My dear readers,
The last few weeks have been really tough as far as finding any free time whatsoever towards blogging. As you might be aware, I switched jobs recently and a new job takes a lot of time especially during the initial stages where there is a steep ramp-up. Combine that with family health issues and then the end of the school year and other family activities, summer approaching etc., I have absolutely no free time for anything else. And that is how it should be. Family comes first after all.
That said, I am as strongly committed to my pursuit of financial independence through dividend growth investing as I am to this blog. This blog is very much a part of my investing journey. Which is why come what may, I will find some time to post my monthly income updates. This way, I can atleast make some time to look at my portfolio and see what is going on.
Lets get into the numbers then, shall we.
Dividend Income Received
Sl. No. | Company / ETF (ticker) | Amount |
1. | Apple Inc. (AAPL) | $2.31 |
2. | AbbVie (ABBV) | $20.61 |
3. | Albertsons Inc. (ACI) | $1.21 |
4. | Caterpillar (CAT) | $1.12 |
5. | Clorox (CLX) | $51.19 |
6. | Costco (COST) | $2.71 |
7. | Procter & Gamble (PG) | $10.15 |
8. | AT&T (T) | $1.16 |
9. | Texas Instruments (TXN) | $57.77 |
10. | Verizon (VZ) | $24.7 |
11. | Realty Income Corp (O) | $12.5 |
12. | STAG Industrial (STAG) | $3.5 |
13. | JP Morgan Equity Income ETF (JEPI) | $1.4 |
Total | $189.88 |
So a total of 13 companies/ETFs rewarded me a monthly income of $189.88. Among these, TXN was highest dividend income payer, closely followed by CLX. I am very happy with my current percentage position in TXN. I have previously written about why this is one of my core holdings and why I am very bullish. I also made about $49.31 in option trading by writing covered calls. This brought my grand total for monthly income to about $239.19. At the same time last year, I had made about $35.96. So if you look at the YoY growth, this is about a 500%+ increase! Granted that a lot of this growth is due to the volume of my invested capital at this point in my journey. But still…500%+ is pretty staggering.
I added a new position in JEPI in one of my tax-advantaged accounts. JEPI is an actively managed fund that generates income by selling covered call options on large cap stocks. The trailing 12-month distribution yield is about 7.96%, at the time of writing this. I also looked at the top-holdings and the overall fund prospectus and their focus is mostly around the SP500 stocks tending towards low-volatility and that they believe are approaching over-valued territory. At the time of writing this, their top four holdings are Bristol Myers Squibb (BMY), Hershey (HSY), Progressive (PGR) and Coca-Cola (KO), all of which seemed overvalued per my analysis as well. Overall, I liked the exposure of relying on a covered call ETF in my tax-advantaged accounts. This is an interesting exercise, giving the benefits of covered call option trading without having to spend as much time. The high distribution yield is an interesting play in what is a very high inflationary environment. Anyway, we will see how this turns out.
Buys and Sells
There were no sells this month.
As far as buys, there was a lot more activity as my pending buy orders go triggered. Among the big buys, I added to my positions for MSFT, TROW, TXN and JPM. Some smaller “staying in the game” purchases included AFL, V, VZ and TGT. TGT and WMT got slaughtered this month as far as their stock prices after their earnings results. None of this was particularly surprising (to me atleast), because the effects of inflation, the situation in eastern Europe and the lockdowns in China were bound to have their impacts on companies in this sector. TGT, in particular, has been a big beneficiary of the lockdown paradigm for the best part of the last two years. So a reversion to the mean was certainly on the cards. Overall though, I think the business fundamentals are sound and I do not see this company going away soon atleast in my lifetime.
Summary
Yet another month is in the books. I am really hopeful of being more regular with my blog updates. We shall see. Let me know in the comments below as to how is your portfolio doing and how was your May.
See y’all in the next post…