September 15, 2009

One of My Stocks Doubled in the Past Year

A little while back I mentioned that I had bought some Bristol Meyers Squibb in my Roth IRA. At the time I also mentioned the other holdings in my Roth. One of the stocks that I bought was a REIT named HRPT Properties Trust (HRP). That REIT has been going up pretty quickly the past 3 months. HRP has gone up over 90% since late June and has more than doubled from the price that I paid for it.

I paid $3.61 for HRP in Nov. 2008 and it hit $7.30 today about 10 months later. Thats a 102% increase.

Why is it up so much? Frankly I don't have a good answer. The market has been going up in general and REITs have been rebounding. But HRP is up much more than the market or REIT sector. I don't see any news about HRP recently that would give reason for such strong increase in its price. So I don't know why its up so much, but I am glad it is.

I decided to sell half my holdings in the stock once it nearly doubled. I had a limit order placed so that it would automatically sell half my shares at the point it hit $7.20. I may sell more of my shares, but I'm going to think about that some. My opinion is that while the stock was a great buy at $3.61, now that its over $7 its no longer such a good bargain. The stock isn't likely to go up a ton more and the yield rate is now much lower. I will research other stocks and see if there are other good buys that I can move my money into. I explained before that I'm using a high dividend stock strategy. So my overall strategy has been to buy good value stocks with high dividend rates.


The rest of my stock picks are doing pretty well overall. Five of the seven stocks that I've bought are up. Overall I'm up about 28% for my Roth IRA since Nov. 2008. By comparison the S&P 500 is up about 5% in that timeframe. I do have a couple picks that have lost money since I bought them. AT&T and GE are both down from what I paid. GE has lost a lot after they slashed their dividends.

My Roth IRA holdings are : AT&T (T), GE (GE) and HRPT properties trust (HRP) bought Nov. 2008 and Harley Davidson (HOG), Hospitality Property Trust (HPT) and Vanguard High Dividend Yield Index (VYM) bought Jan 2009 plus some Bristol Myers Squibb (BMY) that I picked up in July.


Here is the current status of the holdings :


Name Symbol Gain/Loss Current Yield
HRPT PROPERTIES HRP 102.22% 6.90%
AT&T INC T -9.79% 6.20%
GEN ELECTRIC CO GE -26.41% 2.70%
HARLEY DAVIDSON HOG 41.49% 1.60%
HOSPITALITY PROP TR HPT 38.87% ?
VANGUARD HIGH DIVIDE VYM 10.24% ?
BRISTOL MYERS SQUIBB BMY 14.18% 5.60%

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