The Bull Market a Decade on ... Running with the Bull

The Bull Market Began 10 Years Ago.

Excerpt:

The financial system had nearly collapsed. The deepest recession in decades was devouring over 700,000 jobs a month. Roughly $13 trillion in stock market wealth, slowly rebuilt since the dot-com bust, had again been incinerated. It was March 2009. And it was one of the best times in a generation to buy stocks. A decade later, the bull market that began back then ranks among the great rallies in stock-market history. The 305 percent surge in the S&P 500 is the index’s second-best run ever. The rise has generated more than $30 trillion in wealth. Adjusted for inflation, that is the most created during any bull run on record, edging out the $25 trillion in gains during the epic streak from December 1987 to March 2000, which ended with the bursting of the dot-com bubble, according to Federal Reserve data.

Mark Haines Calls the Stock Market Bottom, March 10, 2009

Excerpt:

In this clip from the March 10, 2009 edition of CNBC's Squawk on the Street, the late Mark Haines tells Erin Burnett, "I think we're at a bottom. I really do." As the credit crisis continued to swirl, the Dow had closed the day before at 6,547.05, a staggering 54 percent plunge from its all-time closing high above 14,000 in October of 2007.

Mark Haines Calls the Stock Market Bottom, March 10, 2009 from CNBC.

Blog post from 2/20/2009

2/20/2009 is the day I started individual investing. I called a broker and bought 1,000 shares of FITB for just above $ 1,000. I later sold for about $ 10,000.

From there:

• I opened a Wells Trade account enabling me to have 100 free trades a year (I'm grandfathered into this deal ... no longer offered)
• Shortly thereafter we paid our mortgage off and I began to invest $ 2,000 per month 
• After a bit, we were at the point that we lived in one salary and invested the other
• We continue to invest. Recently buying IBM and CSCO

The 5th 3rd Preferred Dividend

Fifth Third Bancorp Announces Cash Dividends

Excerpt:

Fifth Third also declared a cash dividend on its 6.625% Fixed-to-Floating Rate Non-Cumulative Perpetual Preferred Stock, Series I (Nasdaq: FITBI), at the rate of $414.06 per preferred share, which equates to approximately $0.41406 for each depositary share. Each depositary share represents a 1/1000th ownership interest in a share of Series I Preferred Stock. The Series I dividend is payable on March 31, 2017 to shareholders of record as of March 29, 2017.

Comment: Buy 100 shares today ... get $ 41.40 next Friday. 5.71% yield. Preferred stock tracts like a bond so as interest rates rise, the stock will decline. Image snaps from ...

Advice on Fifth Third (FITB)

Award Winning Banking Analyst From FBR Capital Markets Picks Financial Sector Investment Winners

Excerpt:

You've got to invest in certain balance sheets that are beaten up. You've got to be careful to stay away from the rich stocks like the Wells Fargos, USBs (USB), BB&Ts (BBT) and focus on those companies that are trading at book or below book, like a Fifth Third (FITB), like a KeyCorp (KEY), which is trading a little bit above book. That's where you want to focus on now, on companies that don't make money. It seems kind of odd to be recommending stocks that don't make money, but they are trading at book or right around book whereas some of these other banks, like Wells Fargo (WFC), are trading close to three times book. We think there is very little upside in owning Wells Fargo at these levels.

Comment: I sold all our Wells Fargo. Still have 1000 shares of FITB that I bought for a buck back in February. (In all of my years of investing, Fifth Third, is the only stock that I have bought that has done so well in such a short amount of time. I wish I would have bought 20,000 shares!)

Fifth Third up 33% - closes at $ 1.94

My 5th 3rd Experiment: 1000 shares of FITB

Go go go!!!

Financial bloodbath!

Visualizing Financials: Charting the Carnage

Comment: I bought 1000 shares of Fifth Third today ... just pennies above a buck a share.