Welcome back to Dividend Dollars! I hope you’re doing well and survived this week of investing. And boy what a week! The market ended down this week and had whipsawed us a couple of times due to a new Covid variant and Fed decisions. But these things give us good buying opportunities which we will review.
Every week I write an update on the dividend portfolio so that we can track its progress. I will give an overview of the portfolio and its value, the dividends received, trades made, and any news or business announcements made that may be of interest to our positions.
As you’ll see in this article, I made a handful of purchases this week following the dip from last week. I would not be surprised if we see more downside in the coming weeks, so prepare your account to buy as opportunities present themselves!
Portfolio Value
To date, I have invested $3,655 into the account, the total value of all positions plus any cash on hand is $3,731.54. That’s a gain of $76.54 for a total return of 2.04%. The account is down $57.99 for the week which is a 1.53% decrease, in line with the way the market performed this week.
Was a rougher week, but that’s okay! I’m actually wanting to see greater downside in the near future so that I can add more heavily. This week I did not add as heavily as last week per the market direction not being as clear. We added $295 to the account. I need to get some holiday shopping done soon which may stop me from investing as heavily these next few weeks, regardless I will add heavy should an opportunity present itself.
Portfolio
Below is a table of everything we are invested in so far. The tickers in green are stocks that I added to this week. I added $295 to the portfolio this week! A lot of my buys throughout the week are buys from this month’s stock picks. You can read that article here. I use a stock screener to find potentially undervalued stocks with safe and growing dividends. I will add to positions on the picks and others as good buying opportunities (like the dip on Friday) presents themselves. Stock picks for this month are LMT, CAH, and MO. I added to my CAH position from the stock picks, but I made many other purchases as well.
This week our buys added $18 to our annual dividend income. Our dividend yield increased by 0.16% and our beta went up by 0.02. Neither of those are particularly a bad or good thing. High dividend yields can mean that a company is paying too much in dividends and could be at risk of needing to cut dividends depending on the healthiness of the balance sheet. 4.85% dividend yield is a little higher than most dividend portfolios I’ve seen. Since I am young and just starting off, a high yield, though risky, is better for my long term time horizon and it is partly inflated due to the poor performance of the portfolio this week.
Dividends
This week we received two dividends, one from REYN and another from INTC.
Dividends received for the week of November 29th: $1.39
Dividends received for November 2021: $4.21
Year-To-Date Dividends: $5.55
Trades
Here’s the breakdown of the trades I made this week:
- November 29th
- CAH – 1 share at $47.53
- EOG – 1 share at $89.86 (new position)
- November 30th
- T – 2 shares at $23.12
- VZ – 1 share at $50.87
- UWMC – Sold one 12/17 $8.5 covered call at $5.00 (first covered call ever sold, wanting to learn more about this as a method of making extra gains on long term holds)
- T – 1 share at $22.73
- December 1st
- REYN – $1.00 invested (dividend reinvestment + round up) at $29.32 per share
- AQN – 1 share at $13.78
- SCHD – $10 invested at $76.92 (recurring investment)
- December 2nd
- EPD – 1 share at $21.17
Noteworthy News
This section of the post will identify some headlines that may be of import to our positions. If they are important enough, we will also call out in the posts if the news calls for actions to readjust our portfolio. There was not too much direct news which affects our stock positions; however I will keep a close eye on the Covid variant situation and try my best to gauge information be prepared for how it may affect the market.
I think we have news enough with watching the news develop for the Omicron variant so I will leave this section blank for this week.
Some headlines that are worth looking into though are Exxon’s new forecasted earnings, Altria’s Iqos development with the Biden administration, and an article on Seeking Alpha about AT&T’s management not being able to keep their word on future dividends.
Summary
That is it for the update this week. Let’s kill it next week and keep our eyes open for more good buying opportunities! Let’s see how the market reacts to the Covid variant news and see if we can capitalize on it by continuing to add aggressively. Let me know what you think of the progress so far, share with me your progress and questions, interact with me on twitter and Instagram using the links below!
Thank you for reading and take care!