May 2019 Dividends Received

Here is a tally of the dividends received in May. Amounts are in US Dollars.

May for my portfolio is a light month due to the type of stocks I picked in my portfolio. Most stocks pay once every quarter, a few like Realty Income (O) pay every month. Some companies pay twice a year, such as some foreign companies with ADR listings in the USA. I prefer quarterly paying companies with qualified dividends based in USA.

In a well diversified portfolio, one will be able to receive dividend income every month. Some companies pay on 1/4/7/10 months, some pay 2/5/8/11, and some 3/6/9/12. Some may have slips or do dividends earlier instead of following a strict +3 month cycle. For example some may do 3/6/9/1 (as December slips into January).

It is important to focus on the quarterly moving average. Or compare months inside the same quarter (i.e. 1/4/7/10 or 2/5/8/11) if one has mainly quarterly paying companies. Tracking the growth on a comparable basis is important o know if one's portfolio is growing in the right way.

In June I am expecting $1700 and July $1750 in dividends.

Ticker	Total	Taxable	401k
T	$228.36	$228.36
CLX	$125.66	$125.66
PG	$123.62	$112.35	$11.27
APD	$116.19	$116.19
GIS	$82.40	$45.16	$37.24
CL	$72.83	$60.28	$12.55
O	$70.93		$70.93
SBUX	$52.78	$40.48	$12.30
GD	$41.38	$41.38
ABT	$31.38	$31.38
MA	$31.12	$15.61	$15.51
INTEREST	$0.94	$0.42	$0.52
	$977.59	$817.27	$160.32

April 2019 Portfolio Summary

My monthly summary is coming late, I have not had a real chance to update the plots and data until today. To make a quick summary, the portfolio is maintaining steady with my high savings rate and salary contribution. The overall US market has been trending downwards, due to what appears to be escalating trade tensions between the US and China, my contributions help to offset these declines.

As of 5/24/2019, the portfolio is getting really close to the $700K mark. The portfolio is also now outputting $18K in forward annual dividends. As of now, the dividend growth rate is around 10.5% (around 13% with dividends reinvested) were I to stop any additional contributions. In the last 2 years, my portfolio has grown noticeably compared to when I began. The overall stock market prices and dividends have surged in that timeframe and my consistent income contributions also boosted the total asset size upward. 

April 2019 Dividends Received

Here's the April cash generation:

Ticker	Total	Taxable	401k
MO	$500.12	$430.52	$69.60
PM	$436.46	$382.88	$53.58
XEL	$128.31	$128.31
KMB	$126.66	$84.43	$42.23
KO	$107.15	$107.15
ITW	$106.08	$85.08	$21.00
ADP	$76.53	$76.53
MKC	$70.75	$46.81	$23.94
O	$68.46		$68.46
MDT	$36.95	$36.95
SYK	$30.92	$26.24	$4.68
INTEREST	$0.00
	$1,688.39	$1,404.90	$283.49

March 2019 Portfolio Summary

This is a bit of a late post for March. I will summarize how my portfolio looks as of 4/20/2019. I will not put much market commentary in this summary as frankly I did not have as much time to research stocks in the last 6 weeks. I just let my portfolio run on its own and reinvested the dividends. The purchase a few days ago was done more on an equal spray across various high quality positions I always had liked. So there was no real market timing related decisions in my recent purchase. I make purchases more on a dollar cost average style, instead of timing, as timing the market has not worked well in my favor. Over time I buy when the market is high and low and the timing averages out.

Stocks are rarely sold in my portfolio. Once a position is bought, I just receive the dividend and reinvest it quickly. Cash when available in my bank account is deployed when it crosses a certain threshold (i.e. $15K) beyond what I deem a reasonable emergency fund. My condition for selling is mainly when the dividend is in jeopardy or when it's cut, examples in my past include KHC (a food company) and KMI (a pipeline company).

The overall portfolio is climbing steadily since the start of this year. My job assignment has changed in the last few weeks, and at the moment I no longer have to pay housing expenses as I am moving between multiple international sites and living in hotels or temporary locations. This helps increase my contributions quite significantly as all this after tax income is saved for dividend stocks (I used to live in California area which is expensive). Many will spend this extra money if they no longer have to pay for housing, but for me I will use this opportunity to increase my portfolio instead of buying a new car or toys.

The portfolio is going to break $700K soon. This progress comes with high percentage contribution from my salary, dividend reinvestment, saving money from no longer having to pay rent, and the market continuing to move higher. Right now my portfolio contributions are all directed to my taxable account. I no longer use my 401k account as the benefits are not so good now for me. And I want to be able to use my cash and dividend income freely whenever. Retirement age is too far away for me so I rather put all my wealth in taxable accounts.

Recent buy: CLX, BDX, SYK, WEC, XEL, NEE etc

I bought quite a bit of stock on Thursday afternoon. Here is what I added:

There was not very much good bargains to be honest. So I sprayed my additions across various sectors and dividend growth company types. Some have faster growth and some have lower growth, some have higher yields and others have lower ones. Healthcare and Utilities had a bit of a pullback, but not much.

In total $14,765 USD was added into shares. All these companies were existing positions so I just added more. My cash position sits at around $12.5K now. After the addition, my portfolio now generates $17,758.32 in dividends per year.

Settlement Date	Description	Symbol	Amount
04/23/2019 Pending	Pending Purchase  AT&T INC CLIENT ENTERED.	T	$414.70
04/23/2019 Pending	Pending Purchase  CLOROX CO DEL COM CLIENT ENTERED.	CLX	$2,298.36
04/23/2019 Pending	Pending Purchase  NEXTERA ENERGY INC SHS CLIENT ENTER...	NEE	$761.80
04/23/2019 Pending	Pending Purchase  KIMBERLY CLARK CLIENT ENTERED.	KMB	$988.48
04/23/2019 Pending	Pending Purchase  ABBOTT LABS CLIENT ENTERED.	ABT	$366.33
04/23/2019 Pending	Pending Purchase  STRYKER CORP CLIENT ENTERED.	SYK	$1,403.04
04/23/2019 Pending	Pending Purchase  BECTON DICKINSON CO CLIENT ENTERED.	BDX	$1,795.84
04/23/2019 Pending	Pending Purchase  CLOROX CO DEL COM CLIENT ENTERED.	CLX	$1,073.80
04/23/2019 Pending	Pending Purchase  GENL DYNAMICS CORP COM CLIENT ENTER...	GD	$875.05
04/23/2019 Pending	Pending Purchase  ABBOTT LABS CLIENT ENTERED.	ABT	$873.60
04/23/2019 Pending	Pending Purchase  XCEL ENERGY INC CLIENT ENTERED.	XEL	$717.47
04/23/2019 Pending	Pending Purchase  COLGATE PALMOLIVE CLIENT ENTERED.	CL	$1,035.68
04/23/2019 Pending	Pending Purchase  WEC ENERGY GROUP INC SHS CLIENT ENT...	WEC	$768.40
04/23/2019 Pending	Pending Purchase  COCA COLA COM CLIENT ENTERED.	KO	$711.15
04/23/2019 Pending	Pending Purchase  REALTY INCM CRP MD PV$1. REIT CLIEN...	O	$681.50

March 2019 Dividends Received

Time to tally up March's dividend results. Here is how much cash I received in March 2019.
All cash was reinvested back.

Ticker	Total	Taxable	401k
JNJ	$235.56	$230.16	$5.40
PEP	$201.67	$170.13	$31.54
HD	$192.73	$154.65	$38.08
NEE	$167.83	$124.08	$43.75
MMM	$134.44	$108.52	$25.92
WEC	$112.83	$96.90	$15.93
BDX	$71.14	$71.14
O	$68.09		$68.09
V	$57.66	$43.91	$13.75
ROST	$50.55	$50.55
D	$134.95	$84.49	$50.46
MCD	$45.76	$45.76
CHD	$43.99	$29.43	$14.56
MSFT	$42.43	$17.59	$24.84
TJX	$39.49	$39.49
HON	$38.86	$38.86
KHC	$0.35	$0.35
INTEREST	$0.97	$0.97
	$1,639.30	$1,306.98	$332.32

February 2019 Portfolio Summary

For February I will make a quick post about how I did recently. The market has been propelling higher but recently there has been some pull back. Right now prices are really bad for buying as it's expensive. I hope prices will settle back down which they seem to be doing. I will not be buying any new positions for the next month as there are some uncertainties that I may need the cash for such as tax filing and traveling. I estimate by mid April I will have a lot of cash to invest and hopefully by then the market has declined.

I will change up the way I do my reporting this month and show my results first. Here is how I am doing now:

February 2019 Dividends Received

February is over. The favorite time of the month for me is in the beginning of the month when I count up the amount of dividends I got paid for doing nothing in the previous month.

Here is how I did:

Ticker	Total	Taxable	401k
T	$224.55	$224.55
PG	$118.01	$107.25	$10.76
APD	$109.47	$109.47
CLX	$92.45	$92.45
GIS	$77.50	$44.67	$32.83
CL	$67.35	$55.17	$12.18
O	$66.75		$66.75
SBUX	$51.44	$39.20	$12.24
GD	$37.53	$37.53
ABT	$31.25	$31.25
MA	$31.10	$15.59	$15.51
INTEREST	$0.00
	$907.40	$757.13	$150.27

Total income is $907. It looks like my worst paying months are crossing the $900 level. Soon all my months will be paying 4 figures. Very healthy momentum going forward. The snowball appears to be moving now slowly.

Everything is going according to plan except the dividend cut announcement from Kraft Heinz (the company was replaced in my portfolio plus additional cash with Boeing). 

The past 3mo quarterly average is moving up steadily and sits at $1346. Currently my portfolio will generate $17,261 in the next 12 months. For March I am expecting $1600 and April $1690. 

Happy investing

-YD

Recent buy: MO, WEC, XEL, NEE

Today $2000 was invested in the following stocks. Several variables went into selecting a few, including starting yield, payout ratio, dividend growth, and historical stability.

XEL - $543
NEE - $559
WEC - $529
MO - $416

I loaded up on heavier yielding players to try to boost my portfolio up.
Although all 4 above have higher than average yields, they are great at raising their dividend. And who would of guessed, 3 of these steady growers are actually utility companies and one is a so-called 'dying' business (tobacco)! For perspective here are the recent dividend hikes from the 4:

XEL - 6.6%
NEE - 12.6% !!!
WEC - 6.7%
MO - 14.3% (they had an irregular hike due to the tax cut, usually they have been very consistently 8% y/y hikes).

For utilities, I did not add to D because the payout ratio is close to 90%. I find they are too aggressive on the dividend policy. NEE is the most conservative and it's growing fastest, although it's a lower mid 2% yielder. WEC and XEL hit the sweet spot (normal) dividend growth range that I like while maintaining a decently safe payout ratio for a utility.

I want to load up on higher yielding companies so that I can start purchasing more low yield high growth companies, ones like UNH, TJX/ROST, V/MA, SYK, etc. Overall my sweet spot I am targeting (in today's environment) for my portfolio is a 3% yield with 8% growth for a total income growth of 11% with dividend reinvested.

KHC slashes the dividend 36%

In disappointing news KHC cut the dividend severely down to 0.40 per share per quarter. The stock price fell 28% in the open. I have sold my KHC, all of it. I have added new capital and invested in other companies to boost the dividend back. The position is less than 0.50% of my portfolio and I will record the dividend loss on my year over year chart to show the poor performance.

KHC is still a profitable business but the management at 3G have largely disappointed me. KHC will still remain for many decades in my view and I believe it can crawl back. My problem is mainly with 3G management and this is why I sold. The industry has large secular head winds and 3G's aggressive take on debt and use of acquisitions + debt + laying off people to expand the company is not working well especially when the brands they buy are in secular decline. The company is relying on a lot of cost cutting and firing of staff, which will ultimately hurt innovation and growth. 3G has also underperformed my indirect position in BUD (owned through Altria). They have destroyed a lot of value in my portfolio.

I have lost a lot of money on KHC over the years. I took my losses, will tax loss harvest some of the amount, and use the $2400 in proceeds to buy new stock. 

I infused $7000 of cash into my portfolio. I bought a lot of Boeing and a very few of Altria and WEC (a utility). My boeing position is now $9284.

The lesson learnt here is that not even boring 'stable' food stocks are safe. Dividend cuts also stress the importance of diversification. This dividend cut on my tiny $2000-3000 position in KHC is a non-event. My overall portfolio dividend actually went up as I purchased a lot of new companies this week. However if a dividend cut happens to one of my large positions in the $20K or $30K size then it will hurt, but still not be the end of the world as my portfolio is now sitting around $630K.

Trends change and companies have to keep up (like technology) or die. I am taking a deep look at other types of consumer staples like GIS and drinks like KO/PEP. I think PEP is in a good spot as snacks do not fall under this category and are actually growing with the millenials. It's the whole healthy eating, organic, and fresh food category that is killing old consumer packaged goods companies like Campbell, JM Smucker, GIS, and KHC.

I am also looking closely at traditional safe consumer stocks that are not food related like PG and KMB and CL as their growth has largely stalled. I am worried about off-brand products being competitive and Amazon starting their own essentials lines.

January 2019 Portfolio Summary

This post will summarize my asset size as of February 15, 2019. I will start with some snapshots of various market metrics:

The S&P500 has recovered very hard since the lows of December. The interest rates also remain noticeably lower. Lower interest rates help dividend paying stock prices rise. And overall, lower interest rates are good for stimulating the economy.

Oil prices remain depressed. My investments do not involve any oil so I am not impacted. The low price in oil to me is positive as it lowers the input cost (i.e. plastics, chemicals, shipping freight) for a lot of the businesses I own shares in. The dollar continues to be very strong, this is good for when I travel abroad but not good for the multinational companies that I own shares of. When these multinationals have to bring back money earned from selling overseas, the high strength of the dollar makes the earnings received back in the states lower than if the dollar was weaker..