Welcome back to Dividend Dollars! I hope you’re doing well and are ready for the holidays. The markets had a great week this week with indexes making higher gains at the end of the week. Economic data will be light next week, so I expect we see some more upside next week to end the year!
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. These purchases pushed us past a huge milestone! The portfolio surpassed $5,000 this week! Saving and investing $5,000 in only a couple months is something I am quite proud of and I am excited to continue this into the next year.
Portfolio Value
To date, I have invested $4,845 into the account, the total value of all positions plus any cash on hand is $5,036.38. That’s a gain of $191.38 for a total return of 3.95%. The account is up $39.31 for the week which is a 0.79% gain.
We added $335 to the account this week. A significant chunk of that money added was put towards starting a position in J.M. Smucker (SJM) 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 bought this week. Usually, a chunk 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, start new positions, and add to other existing positions as good buying opportunities presents themselves. Stock picks for this month are LMT, SJM, and CVX.
This week our buys added $15 to our annual dividend income. Our dividend yield decreased by 0.06% 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. 4.58% 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.
This week we also saw our portfolio’s dividend growth increase by 0.2% and our forecasted annual dividend income 20 years from now went up by about $300. This movement is due in part to some restructuring I did this week. I noticed that I was a tad over diversified within my utilities sector and decided to consolidate some of those fund from one holding into another that has greater growth and dividend safety. We sold Exxon and used that money to add to our positions in Magellan Midstream and Enterprise Products.
Dividends
This week we did not receive any dividends.
Dividends received for the week of December 20th: $0
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 20th
- SJM – bought 1 share at $134.92 (new position)
- CMCSA – bought 1 share at $48.44 (new position)
- EPD – added 1 share at $20.60
- TD – bought 1 share at $72.18 (new position)
- UWMC – sold $7.5 call 1/7/2022 for $5.00 premium
- December 22nd
- XOM – sold 1 share at $61.04 (consolidating oil positions)
- MMP – added 1 share at $44.03
- EPD – added 1 share at $21.28
- XYLD – added $10 at $50.58 per share (weekly investment)
- SCHD – added $10 at $79.12 per share (weekly investment)
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.
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 very merry Christmas!