Patrick's Rants

I wrote about using the low stock prices at the beginning of this year to lower your taxes a little and to lower how much you have “at risk” in Intel (INTC). If you had followed the 100 share strategy I mentioned in March here’s what would have happened.
First, let me arbitrarily pick June 1, 2007 as your original purchase date. INTC closed at $22.36. For simplicity I’m going to use the close price of the day. I’m also going to ignore the August 3, 2007 dividend (simply because I haven’t checked the ex-dividend date. I will count the intervening dividends)

• Purchase 100 shares of INTC June 1, 2007 = $2,236.00 (plus commissions, discount brokers will run around $10, others will run as high as $50-$75)
• November 5, 2007 dividends of $0.113 = $11.30 added to your account (using the discount broker you just made back your commissions)
• February 5, 2008 dividend $0.128 = $12.80
• May 5, 2008 $0.14 = $14.00
• August 5, 2008 $0.14 = $14.00
• November 5, 2008 $0.14 = $14.00
• February 4, 2009 $0.14 = $14.00
• May 5, 2009 $0.14 = $14.00 (only counting 100 shares worth of dividends, the ex-date timing could have doubled that)

If you had read the article on March 4, and decided that I wasn’t crazy, you could have bought your new 100 shares for $12.31 = $1,231.00. Holding the shares for around 35 days, you would have sold your “first in” shares on June 5, at $15.92 at the close $1,592.00. This gives you a $644.00 loss based upon the original purchase price on June 1, 2007. In a couple of transactions you have lowered your basis – or purchase price – in INTC, thrown off some beneficial tax losses and kept the same number of shares in your account. The long term capital loss over $3,000.00 can be applied to gains if you had them or carried forward for when you do have them.

Plus there’s almost $700.00 of dividends up there, so if you are using that cash for your new purchase your new shares only cost around $600.00.