Monthly Review: February 2014

This month was an exciting one for DivGro! I had a (surprisingly) popular post that received many more page views and comments than normal, propelling the total page views of this blog above the 30,000 mark. My blog is still young, but I sense some acceleration happening now!

In February, I reworked the Performance page to show an overview of DivGro's holdings and performance in a visually pleasing way. I wrote about the inspiration for the radial charts I created – a logo my dad designed many years ago for a real estate agency. This week, my brother took a photo of a billboard containing the logo. It is great to see the business is still operational, after 38 years!

This month, I bought shares of Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), adding one more holding to DivGro in the Health Care sector. Given DivGro's market value of $80,217, projected annual dividend income of $3,112 represents a simple yield of 3.88%.

I received $101 in dividends from 5 stocks this month, an increase of 13% over dividends received in February 2013. This month, projected monthly dividend income increased to $259, slightly up from $252 last month.

Transactions:

• Purchases
• 2014-02-03: BUY 30 JNJ @ $87.10
• Dividends
• 2014-02-07: Cash Dividend Receipt GD:  $19.60
• 2014-02-14: Cash Dividend Receipt VNR:  $37.35
• 2014-02-20: Cash Dividend Receipt CAT:  $18.00
• 2014-02-27: Cash Dividend Receipt SJR:  $8.01
• 2014-02-28: Cash Dividend Receipt PRE:  $18.09
• Deposits
• 2014-02-28: MAR Cash Deposit: $2,500

New Dividends and Dividend Increases:

• The purchase of JNJ added $79.20 of projected annual dividend income.
• NU's dividend increase added $6 of projected annual dividend income.
• Projected annual dividend income: $3,111.78

Dividend Summary:

• Dividend income last month: $120.65
• Dividend income this month: $101.05
• Total dividend income year-to-date: $221.70

Markets:

Jan 31, 2014	DOW: 15,698.85 S&P 500: 1,782.59 10-YR BOND: 2.67%
Feb 28, 2014	DOW: 16,321.71 S&P 500: 1,859.45 10-YR BOND: 2.66%

After the large drop in the markets in January, things turned around this month. DivGro experienced a strong recovery of 4.83%, compared with the S&P 500 (+4.31%) and the Dow Jones (+3.97%).

Portfolio: The following spreadsheet shows the state of DivGro on February 28, 2014:

Looking Ahead: I'll be looking for 10 new dividend growth candidates for March, one for each sector in my watch list. I have enough funds for one purchase.