May 2013 Dividends

May 2013 Dividends Received

  • Apple, Inc. (AAPL) – $27.45
  • Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. (BMY) – $23.85
  • Kinder Morgan Inc (KMI) – $38.00

Total dividends received during the month of May: $89.30

This is 97.8% improvement upon the $45.14 in dividends I received in May 2012. However, this is difficult to directly compare since only BMY was owned in May 2012 and the other stocks are new. I am up to $240.83 for the year so far. June should be a great month, as 7 of my 10 stocks pay out in the June quarter. I’m 24% toward my $1,000 annual dividend goal for 2013.

Full Disclosure: Long AAPL, BMY, KMI

Recent Stock Purchase of WFC

I’ve been trying to move away from ETFs and into individual stocks. I still hold SCHA (small cap) and SCHV (large cap value) ETFs, which have been doing great from a capital gains perspective. I maintain approximately $2,000 in each of them right now. As of today, my total cost basis for SCHA was $6,625 and total realized/unrealized capital gains of $1,848; total cost basis for SCHV was $2,939 with realized/unrealized capital gains of $644.

I had also been holding on to a small portion of SCHD (~$3000) but recently sold all of my holdings in SCHD to finance many recent stock purchases. Total cost basis for SCHD was $10,500 with a realized capital gain of $1,503. SCHD was a dividend ETF that had a distribution yield of approximately 2.8%. I felt that I could do a better job picking individual stocks with not only a higher initial yield but also with a track record of dividend growth.

Today I sold my remaining SCHD and used the proceeds to buy Wells Fargo & Co (WFC). This will add $97.20 to my annual dividend (an increase from the approximately $80.79 that was estimated from SCHD). My average dividend yield will also increase from 3.07% to 3.12%. Estimated annual dividend is now $983.92.

My entire portfolio is here.

Company Symbol Shares Price Yield Expected Annual Dividend
Wells Fargo & Co WFC 81 $38.30 3.13% $97.20

Full disclosure: Long SCHA, SCHV, WFC

Recent Dividend Increases April/May

Apple (AAPL) recently announced an approximately 15% dividend increase. It will now pay $3.05 per share per quarter (previously $2.65 per share), increasing my annual dividend from $95.40 to $109.80.

Chevron (CVX) recently announced an 11.1% dividend increase to $1 per share (previously $0.90 per share), increasing my annual dividend from $90 to $100.

These two increases will raise my estimated annual dividend from $937 to $962.

Disclosure: Long AAPL and CVX

Kickstarter Open Source Death Star

Recently there was a funny attempt by a guy on Kickstarter to raise money to design detailed plans for a death star (a la Star Wars). The goal was £20,000,000 or around USD$30,500,000. This was in response to the White House replying to an official petition to “Secure resources and funding, and begin construction of a Death Star by 2016.” Due to continuing threats of not building it, this was the people’s of Earth attempt to raise the money themselves.
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Recent Investing Transactions

With the combination of my brokerage and Roth IRA hitting $30,000, I decided to slightly modify my portfolio allocation from mostly ETFs to mostly stocks with a few ETFs. I sold large portions of SCHV, SCHA, SCHC, and SCHD in order to have the capital to invest directly in individual stocks. I then picked an assortment of stocks that I feel were at a reasonable entry price, had an adequate yield (around 3% or greater), and good history/ projection of continued dividend and earnings per share increases. As I’m only 29 (soon to be 30 in July), I’m not super concerned with entry price…I’ll be contributing to this portfolio for many years to come and am more interested in dividend growth.

With the adjusts in my portfolio below, my overall portfolio dividend yield will have increased from around 2.5% to 3.1%, increasing my expected annual dividend amount from $750 to $938 (at the current portfolio value of $30,000). With regular purchases throughout the remainder of 2013, I should be able to easily raise the annual dividend amount past my goal of $1,000 for the year 2013. I have decided to allow the dividends to be automatically reinvested. I know that this might force purchases of “overvalued” equity but feel that in the long-term, the dollar-cost averaging will work out okay.

I’ll also try and be more diligent with updating the blog to reflect new purchases and monthly dividends.

My current portfolio can be viewed here.

Here’s the recent purchases below:

Company Symbol Shares Price Yield Expected Annual Dividend
Apple AAPL 9 $401.76 2.62% $95.40
Aflac AFL 58 $51.26 2.72% $81.20
Avista AVA 144 $27.66 4.49% $178.56
Chevron CVX 25 $118.79 3.05% $90.00
Harris HRS 48 $43.75 3.40% $71.04
Kinder Morgan KMI 100 $39.97 3.80% $152.00

Disclosure: Long AAPL, AFL, AVA, CVX, HRS, KMI

Apple’s ‘disappointing’ 4th quarter

Apple had recently announced its 4th quarter 2012 earnings report. Despite posting a record $13.1 billion in profit, Apple’s stock has dropped significantly from its all-time high of around $700. I’m posting a few articles that puts their “disappointing” quarter into some perspective:

The $13.1 billion in profit Apple posted for the first quarter of 2013 is the most profitable quarter for a tech company in history, just edging out the record $13.06 billion set in the first quarter of 2013 — also by Apple.



A comparison of Apple’s record quarter to those of the other most profitable companies in the United States shows Apple head and shoulders above its American peers. Apple’s $13.1 billion in profit is 31 percent more than the $10 billion of its closest competitor, oil giant ExxonMobil, which briefly surpassed Apple in market cap following investors’ negative reactions to the most recent quarter.


http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/02/07/apples-disappointing-quarter-still-outperforms-the-most-profitable-us-companies





Apple’s record profits contrasted with Amazon’s hopes to turn a profit:

Apple’s profits for fiscal 2012 reached above $40 billion, making it the only tech company to ever reach that benchmark. In fact, it’s a feat only ever matched by oil giant Exxon Mobil.
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Synology 412+ NAS

A couple weeks ago I purchased a Synology 412+ with two 2 TB Western Digital Red drives. I’ve been using it as an additional backup location for my computer as well as a media center. I added a CyberPower CP1000PFCLCD 600W UPS in case the power goes out temporarily. It has been working perfectly. It is running Synology Hybrid Raid, which, with only two drives, is equivalent to a RAID1. I have yet to add an additional drive (waiting until prices drop), at which point it will be a RAID5 NAS. I don’t know if it is the NAS or the drives, which are designed for NAS use, but this thing is super quiet; I can’t even tell that it is running even when it is being fully used.

Rather than recap what many people have already written, I’ll just link to a few reviews of the 412+ that I found:

Ars Technica: A fast NAS with class: 5 months with the Synology DS-412+
X-bit labs: 4-Bay NAS from Synology: Three Models Reviewed
CNET: Synology Disk Station DS412+ review

Interesting North Korean Links

I recently read an article talking about Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google’s, trip to North Korea. His daughter, Sophie, kept a blog: Sophie in North Korea

Other interesting pages:
Kim Jong-Il looking at things
The North Korean Traffic Girls of Pyongyang
Information about travel to North Korea
HD YouTube video: Inside North Korea by an American Tourist

Financial Goals 2013

For 2013, I’ve decided to document a few financial goals and, at the end of the year, I’ll come back to this and see how I’ve done.

1) Continue to invest the maximum of $5000 per fiscal year into a Roth IRA. Anything left over will be placed in a standard brokerage account.

2) Attempt to bring annual dividend income to $1000 (I was at $649 in 2012 and $379 in 2011).
My current weighted dividend average is 2.77%. I hope to increase this over the next year through further investments in higher dividend yielding stocks/funds as well through dividend growth. At 2.77% average yield, I’ve got quite a ways to go to get $36000.