Welcome back to Dividend Dollars! I hope you’re doing well and had a great week of investing! We got whipsawed around this week due to continued volatility caused by economic uncertainty and major shorting on UWMC. Overall, we ended only a little red this week and made some buys to grow our annual dividend income.
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. I believe markets will remain strong through the end of the year, but as Omicron news and other economic data comes out who knows what will happen! This is why we invest in stable, dividend producing companies which will do what we predict regardless (usually) of the state of the market.
Portfolio Value
To date, I have invested $4,510 into the account, the total value of all positions plus any cash on hand is $4,643.57. That’s a gain of $133.57 for a total return of 2.96%. The account is down $18.72 for the week which is a 0.40% decrease.
We added $400 to the account this week. A significant chunk of that money added was put towards starting a position in Chevron (CVX) and a couple of other new positions and adds as you will see further down.
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 $400 to the portfolio this week! A lot of my buys throughout the weeks are usually 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, start new positions, and add to other existing positions as good buying opportunities presents themselves throughout the week. Stock picks for this month are LMT, SJM, and CVX.
This week our buys added $27 to our annual dividend income. Our dividend yield increased by 0.21% and our beta went down by 0.01. 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. 4.64% 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.
One thing I did find interesting when reviewing the forecast of my portfolio was that the projected 2041 dividend income went down by $3.1k from what was projected last week. This is primarily due to the adds I had made this week having lower (and in one case negative) dividend growth history for the last 5 years which brought my portfolio’s growth rate down by 2.2%. Good growth numbers are important for forecasting growing dividend income.
My new position in MFA has a negative 5-year growth rate on their dividend because they cut their dividend by more than half during the pandemic. MFA has a very attractive yield with good upside; however, I don’t love what this holding has done to my forecasted income. I will do more research on the company to make sure I feel good about holding it before taking any more action.
Dividends
This week we received five dividends. They were from MMM, SCHD, KO, O, and STAG. All of these dividends were reinvested, except for STAG, we liquidated that position this week.
Dividends received for the week of December 13th: $3.54
Dividends received for December 2021: $6.47
Year-To-Date Dividends: $11.32
Trades
Here’s the breakdown of the trades I made this week:
- December 13th
- CVX – bought 1 share at $116.29 (new position from the watchlist)
- O – added 1 share at $67.93
- EOG – added 1 share at $87.05
- MMM – added $1.48 dividend reinvestment at $175.19 per share
- SCHD – added $0.78 dividend reinvestment at $77.75 per share
- December 14th
- XYLD – bought 1 share at $50.23 (new position)
- December 15th
- MFA – bought 26 shares at $4.48 (new position)
- STAG – sold 1 share at $45.22
- SCHD – added $10 at $78.35 per share (recurring investment)
- KO – added $0.42 dividend reinvestment at $57.98 per share
- O – added $0.74 dividend reinvestment at $67.57 per share
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; so we are off easy this week.
There were a couple of headlines this week but none of them had any real tangible effect on our positions. There are a few headlines I would recommend you read if you have shares in MMM, T, or VZ.
The first is “Neogen shares soar 14% premarket after it confirms deal to combine with 3M’s food-safety business”. This headline hardly affects 3M because food testing is ~1% of their total revenue, but it is a good read to provide some additional understanding of the company.
Another article is “U.S. former officials urge ‘speedy’ resolution of 5G wireless aviation dispute”. This article is just a little update of the FAA and their issue with the rollout of 5G. There is no real update here other than that we can still expect 5G to be ready next month and that VZ and T continue to be accommodating to the FAA.
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 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 have a terrific holiday season!