Farewell To DOM

I've owned Dominion Resources Black Warrior Trust (DOM) since November 2007. It was my Stock Of The Month just 2 months ago. But in a first half of 2011 that has been mostly foul-ups, bloopers, and blunders, I sold it all on Friday after it hit an all-time low closing price on Thursday. I had set a triggered sell when I last bought it, thinking it would never actually be needed. As DOM sunk lower and lower in recent weeks, I still thought it would bounce back. It didn't - the capital losses were overwhelming the dividend, and I had to admit defeat and move on.

Fortunately, DOM was still around 5.5% of my portfolio, so I had a great opportunity to fill some long-standing orders:

• Bought enough Baidu (BIDU) to get back to where I was before, thereby (as best as is possible) undoing my worst stock sale ever;
• Bought enough Intuitive Surgical (ISRG) to get back to where I was before as well; and
• Used the remainder to buy Google (GOOG). I'd like to say that I got in before their fantastic last-quarter results were announced and the stock jumped 13%, but of course, I didn't.

Those are, as the reader might notice, three non-dividend-paying stocks. I feel that the chance to scratch some items off my to-do list outweighed the need to immediately replace DOM with a similar stock. I do have a few large dividend-paying candidates in mind though, and will be buying them as part of my normal monthly investments going forward.