For the last several months, I’ve largely stepped back from stock trading in order to assemble the funds needed to purchase a condo. And while my divestment of a big chunk of my holdings may have been a little premature (most of my stocks have continued to rise in recent months), at least I got my dream apartment, with more space than this long-time New Yorker is accustomed to and wonderful views of the Mississippi River from my perch on the edge of Downtown Minneapolis.

But enough about me. Now that I’m back thinking about my portfolio, I’ve been tempted to add to two of my holdings, ViacomCBS (VIAC) and Kimco Realty (KIM). ViacomCBS has been good to me, too good. When the stock ran up to $100 per share, I should have forgotten about my dividend focus and sold it for the capital gain. But like a good buy-and-hold investor, or one without foresight of what was to come, I held on. Now that the stock has fallen to around $40 a share, I’m luck enough still to have gains, but my position in VIAC is one of the smallest in my portfolio.

Kimco also has been good to me. I owned it a number of years back, sold off all my holdings at a profit at a time when I thought REITs were taking up too much of my portfolio and I needed to add some technology weight to my portfolio, which proved fortuitous. But recently I’ve taken up a small position in Kimco again. It’s my smallest holding, so just from a portfolio balancing standpoint I may error on the side of adding some more Kimco before ViacomCBS.

Decisions have yet to be made, however. The degree of short interest in ViacomCBS has given me pause. And Kimco’s merger with Weingarten Realty is a question mark at this point. From what I’ve read, the merger sounds like a good deal for Kimco shareholders. But then, mergers and acquisitions always sound good in a company’s announcement of them. And to be frank, neither stock is getting a lot of love from analysts right now. Both release earnings within the next couple of weeks, so I may wait to see how much light those releases shed on the firms’ future prospects.

And, adding to my indecision is a temptation to take on shares of another technology firm. More on that technology play later after I do some additional research, but if I do go in this decision it will be an aberration from my dividend focused investing practice.

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