Yes, that was clear over-valuation and the correction of that is what led to the opportunity to buy in 2019-2023.
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I decided against BLKB when I saw the numerous complaints about technical problems including the inability to login, 502/504 Gateway errors, and pages loading slow (#1, #2, #3). Here’s the community on one of these issues and the inability to report them.
They’re not only far too numerous, this has been the state for years.
Nice day to sell Broadcom! It was up almost 5% today. 
I should probably sell out of it, too, but I am psychologically trapped that it’s paid for itself (only about 8 times over, though) and that I still like it for its Apple business (of selling patented cell phone connectivity chips to them).
Broadcom’s AI business, whatever it may be … I expect it to evaporate, so I am walking into gloomy doom with my eyes wide open. 
In other news I sold some more life insurance that is tainted by AI data center bonds. And bought some other stuff instead.
Bottom line: exchanged $715 in dividends for $1154 of dividends. 
| Ticker | 07/30/2026 | Buy | Sell |
|---|---|---|---|
| MO | 07/30/2026 | 100 | |
| MCD | 07/30/2026 | 50 | |
| AMT | 07/30/2026 | 50 | |
| UNM | 07/30/2026 | 354 |
I think the last time I traded this much in a month was probably March or April 2020.
Dollar amount sold and bought was roughly the same, but UNM was sold at Swissquote for fees of over $200 and the stocks bought at IBKR resulted in feels of 61 cents. Have I ever mentioned that Swissquote is a robber broker disguised in a Swiss flag cloak? 
MO just went to “hold” for me today because of the 2nd quarter numbers. The FCF dividend payout ratio is over 100%. Come on guys and gals, thank you for smoking…
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True true, some gains missed (both upwards and downwards) are essentially baked in, it’s the catastrophic losses that the MA seems to protect against. The whipsaws seem a bit rarer if you add in a 1-3% buffer. It’s not perfect, but it seems to work. In any case I’ve no buy signal in the immediate horizon.
A long time ago I did tests with all kind of MA. If you guess a good number they work perfectly. Problem is you never know in advance. There is the whipsaw effect, missed gains, big losses if you don’t guess a good number of days. Seems to work better on futures than in the stock market, less correlation.
I did separate my test data in periods to proof that the past does not say much about the future of those number bars to use. Seems to be purely random.
So I gave up and don’t use MA.
To protect against big losses a fix number or percentage from last high may be better. I do some changes in my strategies after a loss of 20% in the SP500 (bear market protocol).
Some traders use fibonacci retracement. But this is more complex and if you want to automate would need to use a computer to calculate it for you.
Can’t you transfer the shares from Swissquote?
The transfer cost (50 CHF/USD per position) is much less than the trading fees.
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Last year I did transfer a couple of large positions that I knew I was going to sell down from Swissquote to IBKR. It took Swissquote two months (sic!) after lots of reminders to complete the transfer and a mess-up or two for the ex dividend dates that fell into that two month period.
I never planned to sell MET, PRU or UNM. In fact, I added to them (at IBKR). Then I learned about their AI involvement and decided to sell most of it. Started with the positions at IBKR, now continuing with the positions at Swissquote.
So, yes, had I known two or three months ago that I would be getting out of these positions, I would have transferred them. I’ll just bite the fee bullet now instead of waiting another two to three months for the transfers to complete.
Edit: Looked at SQ’s flat fees also. Smallest lot is 20 for CHF 780 which are valid for 12 months. Further selling via standard fees will be cheaper for me.
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From the WSJ: Situational Awareness Down 67% in July in AI Stock Rout
Friend had the same problem. Swiss broker took 1 month (crazy, there is an electronic process that takes seconds and IBKR does support it) and said any corporate action would stop the transfer. So, he just sold the monthly payers and bought them again at IBKR, was the only way to go.
Wonder why any broker still can survive in Switzerland. They charge like they would put a soldier with a halberd in front of a room where your paper stock certificates are stored. And there is the stamp tax.
(Swiss brokerage employee guarding your stock certificates).
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It’s outright crazy. Once set, and very much like the Vatican guard, people are extremely unlikely to ever switch, which explains the youth and student rebates … the banks could probably pay them and still end up ahead over time.
I talked to my siblings at no end, going through the annual statements and comparing them to mine, but to no avail. And that was when IB still had its $100 (or so) annual fee. Each of them rather pay 4-5 figure amounts annually (including trading fees) to a Swiss bank for no benefit at all. One even choses to pay 1.5% annually to have them implement an “individual strategy”, which the bank of course uses to fleece her further by focusing on its own and far from cheap products [shakes head in complete despair].
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Can’t remember that, I am with IB since 1998.
That applied until, roughly, covid (not correlated of course). You needed a minimum amount, and minimum monthly fee, or you’d get charged something like $10 a month.
If you were big enough or traded enough it never hit you.
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Unless you only hold Swiss publicly listed securities, the ultimate location / custodian is not in Switzerland anyways. Doesn’t matter if you view your shares through a Swiss web site or not.
Reminds me of SOXL. Except there’s no sycophant who takes 20% of any gains per quarter. Given the Situational Awareness fund was worth up to $20bln the manager must have made billions in the 2 years the fund existed.
TLDR; No need to feel sorry for the fund manager. For any fund manager for that matter.
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And the stock market July is already over, here is my report:
Dividend strategy:
Portfolio (finviz).
Dividends paid: MRK, MO, HST, O, CSCO
Completely sold: EMR and AVGO
Bought new: CMCSA and RHI
Margin multiplier: 101.85%, almost no credit.
Carry premium: 7.21%
Performance YTD 17.69%, CAGR since 2014 11.83%, since 2020 15.11%
Wheels of fortune for positions, dividends and sectors:
Not bad. The gambling strategy has more risk and therefor must bring more gains… or more losses. There was not much action this month, cannot find anything worthy of buying. But then when buying I have to sell something (push method) and I am quite OK with my actual positions. Still enjoying the life as an oil sheikh, wonder how long that will last.
Margin multiplier is at 132.33%.
Performance YTD 26.5%, CAGR since 2020 28.4%
Holdings table:
Wheel of fortune of positions:
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My (dividend growth) strategy is always mostly up to date and linked at the previous post in this topic - #11 by Phil_MCR.
Dividends in July: ~$11.1k (+6.4% versus July 2025)
Dividend changes announced in July:
- Unilever: -9.62%
- Stanley Black & Decker: +1.2%
- Omega Healthcare Investors: +1.49%
- J.M. Smucker: +1.82%
- Bank Ozk: +2.13% – this cool little regional bank raises their dividend every quarter by a cent which translates to an about 2% raise every quarter
- Unum: +9.75%
- Cummings: +10%
- Community Trust Bancorp Inc: +22.64% plus an additional one-time dividend half the size of the ordinary dividend raise
Trades: I think I’ve documented them all above as they took place.
Performance:
- YTD: 21.1%
- TWR$ : 15.1%
- XIRR[$, F] : 17.5%
Also noticed that this month or maybe already last month:
- I’ve doubled the value of my positions compared to what I put into it.
- dividends received now exceed ½M USD
$ Since inception in 2019.
F According to FASTgraphs.
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Wow, 17.5% per year for a dividend strategy is great. Also the XIRR(MWR) higher than TWR means your actions did add to performance (I think)!
I calculate XIRR myself (with help of google sheets), debt interest (you have none I suppose) and tax is already excluded. Also I suppose some of your option deals did add a bit. Still impressive.
I calculate XIRR (which would be money weighted return I suppose) since 2020 for each of my strategies and combined. It was 15.1% in the dividend portfolio, 28.38% in the gambling portfolio and 19.48% combined. However, 2019 was an extraordinary good year, even the Dow did make 22.34%. I did start the gambling strategy 2020 and 2020 was a loss there for me.
There was an important change in my rules starting 2020. No more “sell too late”. That (or the bull market) did add a lot to performance.
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That’s what I’d like to think as well. 
June and July were the best months YTD for my portfolio which pushed all the return numbers up. At the end of May I was still at 10.3% (down from 10.6% at the end of April …).
Well, things will turn again, I am certain.
I don’t count the option income (or losses) towards the dividend growth portofolio performance – this is just scratching my gambling itch.
July Option Trades
Bought back all three of my open short puts and haven’t sold any new ones. Because June and July went so well I bought them back much earlier than I would usually.
| Sold | Bought | Option | Profit | Annualized Return |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 29.04.2026 | 15.07.2026 | BIPC 16OCT26 30 P | $76.97 | 12.16% |
| 02.06.2026 | 27.07.2026 | TSCO 15JAN27 27 P | $118.49 | 29.12% |
| 23.06.2026 | 07.07.2026 | DPZ 19MAR27 240 P | $499.95 | 54.31% |
The “cash” behind these Cash Secured Puts is security BOXX which currently yields a little less than 4%.
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