Welcome back to Dividend Dollars! I hope you’re doing well and had a great week of investing. Every week I write an update on the dividend portfolio so that we can track its progress. I will give an overview of the portfolio and its value, the dividends received, trades made, and any news or business announcements made that may be of interest to our positions.
This week high inflation signals continued to be at the forefront of market sentiment. Both the PPI and CPI came in above expectations at multi-decade highs. What’s a great way to protect yourself from rising inflation? The best hedge is to invest! In a rising-rate and rising-inflation environment, value and cyclical parts of the market tend to outperform. Our whole strategy is centered around strong value investing in companies that pay dividends. In addition to that, companies that pass on inflationary changes to their customers instead of absorbing those costs tend to hold up in periods like this. Consumer staples, energy, and healthcare do well in these environments. With these things in mind, our portfolio is prepared for a period of high inflation.
Overall, it was a good week for us despite most indexes ending the week slightly down. Let’s dive into the portfolio and see how we fared.
Portfolio Value
To date, I have invested $2,115 into the account, the total value of all positions plus any cash on hand is $2,157.69. That’s a gain of $42.69 for a total return of 2.02%. The account is up $6.75 for the week, but the overall total return of 2.02% is flat from last week.
Love seeing these gains! It tells me that our method of screening for undervalued stocks that pay strong dividends is working. As we stick with the strategy, we will start to rack up more and more dividends which will one day snowball to a great source of passive income!
Portfolio
Below is a table of everything we are invested in so far. The tickers in green are stocks that I added to this week. Every week $25 is automatically deposited into my account. When there is a stock I want to buy I’ll just throw some more funds in the account (if needed) and make the order. Sometimes I may also put that $25 towards a cheap stock that pays monthly dividends so that if I am saving to buy a larger position in something else my cash on hand isn’t sitting idle. You will sometimes see those temporary positions in the portfolio below.
As you see with the portfolio this week, I didn’t just stick with the $25 deposit. I added $550 this week and made some nice buys! I will usually add funds to my account like this so that I can take advantage of good buying opportunities which are usually called out in my monthly stock picks or other timely articles. Stock picks for this month are LMT, CAH, and MO. As of this week I now have positions in all of the stock picks and they are performing fairly well.
Dividends
This week we received one dividend. $1.04 from T. I own two shares and received $2.08.
Dividends received for the week of November 12th: $2.08
Dividends received for November 2021: $2.60
Year-To-Date Dividends: $3.24
Trades
Here’s the breakdown of the trades I made this week:
On November 8th I bought one share of MKC for $79.50.
On November 9th I added one share of T to my position at $24.61.
On November 10th I bought one share of MO at $45.15 and 5 shares of UWMC at $7.17.
On November 11th I added one share of MO to my position at $45.00.
On November 12th I sold my two shares of AQN for $14.01 per share and put that capital towards buying one share of LMT at $338.77. I also added one share of UWM to my position at $7.04.
Noteworthy News
This section of the post will identify some headlines that may be of import to our positions. If they are important enough, we will also call out in the posts if the news calls for actions to readjust our portfolio.
- Independent Director Stephen Luczo Just Bought 25% More Shares In AT&T Inc.
Independent Director Stephen Luczo bought $2.5 million dollars’ worth of additional T shares for his position. Earlier this year he also $3 million dollars’ worth of shares. This suggests that he has confidence in the company’s future giving me greater confidence in my position! In the last 6 months, insiders have bought about $4.5 million of T shares.
- Amgen: Lumykras Gets Positive CHMP Opinion
The Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use of the European Medicines Agency gave a positive opinion recommending conditional marketing authorization of Amgen’s Lumykras for the treatment of advanced non-small-cell lung cancer based on results from Phase 2 clinical trials.
Summary
That is it for the update this week. Let’s kill it next week and keep our eyes open for more good buying opportunities! This has been my most aggressive week yet, let’s keep up the pressure! 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 and take care!