Welcome back to Dividend Dollars!
The market ended red this week after rocketing oil prices dampened risk sentiment driven by the worsening situation in Ukraine. The Nasdaq dropped 2.8% and the S&P dropped 1.3%. Oil was responsible for the 9.3% gain in the S&P’s energy sector, with utilities, real estate, and defense sectors also making gains. Financial, information technology, communication services, and consumer discretionary sectors were the laggards.
Russian forces attacked civilian areas in Ukraine and seized and shot at an important nuclear power plant. Sanctions have not slowed down Putin’s mission and two rounds of peace talks have appeared to make no beneficial progress.
Fed Chair Powell clarified that the central bank supports a 25 bp rate hike later this month. A 50 bp hike is still possible in the future, but our attempts to fight inflation are significantly weakened due to raising oil prices and the geo-political environment we find ourselves in.
Portfolio Value
Though it was a red week for the markets, we had one of our best weeks to date with LMT and our oil positions leading the way. To date, I have invested $7,020 into the account, the total value of all positions plus any cash on hand is $7,425.73 . That’s a gain of $405.73 for a total return of 5.78%. The account is up $238.78 for the week which is a 3.32% gain.

We started building this portfolio on 9/24/2021 and when compared to the S&P 500 we are outperforming the market so far! Within that same timeframe, the S&P 500 is down 2.84% whereas our portfolio has an overall return of 5.78%! Let’s keep up this good progress with smart adds to the portfolio.
We added $270 to the account this week. My buys are detailed below.
Portfolio

Above is a dashboard of the portfolio that tracks annual dividend income, yield, beta, dividend growth, and more.
Below is a table of everything we are invested in so far. There you can see my number of shares, shares bought through dividend reinvestments, average cost, gains, and more. The tickers in green are positions that I bought shares in this week. The company names in blue are stocks that have been previously picked as a stock pick. I use a stock screener to find potentially undervalued stocks with safe and growing dividends. You can find last month’s watchlist here, going forward I will be doing heavy DD on monthly stock pick instead of multiple. Keep your eyes open for the first one on MMM in the coming weeks!

This week our activity raised our annual dividend income by $16. Our dividend yield decreased by 0.03% and our beta stayed flat. My portfolio’s dividend yield may be just slightly higher than what you will see in other portfolios, however that is strategic per my time horizon. I am in my 20s and am just starting off this investment journey, so a higher dividend yield gives me greater cash flow now to reinvest which help me realize the benefits of compounding sooner. Our beta usually hovers right around the mid 0.6s which I like, especially in times of uneasiness. It means my portfolio won’t dip as much as the rest of the market on red days, however, it does go the other way around and I won’t have as much green on the good days. Therefore, it is good to watch your beta in terms of cyclicity. View the chart below to see the performance of my portfolio versus the S&P 500, notice how my portfolio’s green days are not as substantial as the S&P’s but neither are my red days, that is beta at work. My beta so far has led to better returns than the market since beginning this portfolio.
Dividends
This week we received dividends from 6 positions: $0.70 from REYN, $1.49 from SJM, $0.40 from AFL, $1.10 from INTC, $1.37 from XYLD, and $0.65 from CMI.
Dividends received for 2022: $44.46
Portfolio’s Lifetime Dividends: $67.39
Trades
Here’s the breakdown of the trades I made this week:
- March 1st
- UWMC – added 2 shares at $4.05
- T – added 1 share at $23.47
- APD – added 0.2 shares at 231.15
- SJM – dividend of $1.49 reinvested
- AFL – dividend of $0.40 reinvested
- INTC – dividend of $1.10 reinvested
- March 2nd
- BBY – added 0.2 shares at 98.45
- UWMC – added 1 share at $4.56
- UWMC – sold a $5 call ¾ for $2 premium
- XYLD – added 0.207695 shares at $48.15 (recurring investment)
- SCHD – added 0.128535 shares at $77.80 (recurring investment)
- SBUX – added 1 share at $92.68
- XYLD – dividend of $1.37 reinvested
- March 3rd
- UWMC – closed covered call position for $1
- CMI – dividend of $0.65 reinvested
- March 4th
- UWMC – sold $5.5 call 3/25 for $4
- T – added 2 shares at $23.77
Summary
That is it for the update this week. Let’s kill it next week. Stay patient and be ready to buy income producing assets at a discount!
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! See you next week!