate of return. We don’t have our hands in a lot of food companies (though we did take close to 200% profit on TAST in 2023). 200% sounds way more impressive than $200.
   
   If we wanted to appear wildly successful, we could brag about some 17,000% returns we’ve gotten in OTC penny stocks.
   

   
   *Fun Fact - We just discovered that we’ve been linking to a “Penny Stocks” blog post for over a year. We have never actually published that post (and probably won’t anytime soon). ….. ….. Happy 2024!