Brook Reef

 Buying EVRG @ $63.17 2% position I'm back to making somewhat regular investments. I'll be slowly building out my portfolio again - and hope to keep the ideas to durations of "months" instead of "days". Or longer.  The stock market is super frothy, overvalued. But there are still reasonable values to be found in the regulated utilities space. Evergy is a Kansas and Missouri utility. They just got a bill passed that will allow "securitization" of coal retirement costs. The utility can then replace those coal assets with renewable power assets - growing earnings while keeping customer bills flattish. It's a win-win-win combination - and Evergy is one of the most coal-heavy regulated utilities.

Ringing the register on PPL, PNW, and NWE Sell PPL @ $29.49 - realized gain of 4.65% Sell PNW @ $84.96 - realized gain of 10.70% Sell NWE @ $70.00 - realized gain of 19.27% PPL has made a few big announcements. They sold their UK business. Got a 3-year rate deal done in Kentucky. And bought Rhode Island assets. The next catalyst is either selling the company or buying someone. So I'll get out of the way with a small gain. PNW is just up quite a bit and doesn't warrant holding such a small position. NWE has run too. Quite a bit. And is either going to get purchased (somewhat unlikely) or make a purchase of an increased ownership of a coal power plant, Colstrip, that would create environmental cost risk in the future - or face regulatory hurdles as they look to buy some renewable assets. The easy money has been made here.

Buying AY & BEPC Positions 6% positions AY @ $37.01 BEPC @ $44.14 Renewable shares were down - ahead of Earth Day - so I jumped in bigly and made a big boy pants purchase - full 6% positions. BEPC is a bit worrisome - after selling something like 10% of their wind assets to NEP for a pretty cheap price. Why they're selling and how they'll use the proceeds is a big question. I trust Brookfield, perhaps more than I should, but that's that. I have no clue why AY is down. It's quickly becoming one of my favorite renewable players. It offers a great yield and a global portfolio.  Biden should announce a pretty aggressive renewable plan on Earth Day. And there might be more policy support to foster more renewables growth. I suppose a concern would be that any policy levers used would benefit incumbent utilities more than the independent players. But a growing pie should be good for all.

BUY 1% PNW @ $76.75 BUY 1% NWE @ $58.69 I mentioned it in my note on early retirement & securitization of fossil plants , but I'm buying PNW and NWE on the theme that they have upside in a scenario where their fossil fuel power plants are shut down early. Starter positions to build into full positions. *This is how I'm going to approach this website's trades now. No more day-trading. Just showing how I evaluate, enter, build, and exit REAL investment ideas.*

I wrote about getting a new job but didn't share many details. I don't necessarily plan to share much - I like the modicum of anonymity that I have - but let's just say I'm learning a lot about the electric energy sector and carbon emissions. One of the themes I've been exploring is a bit on the cusp of being on most mainstream asset manager's radars - but it's the early retirement of coal power plants and the subsequent early retirement of all fossil fuel power plants. You can accuse me of being a greenie all you want, but it's coming and makes economic sense! In the proposal, utilities would shut down their fossil fuel power plants earlier than planned. They'd be paid for the remaining book value of the asset by a ratepayer-backed securitization. This would create room in a customer bill for the utility to spend a ton of money on renewable power assets to fill the earnings hole created by the early retirement.  It's a win for all parties! Custo...

My wife came up with a plan to give herself 9 goals this month that she had to achieve each day. As is wont to happen with wives and goals, I got roped into doing 9 goals of my own. One of my goals is to write an article or blog post OR create a video on on of my YouTube channels. That's why I'm writing about such wide ranging things as how I make coffee and rental properties. My other website is a family blog, so those topics really don't fit. This is an investing blog, so only the coffee article is out of place.  Don't worry! I plan to get back to writing about stock investment ideas sometime! It's been a hectic few months. And RV internet service isn't ideal. I've also said a few hundred S&P points ago that I think stocks are overvalued. So I'm not exactly making investments behind the scenes right now.  Speaking of stock analysis - Brookfield Infrastructure Partners has agreed to buy Interpipeline Group for just over $10 billion dollars. The larg...

In the town we just moved away from, our hometown, owning rental properties never made sense to me. I couldn't make the math work. If you need to make 6-10% on an investment, I couldn't get there. Property taxes were too high. In rental real estate there's the "1% rule" which says you should be able to rent a property for 1% of its value on a monthly basis. So if you buy a $150,000 property then it should rent for $1,500 per month or more. The next "rule" is that expenses are about 0.5% per month. So that same property should see expenses of $750 per month. These expenses include property taxes and repairs. And this is where the problem came. Property taxes in our town would be about $6,000+ per year on a $150,000 property. That's $500+/month. So that would leave only $250/month for repairs and other expenses. Throw in vacancy and it's tough to break even. And in our old town, you can't get bailed out by higher property values. Our house sold...