May Portfolio Update

May was a pretty good month.  I had two stocks flirt with "Gold Status" only to dip back down, but they are on their way to making it permanent.  Home Depot (HD) and Chevron (CVX) are two excellent stocks well on their way to achieving gold status in my portfolio.

I received my largest dividend disbursement ever in a month, $153.06.  I am making, on average, $137 a month.  Compared to a year ago at $15 a month.  Of course, I had only invested $6k at that time, and mostly in low yielding stocks, as opposed to 44.5k today.  My next goal is to hit 50k, then move that to Merrill Edge for 30 free trades a month!

I tax harvested AT&T, and moved that over to MAIN for a higher yield.  I will always tax harvest for a higher yield, and since AT&T yield-on-cost already is high, MAIN is the only one higher.  It wasn't enough to take it out of the purple category (10% loss), but AT&T is now underweight and ripe for purchasing in late June.  I'll be keeping a close eye on the DOJ ruling to determine when to buy.  I may be harvesting GIS next month.  It makes more sense for me to take my harvest losses this year as I am working to get below the expected tax bracket I will be hovering above.  I give a lot to tax-deductible charities (10% of gross), but my portfolio can definitely help out with this as I re-position my holdings for the future while increasing my annual income.  Tax harvesting is really beneficial to dividend growth investors.

I completed my industrial sector purchases by buying Eaton Corporation (ETN).  They are an American-born company, that switched their HQ to Ireland, so it is considered an international stock.  As long as they continue to prove that they are a reliable dividend payer, I'll continue to hold them.  The negative about having international stocks is that they are usually late to report dividend tax information to my broker, who in turn delivers them late to me, so I need to re-file over a few dollars.  I guess I won't mind as much when it is a couple hundred dollars, but I am an early filer (don't want scammers to steal any returns I might have).

I removed my watchlist from my holdings spreadsheet, as I have enough opportunities in my own portfolio to keep me busy at the moment.  If I am overweight on all stock sales, or if I receive a windfall, I will consider increasing my holdings.  I am currently lacking in the energy department, but that sector is a little too volatile at the moment, so I don't mind sitting it out.

Dividends Received:
AT&T (T)                     34.50
General Mills (GIS)     24.50
Mastercard (MA)           4.00
Air Products (APD)     14.30
Abbot Labs (ABT)         4.76
Hormel (HRL)                7.69
Main Street (MAIN)       6.65
National Retail (NNN)  20.43
Procter & Gamble (PG) 20.80
Realty Income (O)           9.88
Fastenal (FAST)              5.55

May Purchases:
NNN          28
ETN            10
PG               13
MAIN         18
GIS              19

June should be slow and steady, with a possible influx of cash at the end of July, and definitely in August.

April Portfolio Update

My portfolio cuts both ways, but both sides are still making money!

My portfolio has decided to either be profitable or not.  With half in the red, and half in the black, my stocks are chaotic and confused lately.  Good earnings reports and stocks go down, or up.  They can't make up their minds.  Many commentators say it is due to high expectations, but I think the longs just don't have any more money, and the shorts have too much and are creating this flux.  I think this is obvious from the DJIA not sure where it wants to go.  Anyways, I will just keep buying the deals and increasing my income.  Like a good profiteer in a war, I will make money from both sides.

My net worth for my 401k has increased thanks to paying off my 401k home loan, but no thanks to the market.  I opened a Brokeragelink account, and was disappointed to find I could only buy ETFs with my 401k money.  Oh well, I dropped 100 shares into each sector with cash on hand, and we will see how that pans out.

Dividends Received:

XEL	$16.34
MAIN	$6.65
O	$9.88
PM	$17.12
KMB	$5.00

April Purchases:

QCOM	16
SO	15
PG	12

The irony is that I told a friend 2-3 weeks ago that hardly anything in my portfolio was on sale.  A week later and half my portfolio was on sale.  Well, unless something jumps out as a great deal, I won't be adding any new stocks anytime soon. 

May will also be the anniversary of when I started my portfolio.  I may be doing some tax harvesting to increase annual dividend income and reduce taxes (trying to keep out of a tax bracket I will most likely hit this year).  Also, when I hit 50k, I may be moving to a different broker that offers free trades at that level.  This will be advantageous to buy smaller lots, catch ex-dividend dates, and put my dividends to work immediately when I get them.  Stay tuned.

The Big Drop Didn't Happen

When I was young and owned a Tandy 1000 EX and a 1200 baud modem, I would dial up into a BBS and play a popular game called "TradeWars".  Recent news brings up these old, fond memories.

My son and I were stockpiling cash for a possible tradewar, but it seems like it is fizzling out.  Regardless, I decided to highlight in light purple the stocks in my portfolio that are free and clear of China.  Cramer recently listed the sectors and some stocks that he considered safe in a tradewar:

1) Telcos (VZ)
2) Mall based retailers & apparel (I consider this a bit weak -MLD)
3) Cloud Kings
4) Cell Towers (AMT)
5) Health Insurers & Hospitals (ANTM, HUM, CNC, UNH, THC, HCA)
6) Domestic Oils (MRO, HES, PXD, APC)
7) Oil Refiners (MPC, VLO, HFC)
8) REITs
9) Utilities
10) Restaurants (EAT, WEN, SONC)
11) Brokerage Stocks
12) Cybersecurity (FEYE)
13) US Biz Helpers (ADP, CTAS)
14) Homebuilders
15) Military (RTN, HRS, NOC, LMT)

My son was set to buy up some Chili's stock with EAT, but after the tradewar fizzled, he opted for Verizon (VZ).  He has no irons in the Telecom fire, so he decided to snag it. 

I, on the other hand, decided to shore up some Procter & Gamble (PG) after their recent dividend increase.  They are one of the few stocks I don't have a 5% stake in and looks healthy from the fundamentals, and I need to average down my price on it.  Another stock I bought more shares of was Southern (SO), which also looks good going into earnings season.  They will be reporting out their dividend increase next week, so here's hoping.  The next purchase on my list will be NNN (provided the interest rates rise) with a possibility of PDCO for a new position.

In the meantime, I paid off my 401k home loan this month, which cranks up my net worth (not reported here), and allows me to increase my biweekly donations to my dividend retirement.  I have some cash still on hand, but I really don't wish to buy any stocks that can't report out good in this current economic environment.  In fact, if any of my stocks report out poorly, I may need to give them a second look.  The exception is GIS which already acquired massive debt, so I don't expect too many good surprises from them.  Everyone else better take off!

March Portfolio Update: A lot of Lion, a Little Lamb

My total net worth actually is $400 less than last month, which includes money added and gains on the last day.  For the most part, my portfolio outperformed the DJIA, but I haven't figured out how to graph that yet with my brokerage.  April will be a big month for purchases, so I'm hoping things stay low key (or drop) for a few more weeks...

Annual Income:

Dividends Received:  March is another high yielding month

Symbol	Amount
HD	12.36
O	9.86
ORI	8.97
MCD	13.13
MAIN	6.65
CMP	7.92
JNJ	12.6
ADM	5.03
TGT	8.68
CVX	14.56
SO	14.5
WEC	7.18
WTR	2.87

Total               124.31

March Purchases:

QCOM - 29

GIS - 25

KMB - 10

I just bought KMB on Tuesday, right before it started heading back up to where I originally bought it a few months ago.  I doubled down on GIS after short-selling PM (I'm off cigarettes!).  I was in with Kroger for a day, then went with QCOM ("the biggest drama queen on Wall St.").  Target and Kroger seem to be getting along together quite well lately, so we will see if I don't end up having a part of Kroger anyway.  

YD was right, the first annual $1k is difficult, and i even had a head start with the 20k initial.  I'm hoping to see $2k quite soon.  I'm also looking forward to a few more dividend increases in April.  April is historically the best month in the market, but we will see if it keeps the title.

Kroger in, Kroger out, Qualcomm in

Last week I had been watching and waiting for WalMart to drop.  It wouldn't.  Everybody and their mother says "Buy WalMart", but it has never quite hit the level I wanted it to be at before buying in.  So I look at similar grocery-type staples, and Kroger had just announced their (less than expected) quarterly results.  I figure if I can find the floor on this one, I might get a good yield.

Well, Friday morning I see the inflation report on Drudge, and I surmise that the market will take off.  I pull the trigger on Kroger, and sure enough I made some money by the end of the day.  Over the weekend, and listening to Cramer, I realized a few things.  Kroger is in the most competitive sector out there right now - groceries.  Everyone has a hand in groceries:  WalMart, Target, Amazon, even Kohl's will!!  Add that to the list of grocery stores that already exist.

But that is not what pushed me over the "Sell" edge.  It was the unions.  I am from a big union state, I see what they do to inflation, bottom lines, even new, innovative stores.  Working in tech made me think that unions were just for railroads and truck drivers.  After all, WalMart kept the unions out.  And then I find out that Kroger has unions.  That was enough for me.  I sold bright and early Monday morning with a tiny profit.  I refuse to invest in anything grocery going forward, the margins are too thin!

Meanwhile, the Qualcomm/Broadcom
deal was nixed.  After QCOM flew up out of reach in November when the merger talk started happening, I largely ignored it.  However, when the deal was nixed, QCOM started dropping pretty hard, being on Yahoo's loser list 2 days in a row.  When it stopped falling on Wednesday, and everything else was falling, I realized it hit the bottom and bought 29 shares at 3.9% yield!  So I guess I get to be part of the silicon valley NASDAQ drama as I now have a part of Qualcomm.  I'm glad my other tech company is MasterCard, which will be a solid player against the volatility of Qualcomm and its ilk.  As for now, I have my tech quota (2) so I am done with tech.  Until I fill all of my other quotas, I may take a look at tech again, but if I do it will be a long time from now.

I am glad that my net worth has popped back above what it was at the end of January - the February drop will be forever immortalized in my spreadsheets!  I'm counting down to 5 weeks when I will be making some (positive) financial changes through a hard-earned windfall.  It will still be a few weeks after that before the effects will be seen, but it should help boost my investing and bring me closer to my goals.

Great Article on "The Highest Quality Dividend Growth Stocks"

I came across an article here, which may or may not be available depending on when you read this.  Basically, the author used a set of standards to rate all of the stocks on David Fish's CCC list.  He used these stringent criteria:

He did not record any stocks that scored lower than 4 in each category.  That being said, let's see how mine turned out!

The 20 Point Crew:  These stocks are the golden standard.  Only 11 made the cut, of these I own:
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ)
Proctor & Gamble (PG)
also, the ones on my shortlist watchlist were
WalMart (WMT)
Merck (MRK)

The 19 Point Crew: A bigger list overall, but of mine...
Chevron (CVX)
Home Depot (HD)
MasterCard (MA)
shortlist watchlist:
Exxon (XOM)

The 18 Point Crew:
Fastenal (FAST) - I found this gem from personal research, so good on me!
Kimberley Clark (KMB)
No watchlisters...

and....
The 17 Point Crew:
WEC Energy (WEC)
Xcel Energy (XEL)
Again, no watchlisters.

The 16 pointers had QCOM on it, which is on my watchlist, but nothing else.

Now,
Stocks on these lists yielding high that I might want to look into:
Pfizer, IBM, AEP & Pinnacle West.  I decided to replace Smuckers (didn't make the cut) with Pinnacle West.  I have enough staples in my portfolio, and shortlist that I think this one would be fine.  Although I am a bit utility heavy as well.  We will see what happens during my tax harvest season.

Note:  These are Dividend Growth Stocks, not Growth stocks.  Hence I don't buy them all.  I need a little growth mixed in (ABT, MA, TGT, FAST).

February Portfolio Update

Since tracking my net worth since May of '17, this is my first month where my total net worth (which I do not track on this blog) went down.  I decided this would be a good time to start posting my progress per month so I can look back on it.  Why not start with a down month?  Next month will be better, right?  Right?

Annually, I am currently making:

Dividends Received
February is one of the higher yielding months.

Ticker	Divs
T	34.50
GIS	6.86
MA	4.00
APD	12.35
ABT	4.76
HRL	7.69
MAIN	2.85
NNN	14.25
PG	6.90
O	7.67
FAST	5.55
Total	107.38

February purchases:

XEL - 19

MAIN - 20

NNN - 13

O - 10

PG - 7

GIS - 11

I made a decision to move or get off the fence on General Mills (GIS) after their expensive purchase of Blue Buffalo.  The yield is good, however the growth is slow, debt is high, and possibly the dividend will be frozen until 2020.  However, it is a staple.  I don't expect much growth from staples in a healthy economy, so I decided to stick with them for now, adding to my position.

I have a lot of deals in my own portfolio, while keeping one eye on my watchlist short list, particularly WMT, which is still a tad too expensive.  I feel like I should obtain deals in my own portfolio before adding to a new position, i.e. buy some more O.  Now that tax reform has passed, I don't know if we will continue to see as much of an upward trend, despite it is Q2 when the tax law makes its impact known.  I am preparing for choppy waters by being more conservative and averaging down my portfolio in preparation for tax harvesting, which will begin after May for me.  However, if WMT hits the low 80s....

My other indicators will be at the other links, as usual.