If I Knew Then 3

As I said in my first post, that if I knew then what I know now, I would just invest in Canadian Dividend Growth Stocks. I did try investing in the US, in International Stocks and in Mutual Funds. In this post I want to talk about my adventures in International stocks.

Telefonica SA was a Spanish multinational broadband and telecommunications provider with operations in Europe, Asia, and North, Central and South America I invested some $10,570 in this company in 2000. I decided to sell this stock in June 2005. I sold for $6,842 and a 35% loss. I ended up with odd number of shares because the company decided after I bought it to force shareholders to take shares rather than dividends.

S&P in 2005 recommend this stock as a hold and said it was fully and fairly valued at present time. Most analysts rated it as a hold. I thought it was going nowhere. I could not find any cash flow statement with their recent annual report. I sold my shares for $59.88 a share. This company is now worth $10.13 a share.

I did make a 67% profit (or just under ($8,000) on Cable & Wireless HKT which was the Hong Kong operations of British-based telecom firm Cable & Wireless. I bought this stock in 1998 and was force to sell in 2000. The company was acquired by Pacific Century Cyberworks. I paid $11,343 for this company and got back $18,842. This was a gain of 66% over a period of less than 2 years.

Nokia is a Finnish multinational communications and information technology company that I held from 1999 to 2008 and made 2.23% per year. That was 16% profit or just under $2000 over a more than an 8 year period. I paid $26.27 for the shares and sold them at $27.92. The current price for these shares is $5.14.

I still have Barclay's Bank which I bought in 2000 and have made 1.63% per year in total returns. My total returns consist of a capital loss of 4.54% per year and dividends of 6.17% per year. My capital loss is 54.4% but I have gained a total of 18.9% because of dividends. Dividends have now paid for some 73% of my stock's cost. I probably should sell this.

This bank was doing fine until 2008. It seems like our banks did much better coming out of the 2008 problems than European and indeed a lot of US banks.

On my other blog I wrote yesterday about RioCan Real Estate (TSX-REI.UN, OTC- RIOCF)... learn more. Tomorrow, I will write about Allied Properties Real Estate Investment Trust (TSX-AP.UN, OTC- APYRF)... learn more on Friday, March 3, 2017 around 5 pm.

This blog is meant for educational purposes only, and is not to provide investment advice. Before making any investment decision, you should always do your own research or consult an investment professional. I do research for my own edification and I am willing to share. I write what I think and I may or may not be correct.

See my site for an index to these blog entries and for stocks followed. I have three blogs. The first talks only about specific stocks and is called Investment Talk. The second one contains information on mostly investing and is called Investing Economics Mostly. My last blog is for my book reviews and it is called Non-Fiction Mostly. Follow me on Twitter.