Investments

The day started with me waiting for the Euronext stock exchange to open. I had 300 shares with Dutch ING stock and was looking to write covered calls to generate some income. Unfortunately, my portfolio was dragged under EUR 2,000 balance and I had to wait a few minutes to recover slightly above EUR 2,000 and sell covered calls. Sold, Sold, Sold. Then I left for Vilgale Apartment to prepare the bathroom for tiling, a few weeks ago I bought a special shower tray, over which I poured concrete.…

My portfolio dropped by some 10% today - as I'm heavily invested in Dutch ING bank stock and Barrick Gold, I find it a bit scary, not to say more. It seems I'm going to get assigned ING 9.34 PUT tomorrow and might get assigned GOLD: NYSE 17 put next week. Additionally holding a few call options, but with a price under the water, it will be hard to find decent options premiums. Inflation and bank stock earnings are to blame. With inflation running higher than expected at 9.1% in June, we are…

On July 12th, 2022 I bought 60 shares of AMS: INGA (ING Groep NV) paying EUR 9.04 per share.  I'm now holding 200 shares with ING stock in my portfolio and my average buy price is EUR 9.82.  The ING Group is a Dutch multinational banking and financial services corporation headquartered in Amsterdam. Its primary businesses are retail banking, direct banking, commercial banking, investment banking, wholesale banking, private banking, asset management, and insurance services My goal is to…

In 2022 three were 27 member states in the European Union (EU), and 20 of the 27 EU member states have adopted the euro (€) as their common currency. In this article, I've listed European Union member countries by the gross monthly average salary in 2022. I wouldn't call the below written scientific research or take it too seriously, as most of the data in this article are taken from Wikipedia's article List of European countries by average wage.  All calculations are done using Google…

The European Union (EU) is a political and economic union of 27 member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total population of about 447 million.  The other morning I was talking to a friend from South Africa, after a nice conversation about living in Georgia, railways, copper, and African Union I decided to look back on my old articles about African Union and GDP data from there. After a few hours of research, I come up with a newly updated article and was quite…

The African Union (AU) is a continental union consisting of 55 member states located on the continent of Africa.  The AU's future goals include a customs union, a single market, a central bank, and a common currency, thereby establishing an economic and monetary union. This morning I was talking to Rob, a friend from South Africa, we were talking economics, Georgia, and railways and suddenly I remembered a few years ago I did an article about GDP per Capita in the African Union in 2013. As…

A few years ago I bought a property in rural Latvia (which is a member state of the European Union) for under EUR 4,000 - most of the time I thought this has been a bad investment.  Since my original purchase I have additionally invested about EUR 14,000, making my total around EUR 18,000, and this Summer for the first time I feel I could actually realize this apartment for EUR 25,000 or at least EUR 20,000 without much hassle. See the latest developments here A few weeks ago we bought a nice…

In 2022 there were 21  out of 27 European Union member states with an official minimum wage set by the government. Turns out this is already the eighth (#9) article about minimum wages in European Union featured on the blog. To keep it up, here is the raw data for minimum wages across European Union in 2022. Please don't judge too hard, data are taken from this article on Wikipedia, and applied some basic calculations for yearly growth. The minimum wage in European Union member countries…

On June 13th, 2022 I bought 40 shares of AMS: INGA (ING Groep NV) paying EUR 9.45 per share.  I'm now holding 140 shares with ING stock in my portfolio and my average buy price is EUR 10.16.  The ING Group is a Dutch multinational banking and financial services corporation headquartered in Amsterdam. Its primary businesses are retail banking, direct banking, commercial banking, investment banking, wholesale banking, private banking, asset management, and insurance services My goal is to…

Welcome to another article in the series of stock picking. The other morning I was talking with my fiancee over the Whatsapp chat and as she works in the translation field, she suggested taking a closer look at the RWS company. She sent me the following URL: RWS shares drop 19% after BPEA abstains from takeover As I've been already looking into translation, and machine translation stocks in the past, most I was able to find were London or Hong-Kong based, which kind of is not attractive to…