Monthly Review, September 2014

September was an interesting month as I increased DivGro's exposure by posting articles on Seeking Alpha. The increased exposure created more traffic to this site and, consequently, total page views have crossed the 100,000 mark. On average, DivGro is now getting about 500 page views per day. Unfortunately, my application for associate membership of The DIV-Net is stuck somewhere in the ether, which is a bad start to what I had hoped would be a mutually beneficial relationship. Oh well...

In September, I added MCD to DivGro, but parted ways with CHL and SNP after both companies cut their dividends. Consequently, DivGro now has 33 different holdings. With plenty of cash on hand, I'm in a good position to reach my goal of 36 holdings by year's end. At the same time, I'm quite pleased with my diversification efforts this year. DivGro has multiple holdings in most of the 10 sectors in my watch list. I'm still overweight in Energy and underweight in Consumer Discretionary and Industrials.

DivGro's dividend income in September set a new record! I received a total of $498 in dividends, compared with $179 in September 2013. That's an increase of 278%!

This month, I purchased shares of McDonald's Corp. (MCD), the third Consumer Discretionary sector stock in DivGro. As mentioned earlier, I sold all my shares of CHL and SNP, so DivGro is down to 34 different holdings. DivGro now has a market value of $111,249 and is delivering an average yield on cost of 5.06%. Projected monthly income is $383, down from $389 at the end of August.

Transactions:

• Purchases
• 2014-09-22: BUY 27 MCD @ $93.97
• Sales
• 2014-09-24: SELL 47 CHL @ $61.40
• 2014-09-26: SELL 31 SNP @ $90.21
• Dividends
• 2014-09-02: Cash Dividend Receipt COP:  $27.74 
• 2014-09-02: Cash Dividend Receipt AFL:  $18.50 
• 2014-09-02: Cash Dividend Receipt INTC:  $27.00 
• 2014-09-03: Cash Dividend Receipt WMT:  $16.32
• 2014-09-09: Cash Dividend Receipt JNJ:  $21.00
• 2014-09-10: Cash Dividend Receipt TGT:  $20.80 
• 2014-09-10: Cash Dividend Receipt IBM:  $15.40 
• 2014-09-10: Cash Dividend Receipt CVX:  $26.75 
• 2014-09-10: Cash Dividend Receipt XOM:  $20.70 
• 2014-09-11: Cash Dividend Receipt MSFT:  $22.40 
• 2014-09-12: Cash Dividend Receipt VNR:  $37.80 
• 2014-09-12: Cash Dividend Receipt WAG:  $14.85 
• 2014-09-18: Cash Dividend Receipt SDRL:  $72.00 
• 2014-09-23: Cash Dividend Receipt BBL:  $53.32 
• 2014-09-30: Cash Dividend Receipt NU:  $23.55 
• 2014-09-30: Cash Dividend Receipt TRV:  $15.95 
• 2014-09-30: Cash Dividend Receipt DLR:  $39.84 
• Deposits
• 2014-09-29: OCTOBER Cash Deposit: $2,500

New Dividends and Dividend Increases:

• The purchase of MCD added $91.80 of projected annual dividend income.
• The sale of CHL subtracted $90.32 of projected annual dividend income.
• The sale of SNP subtracted $107.45 of projected annual dividend income.
• PM's dividend increase added $7.44 of projected annual dividend income.
• MSFT's dividend increase added $9.60 of projected annual dividend income.
• PMT's dividend increase added $9.60 of projected annual dividend income.
• Projected annual dividend income: $4,592.38

Dividend Summary:

• Dividend income last month: $350.54
• Dividend income this month: $497.71
• Total dividend income year-to-date: $2.808.41

Markets:

Aug 29, 2014	DOW: 17,098.45 S&P 500: 2,003.37 10-YR BOND: 2.34%
Sep 30, 2014	DOW: 17.042.90 S&P 500: 1,972.29 10-YR BOND: 2.51%

The markets were down in September, as volatility increased. For the month, the Dow dropped 0.33% and the S&P 500 dropped 1.58%. Once again, DivGro trailed the performance of the overall markets, dropping 2.43% in September.

Portfolio: The following spreadsheet shows the state of DivGro on September 30, 2014:

Looking Ahead: I have enough funds for three buys in October. I'll be looking to buy stocks in these sectors: Consumer Discretionary, Financials, Industrials, Materials and Utilities. Look for a post with my next quarterly review of DivGro's performance.

How did your portfolio do in September? Did you also have a record month of dividend income?