Category: Dividends

Categories
Dividend Stocks Dividends Portfolio

Dividend Portfolio: 7/22/2022 Week in Review

Welcome back to the weekly Dividend Dollars portfolio review! Dividend Dollars, our investing approach is a dividend growth strategy with aspects of value investing and fundamental analysis. I am a young investor in my 20’s and by sticking to this strategy over the long term, the magical powers of compounding are on my side. This allows me to more easily build substantial positions in dividend paying stocks over time, which will one day help me reach the ultimate goal of being financially free through the sources of passive income they provide. You can read more about the strategy here.

Thanks to everybody for showing some love on the new analysis post on Activision Blizzard ($ATVI) from last week! Above is the comment from the judge on my submission. I ended up winning third place with a prize of $400! That money helped me upgrade my home’s Wi-Fi so I can be a little bit more efficient with running things and it will help pay for the WordPress subscription that runs this website! It’s awesome to get rewarded for the work I put into this website and it’s nice to see folks get some value out of it. So, thank you for reading! Let’s dive into the portfolio review!

Portfolio Value

To date, I have invested $10,350 into the account the total value of all positions plus any cash on hand is $10,156.53. That’s a total loss of 1.87%. The account is up $11.32 for the week which is a 0.11% gain.

We started building this portfolio on 9/24/2021 and, even with this rough last week, when compared to the S&P 500 we are outperforming the market so far! Within that same timeframe, the S&P 500 is down -11.08% whereas our portfolio is down -1.87%! I love tracking my portfolio against a benchmark like the S&P. The above chart comes from Sharesight which makes portfolio and dividend management a breeze!

We added $120 in cash to the account this week. The trades made this week will be broken out 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 and the blue ones are positions that I reinvested dividends into. The positions that we added to increased our annual dividend income by $7 at a yield of 4.45%.

Dividends

This week we received only one dividend: $4.96 from ETRACS 2xPayer Levered Small Cap ETF ($SMHB), this will be reinvested on Monday.

In my portfolio, all positions have dividend reinvestment enabled. I don’t hold onto the dividend, I don’t try to time the reinvestment, I just let my broker do it automatically.

Dividends received for 2022: $184.26

Portfolio’s Lifetime Dividends: $208.78

Trades

Below is a breakdown of my trades this week!

  • July 18th
    • 3M ($MMM) – 0.15 shares bought at $128.80
  • July 20th
    • Ally Financial ($ALLY) – 1 share bought at $33.82
    • SCHD – added 0.138125 shares at $72.40 (recurring investment)
    • XYLD – added 0.231054 shares at $43.28 (recurring investment)
  • July 21st
    • AT&T ($T) – 2 shares bought at $18.42
  • July 22nd
    • Intel ($INTC) – bought 0.25 shares at $40.04

Not a huge week of buys for me. AT&T’s quarterly earnings report showed great growth in their products and stable margins. However, the report was not received well by the market on account of the decreased FCF guidance and very heavy capital expenditure. I still believe this is a good long-term hold, if anything, their heavy investments will contribute to a better future for the firm.

Next week I plan on keeping my eyes MMM, MSFT, and TXN for their earnings reports on Tueday, MO, INTC, MRK, and CMCSA for their earnings reports on Thursday, and ALLY for its ex-date on Friday. If any of these provide a nice dip, assuming information from earnings is not catastrophic, I’ll be looking to add.

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!

Read the weekly market review to get a recap of the week and what economic events are coming in order to help arm yourself with a strategy for your future buys!

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 and stay safe!

Regards,

Dividend Dollars

Categories
Dividend Stocks Dividends Portfolio

Dividend Portfolio: 7/15/2022 Week in Review

Welcome back to the weekly Dividend Dollars portfolio review! Dividend Dollars, our investing approach is a dividend growth strategy with aspects of value investing and fundamental analysis as well. I am a young investor in my 20’s and by sticking to this strategy over the long term, the magical powers of compounding are on my side. This allows me to more easily build substantial positions in dividend paying stocks over time, which will one day help me reach the ultimate goal of being financially free through the sources of passive income they provide. You can read more about the strategy here.

Sorry about the delay in this post too! I spent many hours this week working on a new analysis post on Activision Blizzard ($ATVI) which is posted here and is also submitted to a CommonStock competition for $5,000 in prize money! I pay out of my pocket to run this website and spend lots of my personal time putting together my posts for your benefit, so if you want to help push some support and maybe some money my way, please go upvote and comment on my submission here. Let’s dive into the portfolio review!

Portfolio Value

To date, I have invested $10,230 into the account the total value of all positions plus any cash on hand is $9,963.15. That’s a total loss of 2.61%. The account is down $21.48 for the week which is a 0.22% loss.

We started building this portfolio on 9/24/2021 and, even with this rough last week, when compared to the S&P 500 we are outperforming the market so far! Within that same timeframe, the S&P 500 is down -13.29% whereas our portfolio is down -2.61%! I love tracking my portfolio against a benchmark like the S&P. The above chart comes from Sharesight which makes portfolio and dividend management a breeze!

We added $120 in cash to the account this week. The trades made this week will be broken out 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 and the blue ones are positions that I reinvested dividends into. The positions that we added to increased our annual dividend income by $7 at a yield of 4.46%.

Dividends

This week we received only one dividend: $4.85 from Altria $MO.

In my portfolio, all positions have dividend reinvestment enabled. I don’t hold onto the dividend, I don’t try to time the reinvestment, I just let my broker do it automatically. The Coca-Cola dividend was actually received last Friday, but got reinvested on the following trading day.

Dividends received for 2022: $184.26

Portfolio’s Lifetime Dividends: $208.78

Trades

Below is a breakdown of my trades this week!

  • July 11th
    • ETRACS 2xMonthly Levered Small Cap ($SMHB) – 1 share bought at $7.87
    • Stantec ($STN) – 1 share bought at $44.76
  • July 12th
    • Altria ($MO) – dividend reinvested
  • July 13th
    • SCHD – added 0.139763 shares at $71.55 (recurring investment)
    • XYLD – added 0.232374 shares at $43.03 (recurring investment)
  • July 14th
    • Bank of America ($BAC) – 0.3 shares bought at $29.97
    • 3M ($MMM) – 0.3 shares bought at $127.10

Not a huge week of buys for me. I started a new position in Stantec on Monday and then used the big down day on Thursday to add to some of biggest down positions.

Next week I plan on keeping my eyes on Lowe’s, Microsoft, and Intel for the reasons below:

  • Lowe’s ($LOW) for its ex-date coming up on July 19th.
  • I’ll be watching Microsoft for their earnings report coming out this week. Could provide a good buying opportunity if it isn’t received well.
  • I’ll also be watching Intel to see how the stock price reacts to many of the big tech names having their earnings reports come out next week. May be another dip buying opportunity if it isn’t received well.

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!

Read the weekly market review to get a recap of the week and what economic events are coming in order to help arm yourself with a strategy for your future buys!

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 and stay safe!

Regards,

Dividend Dollars

Categories
Dividend Stocks Dividends Portfolio

Dividend Portfolio: 7/8/2022 Week in Review

Welcome back to the weekly Dividend Dollars portfolio review! Dividend Dollars, our investing approach is a dividend growth strategy with aspects of value investing and fundamental analysis as well. I am a young investor in my 20’s and by sticking to this strategy over the long term, the magical powers of compounding are on my side. This allows me to more easily build substantial positions in dividend paying stocks over time, which will one day help me reach the ultimate goal of being financially free through the sources of passive income they provide. You can read more about the strategy here. Let’s dive into the portfolio review!

Portfolio Value

To date, I have invested $10,110 into the account (WOOT WOOT WE PASSED 10K), the total value of all positions plus any cash on hand is $9,887.69. That’s a total loss of 2.20%. The account is up $142.95 for the week which is a 1.47% 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 -12.48% whereas our portfolio is down -2.20%! I love tracking my portfolio against a benchmark like the S&P. The above chart comes from Sharesight which makes portfolio and dividend management a breeze!

We added $120 in cash to the account this week. The trades made this week will be broken out 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 and the blue ones are positions that I reinvested dividends into. The positions that we added to increased our annual dividend income by $9 at a yield of 4.42%.

Dividends

This week we received $6.72 from two dividends: $0.49 from Coca-Cola, $6.23 from Best Buy ($BBY).

In my portfolio, all positions have dividend reinvestment enabled. I don’t hold onto the dividend, I don’t try to time the reinvestment, I just let my broker do it automatically. The Coca-Cola dividend was actually received last Friday, but got reinvested on the following trading day.

Dividends received for 2022: $179.42

Portfolio’s Lifetime Dividends: $202.34

Trades

Below is a breakdown of my trades this week!

  • July 5th
    • Best Buy ($BBY) – dividend reinvested
    • Coca-Cola ($KO) – dividend reinvested
    • Comcast ($CMCSA) – 0.5 shares bought at $39.26
    • Lowe’s ($LOW) – added 0.125 shares at $175.84
  • July 6th
    • SCHD – added 0.1399 shares at $71.48 (recurring investment)
    • XYLD – added 0.233198 shares at $42.88 (recurring investment)
  • July 8th
    • Intel ($INTC) – added 0.25 shares at $37.96
    • AT&T ($T) – added 2 shares at $20.86

This was sort of a slow week on top of an already shortened week. It was a pretty positive week driving by the tech and consumer discretionary sectors as discussed in my weekly market review, therefore there wasn’t too many amazing opportunities to buy down. I mainly just took this week to add a little bit into some of my favorite down positions and positions on ex-dates.

Next week I plan on keeping my eyes on Lowe’s, Cummins, and Altria for the reasons below:

  • Lowe’s ($LOW) for its ex-date coming up on July 19th.
  • I’ll also be looking to add to Cummins ($CMI) which I’m down 4% on right now. Their yield is 2.89% which is slightly above their 5-year average and their P/E is at 10.8 which is about 20% underneath the 5-year average. They have a 29-year dividend streak with 16 years of consecutive growth. I’m anticipating a dividend increase on their Q3 payout and thus would like to add earlier now while down.
  • I’ll also be watching Altria ($MO) to add to next week. I’m currently down 12.3% on this stock. Its yield is juicy right now at 8.67%, roughly 2% higher than its 5-year average. This company has great financials and the JUUL headlines don’t concern me too much due to the company’s limited stake in it. Similar to $CMI, I’m expecting their next announced dividend to be increased and I want to add early while down now.

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!

Read the weekly market review to get a recap of the week and what economic events are coming in order to help arm yourself with a strategy for your future buys!

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 and stay safe!

Regards,

Dividend Dollars

Categories
Dividend Stocks Dividends Portfolio

Dividend Portfolio: 7/1/2022 Week in Review

Photo by Burak Kebapci on Pexels.com

Welcome back to the weekly Dividend Dollars portfolio review! Dividend Dollars, our investing approach is a dividend growth strategy with aspects of value investing and fundamental analysis as well. I am a young investor in my 20’s and by sticking to this strategy over the long term, the magical powers of compounding are on my side. This allows me to more easily build substantial positions in dividend paying stocks over time, which will one day help me reach the ultimate goal of being financially free through the sources of passive income they provide. You can read more about the strategy here. Let’s dive into the portfolio review!

Portfolio Value

To date, I have invested $9,990 into the account, the total value of all positions plus any cash on hand is $9,739.21. That’s a total loss of 2.51%. The account is down $115.45 for the week which is a 1.17% loss. Overall, for the month of June we were down about 4.5% whereas the S&P 500 fell 8.4%. Read our monthly market review here where we discussed the bear market and why dividend strategies do well in times of economic contractions.

We started building this portfolio on 9/24/2021 and, even with this rough last week, when compared to the S&P 500 we are outperforming the market so far! Within that same timeframe, the S&P 500 is down -14.14% whereas our portfolio is down -2.51%! I love tracking my portfolio against a benchmark like the S&P. The above chart comes from Sharesight which makes portfolio and dividend management a breeze!

We added $120 in cash to the account this week. The trades made this week will be broken out 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 and the blue ones are positions that I reinvested dividends into. The positions that we added to increased our annual dividend income by $14 at a yield of 4.37%.

Dividends

This week we received $7.57 from 3 dividends. $3.43 from Schwab US Dividend Equity ETF ($SCHD), $3.65 from Global X S&P 500 Covered Call ETF, and $0.49 from Coca-Cola ($KO).

In my portfolio, all positions have dividend reinvestment enabled. I don’t hold onto the dividend, I don’t try to time the reinvestment, I just let my broker do it automatically. The $BAC and $LMT dividends will be reinvested at market open.

Dividends received for 2022: $171.11

Portfolio’s Lifetime Dividends: $194.04

Trades

Below is a breakdown of my trades this week!

  • June 21st
  • June 27th
    • AT&T ($T) – 1 share bought at $20.95
    • Schwab US Dividend Equity ETF ($SCHD) – dividend reinvested
  • June 28th
    • Ally Financial ($ALLY) – 1 share bought at $35.41
  • June 29th
    • Best Buy ($BBY) – 0.5 shares bought at $66.86
    • $SCHD – added 0.139324 shares at $71.78 (recurring investment)
    • $XYLD – added 0.234224 shares at $42.69 (recurring investment)
  • June 30th
    • AT&T ($T) – 1 share bought at $20.90
  • July 1st
    • Texas Instruments ($TXN) – 0.075 shares bought at $147.73

This was sort of a slow week. Not too much movement or news to produce amazing buying opportunities, so I decided to buy down into Ally and Best Buy some. I also decided to buy down into AT&T and am looking to get that position to 100 shares to take advantage of selling covered calls to boost income. We are over half way there!

Next week I plan on keeping my eyes on AT&T, Comcast, and McCormick as their ex-dividend dates are next week and all three positions are ones that I can buy down into.

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!

Read the monthly market review to get a recap of the month and arm yourself with a strategy for your future buys!

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 and stay safe!

Regards,

Dividend Dollars

Categories
Dividend Stocks Dividends Portfolio

Dividend Portfolio: 6/24/2022 Week in Review

Welcome back to the weekly Dividend Dollars portfolio review! Dividend Dollars, our investing approach is a dividend growth strategy with aspects of value investing and fundamental analysis as well. I am a young investor in my 20’s and by sticking to this strategy over the long term, the magical powers of compounding are on my side. This allows me to more easily build substantial positions in dividend paying stocks over time, which will one day help me reach the ultimate goal of being financially free through the sources of passive income they provide. You can read more about the strategy here. Let’s dive into the portfolio review!

Portfolio Value

To date, I have invested $9,870 into the account, the total value of all positions plus any cash on hand is $9,713.92. That’s a total loss of 1.58% (up from 6.5% just last week). The account is up $347.25 for the week which is a 3.71% gain. We made back last week’s loss and some! As we discussed in the market recap for this week (read that here), the rebound this week was widespread.

We started building this portfolio on 9/24/2021 and, even with this rough last week, when compared to the S&P 500 we are outperforming the market so far! Within that same timeframe, the S&P 500 is down -12.20% whereas our portfolio is down -1.58%! I love tracking my portfolio against a benchmark like the S&P. The above chart comes from Sharesight which makes portfolio and dividend management a breeze!

We added $120 in cash to the account this week. The trades made this week will be broken out 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 and the blue ones are positions that I reinvested dividends into. The positions that we added to increased our annual dividend income by $4 at a yield of 4.34%.

Dividends

This week we received $11.80 from 3 dividends. $3.18 from ETRACS 2xMonthly Pay Leveraged US Small Cap ETN ($SMHB), $5.68 from Lockheed Martin ($LMT), and $2.94 from Bank of America ($BAC).

In my portfolio, all positions have dividend reinvestment enabled. I don’t hold onto the dividend, I don’t try to time the reinvestment, I just let my broker do it automatically. The $BAC and $LMT dividends will be reinvested at market open.

Dividends received for 2022: $163.54

Portfolio’s Lifetime Dividends: $186.47

Trades

Below is a breakdown of my trades this week!

  • June 21st
    • 3M ($MMM) – 0.2 shares bought at $129.85
    • Comcast ($CMCSA) – 0.3 shares bought at 38.77
  • June 22nd
    • Altria ($MO) – added 1 share at $41.72
    • SCHD – added 0.140768 shares at $71.04 (recurring investment)
    • XYLD – added 0.235532 shares at $42.46 (recurring investment)
    • ETRACS 2xMonthly Pay Levered US Small Cap ($SMHB) – dividend reinvested

This was a slow week for buys. With everything being down for so long, we finally had a week with not much downside, so I decided not to deploy all of my weekly cash. Altria had news with week the Juul ban and the FDA’s new nicotine limits on cigarettes that made the stock drop almost 10% at the most and was a great opportunity to buy. Altria ended the week being only down 4.50%.

Next week I plan on keeping my eyes on $MO for more buying opportunities. I’ll also be watching Realty Income ($O) for any good chances to buy down next week before the ex-date. With the Fed’s stress test and financials lacking performance (discussed in the economic recap here) I think our financial stocks might see some love next week. I’ll be looking to add to our $BAC, $ALLY, and $AFL positions if that lagging continues.

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!

Read the last market review to educate yourself on the prior week to help build proper expectations for the week to come! This can help you make better buying decisions.

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 and stay safe!

Regards,

Dividend Dollars

Categories
Dividends Stock Market Strategy

What Dividend Strategy Does Best in a Bear Market?

As the economy falls further into bear market territory, it is clear that dividend investing strategies have held up better than most other investing strategies this year. Today I read an article from a Morningstar writer about which dividend investing strategies are outperforming year to date 2022. This article looked at how much that performance has varied depending on specific dividend investing approaches.

Generally speaking, there are usually two schools of thought when it comes to dividend investing: dividend yield investing vs. dividend growth investing. Dividend yield is calculated as the latest dividend payment annualized divided by price. Dividend growth is defined as the rate of change of dividends paid by a company over time, generally the most recent 3 or 5 year period. Clearly, a high dividend investor is more focused on the size of the dividends they receive while a dividend growth investor cares more about the historical and potential growth of the dividend. Both styles generally have the same goal, which is create an income stream.

However, an investor’s time horizon can play a significant role in determining which strategy they focus on. Older folks may want to put their money in high yielding yet consistent payers like Realty Income ($O) or Enterprise Products Partners ($EPD). This is because reliable income now is more important to them than growing long term wealth. For younger investors, it may make more sense to focus on a dividend growth strategy by investing in companies that have low payout ratios and potential to create a long track record of increasing dividends like Lowe’s ($LOW) or Visa ($V).

With dividend strategies faring better than most other for 2022, the article looked at which one is doing the best. The article concluded that strategies that invest in high yield companies with healthy financials outperformed the most. After reading that, I decided to evaluate that conclusion for myself by back-testing a handful of dividend paying ETFs which follow various strategies. Below are the ETFs that I was able to back-test through using Sharesight:

  • ProShares Dividend Aristocrats ETF ($NOBL) which contains the numerous stocks of varying yields and growth potential that are on the dividend aristocrat list
  • Vanguard High Dividend Yield ETF ($VYM) which contains the highest yielding stocks after being filtered by market cap adjustments
  • Vanguard Dividend Appreciation ETF ($VIG) which contains stocks with at least a 10-year history of growing dividends after passing market cap and trading volume criteria
  • Schwab US Dividend Equity ETF ($SCHD) which contains stocks that meet the criteria of both yield and fundamental aspects
  • Global X S&P 500 Covered Call ETF ($XYLD) this is not a dividend ETF perse, however lots of dividend investors use covered call funds to use their high yields for income purposes

As you can see in the graph below, the S&P has fallen by 20.55% year to date. The best performer of the dividend strategies was the dividend yield strategy down by only 9.46% year to date, followed by the dividend fundamental strategy down by 10.74% year to date. Surprisingly, the covered call high yield ETF was a very close third down by only 10.77% year to date!

High yield investors (assuming sound quality of stocks) have stayed strong in this market, in part by the strong finances of their holdings but also sizable exposure to the energy sector. A high yield dividend strategy almost inherently has extra exposure to energy and little exposure to tech. High yield strategies with a quality focus on seeking profitable firms in a position to consistently pay their dividends over many years and dumping the ones that can’t, are in a great position to keep the dividends flowing which is provides important financial stability even if a recession hits.

Though energy is starting to waiver, the sector’s performance this year is primarily the determinate of the success of these dividend funds. Energy tends to be much more prominent in dividend and value portfolios. $VYM, our high yield ETF, has the second highest yield at 2.79% and has greatest exposure to the energy sector at over 10%. That is more than double the S&P’s energy exposure at 4.68%

Dividend growth strategies haven’t done as well this year, mainly because of their exposure to tech. For example, our high yield ETF $VYM has 8.37% exposure to tech whereas its growth counterpart $VIG has more than double that at 16.78%. Prior to this year, most dividend strategies in general had not performed well when compared to the market. Even with a focus on which quality, dividend stocks tend to have a hard to keeping up when the market is focused on growth. However, now that the tide of the economy has turned, dividend investing, whether that is with an emphasis on yield or on dividend growth, is shining bright as the safeguard against this volatile market.

Categories
Dividend Stocks Dividends Portfolio

Dividend Portfolio: 6/17/2022 Week in Review

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Welcome back to weekly Dividend Dollars portfolio review! You’ll notice this week that the economic review is not in this post! I have posted that separately here. Going forward those will continue to be posted individually so that it is easier to discern which articles contain which type of information.

Here at Dividend Dollars, our investing approach is a dividend growth strategy with aspects of value investing and fundamental analysis as well. I am a young investor in my 20’s, by sticking to this strategy over the long term, the magical powers of compounding are on my side. This allows me to more easily build substantial positions in dividend paying stocks over time, which will one day help me reach the ultimate goal of being financially free through the sources of passive income they provide. You can read more about the strategy here. Let’s dive into the portfolio review!

Portfolio Value

To date, I have invested $9,750 into the account, the total value of all positions plus any cash on hand is $9,119.30. That’s a total loss of 6.47%. The account is down $337.87 for the week which is a 3.57% loss. This is a huge loss for one week, especially on the losses we had last week, but as we discussed in the market recap for this week (read that here), the markets had it worse this week with a 5.07% loss in the S&P.

We started building this portfolio on 9/24/2021 and, even with this rough last week, when compared to the S&P 500 we are outperforming the market so far! Within that same timeframe, the S&P 500 is down -17.52% whereas our portfolio is down -6.47%! I love tracking my portfolio against a benchmark like the S&P. The above chart comes from Sharesight which makes portfolio and dividend management a breeze!

We added $370 in cash to the account this week. The trades made this week will be broken out 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 positions that we added to increased our annual dividend income by $23 at a yield of 4.51%.

Dividends

This week we received $13.53 from four dividends. $6.98 from 3M ($MMM), $1.28 from NextEra Energy ($NEE). $3.74 from Atlantica Sustainable Infrastructure ($AY), and $1.53 from Realty Income ($O)

In my portfolio, all positions have dividend reinvestment enabled. I don’t hold onto the dividend, I don’t try to time the reinvestment, I just let my broker do it automatically. All dividends were reinvested.

Dividends received for 2022: $151.75

Portfolio’s Lifetime Dividends: $174.67

Trades

Below is a breakdown of my trades this week!

  • June 13th
    • Best Buy ($BBY) – added 1 share at $69.28
    • ETRACS 2xMonthly Pay Levered US Small Cap ($SMHB) – added 1 share at $8.47
    • Activision Blizzard ($ATVI) – added 1 share at $75.25 (new position)
    • Comcast ($CMCSA) – added 1 share at $40.75
    • 3M ($MMM) – dividend reinvested
  • June 14th
    • Altria ($MO) – added 0.1 shares at $46.00
    • ETRACS 2xMonthly Pay Levered US Small Cap ($SMHB) – added 2 shares at $7.92
    • Activision Blizzard ($ATVI) – added 1 share at $74.82
  • June 15th
    • SCHD – added 0.138199 shares at $72.36 (recurring investment)
    • XYLD – added 0.231256 shares at $43.24 (recurring investment)
    • NextEra ($NEE) – dividend reinvested
    • Atlantica ($AY) – dividend reinvested
    • Realty Income ($O) – dividend reinvested
  • June 16th
    • ETRACS 2xMonthly Pay Levered US Small Cap ($SMHB) – added 1.3 shares at $7.16
    • AT&T ($T) – added 2 shares at $18.82
    • Lowe’s ($LOW) – added 0.075 shares at $171.87
  • June 17th
    • Chevron ($CVX) – sold whole position at $147.35
    • Activision Blizzard ($ATVI) – added 1 share at $73.98
    • XYLD – added 1 share at $42.00
    • AT&T ($T) – added 1 share at $19.06
    • Comcast ($CMCSA) – added 0.2 shares at $38.15
    • ETRACS 2xMonthly Pay Levered US Small Cap ($SMHB) – added 1 share at $7.12

This week I decided to sell my position in Chevron ($CVX) as it was my last exposure to the oil industry. The energy sector is starting to slow and succumb to the rest of the downward market pressures, so I decided to take my profits and direct them elsewhere. One of the positions that went to was my new one in Activision ($ATVI). I love Activision Blizzard’s games, they have a strong lineup of games coming in the next year, and the Microsoft acquisition at $95 per share provides an interesting arbitrage opportunity.

Stocks I’ll be watching to add next week: Air Products and Chemicals ($APD), Comcast ($CMCSA), and Microsoft ($MSFT). Both $APD and $CMCSA have ex-dividend dates coming up in a week or two. $APD is one of the few positions of mine that are still up, it is a very defensive stock and might be wise to add to it. $CMCSA is down and is provided a good opportunity to buy down prior to its ex-date. Microsoft is beginning to look attractive at its levels as well.

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!

Read the last market review to educate yourself on the prior week to help build proper expectations for the week to come! This can help you make better buying decisions.

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 and stay safe!

Categories
Dividend Stocks Dividends Portfolio

Dividend Portfolio: 6/10/2022 Week in Review

Welcome back to weekly Dividend Dollars portfolio review! You’ll notice this week that the economic review is not in this post! I have posted that separately here. Going forward those will continue to be posted individually so that it is easier to discern which articles contain which type of information.

Here at Dividend Dollars, our investing approach is a dividend growth strategy with aspects of value investing and fundamental analysis as well. I am a young investor in my 20’s, by sticking to this strategy over the long term, the magical powers of compounding are on my side. This allows me to more easily build substantial positions in dividend paying stocks over time, which will one day help me reach the ultimate goal of being financially free through the sources of passive income they provide. You can read more about the strategy here. Let’s dive into the portfolio review!

Portfolio Value

To date, I have invested $9,380 into the account, the total value of all positions plus any cash on hand is $9,250.27. That’s a total loss of 1.38%. The account is down $469.67 for the week which is a 4.83% loss. This is a huge loss for one week, but as we discussed in the market recap for this week (read that here), the markets had it worse this week with a 5.1% loss in the S&P and a 5.6% loss in the NASDAQ.

We started building this portfolio on 9/24/2021 and, even with this rough last week, when compared to the S&P 500 we are outperforming the market so far! Within that same timeframe, the S&P 500 is down -12.45% whereas our portfolio is down -1.38%! I love tracking my portfolio against a benchmark like the S&P. The above chart comes from Sharesight which makes portfolio and dividend management a breeze!

We added $160 in cash to the account this week. The stock purchases made with this will be broken out 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 positions that we added to increased our annual dividend income by $8 at a yield of 4.2%.

Dividends

This week we received two dividends. $3.93 from Amgen ($AMGN) and $0.99 from Microsoft (MSFT).

In my portfolio, all positions have dividend reinvestment enabled. I don’t hold onto the dividend, I don’t try to time the reinvestment, I just let my broker do it automatically. All dividends were reinvested.

Dividends received for 2022: $138.22

Portfolio’s Lifetime Dividends: $161.14

Trades

Below is a breakdown of my trades this week!

  • June 6th
    • ETRACS 2xMonthly Pay Levered US Small Cap ($SMHB) – added 0.5 shares at $10.42
    • Best Buy ($BBY) – added 0.15 shares at $80.20
  • June 7th
    • Best Buy ($BBY) – added 0.2 shares at $78.20
  • June 8th
    • Altria ($MO) – added 0.25 shares at $50.92
    • SCHD – added 0.128609 shares at $77.76 (recurring investment)
    • XYLD – added 0.224346 shares at $44.57 (recurring investment)
    • Amgen ($AMGN) – dividend reinvested at $245.61
  • June 9th
    • Best Buy ($BBY) – added 0.5 shares at $75.28
  • June 10th
    • Intel ($INTC) – added 1 share at $39.67
    • ETRACS 2xMonthly Pay Levered US Small Cap ($SMHB) – added 0.2 shares at $9.40

Stocks I’ll be watching to add next week: Best Buy (BBY) and Altria ($MO). Both have ex-dividend dates early next week and both have good opportunities to DCA into before this next dividend payout. Aside from that, I’ll be watching my financial stocks like Bank of America ($BAC) and Ally Financial ($ALLY) for opportunities to DCA into as well. Particularly because that sector was hit the hardest last week. I expect these will have some more downside to buy into.

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!

Read the last market review to educate yourself on the prior week to help build proper expectations for the week to come! This can help you make better buying decisions.

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 and stay safe!

Categories
Dividends General Portfolio Strategy Welcome

Dividend Growth Investing While Young

It is a common adage that young investors should take on more risk than older investors and pursue high-growth investment strategies. There is a lot of reasoning behind this approach, but I believe it can be boiled down into three main points.

  1. Certain stocks have the potential for massive gains via quick increases in stock price. If you are successful at identifying these, you can get rich quickly.
  2. If you are unsuccessful at investing in the next “multi-bagger”, you still have plenty of time to make up for your losses.
  3. If you’re young and have a job that provides you with sufficient income, you don’t need to rely on the slow-growth or passive income that dividend stocks provide. Dividend income is not needed at a young age.

While I think that a portion of high-growth stocks have a place in every portfolio, I disagree with the approach that younger investors should overlook dividend investing entirely. Young investors do not need to entirely pursue growth-stocks, they don’t need to risk the potential large losses of this strategy, and I do not think that younger investors should avoid dividend paying stocks simply because they don’t need the income.

As an investor in my 20’s, my personal investing strategy is one of dividend growth investing. My strategy incorporates aspects of traditional dividend investing, value investing, and growth investing. I look for stocks of companies that pay dividends consistently, grows them consistently, appears to be undervalued (using a handful of techniques), and looks to be successful over the long term.

Through doing this, young investors can realize capital appreciation through successful use of both value and growth investing, they can have exposure to passive income through the dividend, and can build up their position over time by reinvesting the dividend overtime to compound their money.

Compounding is the key here. By reinvesting dividends, you are using that dividend to produce more dividends every time a dividend is declared. Compounding dividends is a powerful force for the long-term wealth builder, but it takes time for that power to grow and become significant. For this reason, young investors may not appreciate why dividend growth investing is such a sensible strategy for people who won’t be retiring till 40+ years from now.

Compounding is the 8Th Wonder of the World

Einstein once said, “Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it… he who doesn’t… pays it.” Over time, your dividends will earn more dividends. Then your dividends that were earned by prior dividends will earn you more dividends. It seems simple, but it is surprising hard to wrap your head around just how powerful compounding is till you play some numbers and graphs. We will do that here.

Take Lowe’s (LOW) for example. For the last ten years, the stock’s average dividend yield has hovered around 2%. 10 years ago today, one share of LOW cost you $26.98. Let’s assume an initial investment of $10,000. Using Sharesight, I can back-test the performance of that investment with dividends reinvested and the result is shocking.

From June 2012 to June 2022, the stock price from $26.98 to $186.33. In 10 years, the stock price grew by almost 6x. Add to that appreciation, 10 years of growth and compounding dividends your position grew from $9,982.60 on June 11th, 2012 to $64,920.20 on June 10th, 2022.

Meanwhile, your quarterly dividend payout began at $59.20 and grew to $296 which yielded you total dividend payout of $5,960.70. With just 10 years of holding, your dividend payout grew by more than 5x and yielded you a total of $5,960.70.

The magical variable in this formula is time. In 10 short years, you can see in the graph below that the dividend payouts start to resemble an exponential curve. If I had back tested for 20 years instead of 10 years, the dividend would have grown from $4.24 to $339.20 and that curve would be more pronounced. This simply goes to show why it is a good idea for dividend growth investors to start early. The younger you are the more time you have available to you for compounding.

Comparison with Aggressive Growth Investing

The graphics above show the potential outcome of a dividend growth investing strategy played out over 10 years with only Lowe’s (LOW). Assume an investor was 55 when they started investing in LOW, held it for those 10 years, then decided they wanted to retire at 65. However, now assume that that investor was persuaded that Facebook (now Meta Platforms META) would be the next big thing and decided to invest in that instead. Instead of finishing the 10-year stint with nearly a $65,000 position in LOW that pays him over $1,000 in dividends per year, this investor now has a $55,000 position in META that pays him nothing.

Though I am picking and choosing stocks for this scenario, it clearly demonstrates that the early emphasis on dividend growth provides a greater return and a stream of cashflow to rely on in retirement.

Some of the popular growth names would have caused you to lose money over that 10-year time frame (think Achillion or Blackberry). Others produced lesser gains like Google and Apple. Others barely outperformed like Amazon and Microsoft. Only a handful really took off like Netflix and Tesla. However, are you confident that 10 years ago you could have picked Tesla while you risk accidentally picking the Blackberry? And are you confident that you could make that same decision today?

Dividend Dollars Strategy

While it’s hard to pick the next Tesla, it is not hard to pick stocks that pay consistent dividends, grow them, and have potential for future growth. As I said before, my strategy incorporates aspects of traditional dividend investing, value investing, fundamental analysis, and growth investing. I look for stocks of companies that pay dividends consistently, grows them consistently, appears to be undervalued (using a handful of techniques), and looks to be successful over the long term.

10 years ago, Lowe’s already had nearly a 50-year streak of paying and growing dividends, they had good financials, a growing P/E and a growing EPS. Fundamental analysis shows that the company has value, value that may have been overlooked in 2012 depending on what quarter you look at. From a value standpoint, 2012 had some dips in the stock price that would have made sense to buy. From a dividend standpoint, Lowe’s already had great history of payments that would make any income investor feel fuzzy inside. Overall, there was nothing fancy about them back then, and there is still nothing fancy about them today.

In conclusion, it is much easier, and much safer to take the road less traveled as a young investor. Achieving long term wealth is much more realistic when considering the compounding opportunity that already successful and healthy companies can offer you.

Young investors should not feel obligated to follow the conventional advice of pursuing high growth investing or risk day trading. Taking on excess risk with goal of achieving wild returns might not materialize. Even though they have the time to recoup those losses, they may not be able to avoid the consequences of lost time for compounding.

Here at Dividend Dollars, I am a young investor trying to avoid just that. I invest in safe dividend paying companies that long-term have the greater potential support me in retirement and may even help me retire early! I have educated myself and built a sensible long-term strategy and highly encourage you to do the same.

This website is here to help you do just that by following our posts which include weekly portfolio updates, market analysis, occasional stock due diligence articles and the shared investing resources to give you all the tools you need to start!

I am also open to conversations to help! Comment below or reach out to me on my socials if you ever need anything.

Regards,

Dividend Dollars

Categories
Dividend Stocks Dividends Portfolio

Dividend Portfolio: 6/3/2022 Week in Review

Welcome back to Dividend Dollars and our weekly review where we discuss what happened in the market and our portfolio.

The first week of June was a short one! Short in terms of trading days, but also short in terms of the market movement as it failed build on last week’s gains. The market this week showed renewed seller’s interest off of the back of economic concerns, earnings outlooks (looking at you Microsoft), and monetary policy.

As discussed in our monthly market recap, JPMorgan Chase (JPM) CEO Jaime Dimon said that he sees a storm ahead, whether it’s an “economic hurricane” or a slight down pour, we need to ready. He and JPM will do so by being conservative with their balance sheet. On Friday, Elon Must said that he had a bad feeling about the economy and that his electric car company Tesla (TSLA) needs to freeze hiring and cut 10% of staff.

Every S&P sector finished Friday in the red with the exception of the energy sector. Healthcare, real estate, financial, and consumer staples were the worst performers. Energy was the best performer followed by information technology at a distant second.

The energy sector’s performance this week was a result of oil prices pushing higher off an announcement by the EU to ban 90% of Russian crude imports by the end of the year and an announcement from OPEC that they will boost production targets for July and August. OPEC’s oil decision is sound on the surface, however, oil traders saw it as insufficient to meet demand. Demand is expected to rise in the wake of China’s reopening and the EU’s oil ban. WTI crude started the week at $115.07 and are now at $118.87. It had just come off of highs of $120.46 which is the highest level seen since March.

Rising oil prices will yet again seep into rising gas prices, reinforcing inflationary concerns and hawkish policies at the Fed.

Overall, this was a great week! We saw some volatility in the first two days, but the market rallied strongly after the S&P managed to stay above last week’s lows. Let’s dive into the portfolio review!

Portfolio Value

To date, I have invested $9,220 into the account, the total value of all positions plus any cash on hand is $9,497.74. That’s a total gain of 3.01%. The account is down $85.99 for the week which is a 0.9% loss.

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 -7.79% whereas our portfolio has an overall return of 3.01%! I love tracking my portfolio against a benchmark like the S&P. The above chart comes from Sharesight which makes portfolio and dividend management a breeze!

We added $120 in cash to the account this week. The stock purchases made with this will be broken out 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.

This week our annual dividend income increased by $5 at a yield of 4%. For my portfolio, its 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 helps me realize the benefits of compounding sooner. Also, with so many positions being down, it’s hard not to experience a growing dividend yield.

Our beta usually hovers right around the mid 0.6s which is good, 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 first chart above 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, however, on rally weeks I underperform. To combat that, I have started adding to a levered position to raise my beta. I would like to see it in the 0.8s.

Dividends

This week we received four dividends. $1.00 from Aflac (AFL), $3.12 from Intel (INTC), $2.94 from XYLD, and $1.96 from Cummins (CMI)

In my portfolio, all positions have dividend reinvestment enabled. I don’t hold onto the dividend, I don’t try to time the reinvestment, I just let my broker do it automatically. All dividends were reinvested.

Dividends received for 2022: $131.86

Portfolio’s Lifetime Dividends: $154.79

Trades

Below is a breakdown of my trades this week and what I’m looking to buy next week!

  • May 31st
    • Realty Income (O) – added 0.2 shares at $68.00
    • Lockheed Martin (LMT) – added 0.05 shares at $440.80
    • Ally Financial (ALLY) – initiated position at $42.82
    • Bank of America (BAC) – added 0.25 shares at $36.52
  • June 1st
    • SCHD – added 0.128518 shares at $77.81 (recurring investment)
    • XYLD – added 0.22528 shares at $44.39 (recurring investment)
    • Intel (INTC) – dividend reinvested $3.12
    • Aflac (AFL) – dividend reinvested $1.00
    • XYLD – dividend reinvested $2.94
  • June 2nd
    • Bank of America (BAC) – added 0.25 shares at $36.36
    • Coca-Cola (KO) – added 0.1 shares at $62.90
    • Cummins (CMI) – dividend reinvested $1.96

Stocks I’ll be watching to add next week: Best Buy (BBY). BBY’s ex-date is coming up in about a week. My position is down just over 13% on it to date. I’ll continue to DCA into this position leading up to the ex-date.

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 and stay safe!