Anodyne Inc.

Various envelopes stuffed with dollar bills:

Dominion Citrus Income Fund (DOM.UN): 12,346 units x .01/unit = $123.46 (28 Dec)
Norbord, Inc. (NBD): 1208 shares x .10/share = $120.80 (21 Dec)

Cash balance, $470.71

Farewell monthly Dominion Citrus Income Fund distribution. It probably bears repeating that the distribution cut, in and of itself, should not concern unitholders with a medium- to long-term investment horizon. DOM.UN's corporate precursor, Dominion Citrus, Inc., paid -- if memory serves -- a .05 dividend on earnings of .08-.10/unit. Given roughly stable earnings over the next 12-18 months, I'd anticipate the re-implementation of a dividend of some kind, and, hopefully, reasonable share price appreciation. I have approximately $7500 of my own (eg., real, non-Anodyne Inc.) money in this medium- to long-term process, so it's not like I'm a totally uninterested bystander.

In other Anodyne Inc.-related news, someone previously unknown to me, a high school student from New Brunswick, writes to ask about "learning about investing."

• Read everything. I started in 1985 with a Self Counsel Press book -- Chuck Chakrapani's Financial Freedom on $5/Day -- and never stopped.

• Question everything. Don't rush out and buy DOM.UN just because I labelled it a screaming buy. It was for me, but your mileage may vary.

• Read as many annual reports as you can. I read between 100-150 in the course of a year, and if you really want to learn about investing, you should, too. If you run across a paragraph (or paragraphs) in an annual report that you can't parse into standard non-technical English, ask yourself what that rhetorical equivocation might signal or conceal. The Globe's Annual Reports Service will send you a big box of reports free for the asking. When I began to seriously study investing, I ordered a few reports from each industry, and compared them with each other.

• Learn from people who are smarter than you. Warren Buffett's Chairman's Letters are up on the Berkshire Hathaway website. Marty Whitman's semi-annual commentaries are available on the Third Avenue Funds website. Irwin Michael's (great; lengthy) ABC Fund Commentaries are up over at Valueinvestigator.com.

• Get your feet wet. Seriously research a few ideas. Buy 100 shares of something affordable. Get used to the idea that you are now the part owner of a business, as opposed to, in Warren Buffett's words, a price that squiggles around randomly and is a candidate for sale whenever its gyrations make you nervous.

• Keep reading. Keep questioning your motivations and judgments. Take pleasure in being alive -- a gift given to you gratis (H. Arendt) -- and being able to reason and think. Drop me a line, and let me know how you do.
- posted by cjb @ 8:46 PM