Category Archives: Investing

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

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.
Continue reading

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.

2012 Dividends

Here’s my dividend report for calendar year 2012. This is the second annual dividend report. For a detailed breakdown of the 2011/2012 dividends, please visit: Dividend Income.

It has been exciting to see the growth of the dividend payments both as a result of the underlying companies increasing the payouts as well as my addition of new capital. Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances, I was not able to invest as much in the last few months of the year as I would have liked.

Total 2012 Dividends

  • $649.30 or $54.11/month
  • Dividend Growth Year-Over-Year: 71.26%
  • Stay Calm When Markets Are Volatile

    Here’s a chart from Charles Schwab’s On Investing that shows that trying to time the market doesn’t really work. Rather, it’s best to constantly invest as much as your finances and situations allow.

    20120209-150028.jpg

    2011 Dividends

    This will hopefully get more exciting as time goes on, but here’s my first annual dividend report for calendar year 2011. December is substantially higher because my International Small-cap equity ETF (SCHC) pays annually. For a detailed breakdown of the 2011 dividends please visit: Dividend Income.

    Total 2011 Dividends

  • $379.14 or $31.60/month
  • Dividend Growth Year-Over-Year: NA
  • Selling General Electric Stock in my DRIP

    I just sold my GE stock today that I had been DRIPing directly through the company. I sold despite the fact that I feel it is a great stock, especially at its current price. (They even just recently raised the dividend to 0.17/share/quarter.) The reason why was that I do all of my investing through Schwab. Overtime, record keeping is getting more and more difficult and having everything consolidated into one location will be very helpful. I also will be able to add to the capital loss carryover that I’ve had for a number of years now. I will even be able to effectively continue reinvesting the dividends for free, which is something that Schwab allows you to do; the downside being that I lose the ability to buy small amounts of shares. Schwab’s commissions are good but not close to the $1 per transactions that direct investing allowed. I’ll have to wait and purchase in large enough amounts to make the commission reasonable. Unfortunately, before buying GE stock with Schwab, I’ll have to wait 30 days so that the Wash Sales rule does not apply.

    I feel that while I will lose money (and have lost in the 7 years I’ve been investing in GE) in the short term, it will be the smart move for the future. With how little my dividends are now, reinvesting them is smart, but in the future I might want to collect the dividends and use them to purchase something else. By doing everything at Schwab, I’ll more easily be able to move this money around.