Twelve Lost Years With TC Energy…

While I know that the markets have pulled back this year, I have one investment that literally has a mediocre 2.90% annual rate of return (money-weighted) after 12 years. It doesn’t even account for any inflation so I am losing money big time really.

How can that be? It pays a generous yield and it has always DRIP. In fact, it reinvests fractional shares with Computershare. It’s so disapointing …

This is why I love using the ROR as a metric with my investments as it includes time as a factor. Today, at the current price, I am making hardly no money. Even after all the compounding. Factor in inflation and it’s a loser …

While many holdings are near the 52-week lows, I am still making money with many holdings. Actually, 65% of my holdings thrive from a ROR perspective. So, you could imagine why I am not thrilled about TC Energy. I don’t have much and I have been trying to sell them for a while, but still, what a poor investment …

Here are what good investments provide for a portfolio!

All TRP Transactions

Before we speculate on the return and why it doesn’t match what you may see in a graph, here are all the transactions.

My annual rate of return is based on my purchase price and not any hypothetical purchase price from a general stock graph adjusted for dividends. Whatever you do with any chart out there will give you what I call the “TRP Index” as opposed to my ROR. My ROR is based on the numbers below.

It leads me to the following question …

What Is A Good Investment?

We usually have to compare apples with apples but unfortunately, a good investment for investor X is not the same as investor Y even with the same apple …

How many of you like TRP? Why do you like it? Are you surprise that after 12 years, I have a 2.90% annual ROR?

Since this blog is about dividend investing, some investors focus on the yield mostly to pay bills and fund travel while others focus on total return. Which is right isn’t up for debate unfortunately as it’s not what is best but what you need that matters.

So, back to the question, is TC Energy a good investment in my case?

For me, it’s not a good investment. The ROR is my compass today, and not the yield. Even with my income account, the ROR still rules. Even if I can’t get good income with a 20% ROR, I still expect an ROR matching the bank when I focus on income. The banks are my baseline and they have an ROR above 10% with an approximate yield of 4%.

Income investors are probably struggling here as the yield is one of the most important metric for them but capital preservation is also important and in the case of TRP, it’s struggling to keep up … Once you start using the dividends, your ROR will drop.

As mentioned, I don’t have much in TRP. I have been trying to sell it and I have just been too lazy to deal with the share certificates (yes, the paper certificate). I am doing to deal with that in 2023

Is It An Opportunity?

The flip side to this situation is to understand if it’s an opportunity?

You could just say that it’s time to buy more?

I don’t think so … When I have a good performing stocks like the first table pulling back to 52-week lows with an attractive yield (vs 5-year historical) than I can add. A good dividend screener can help find opportunities like that.

In this case, it’s adding money to a loser. I have been there where I sold my winners to rebalance only to add to losers … That approach was just a big investment mistake. I learned that you don’t have to lock in profit with great investments, they just keep on rolling. So you just let them ride.