8 Dividend Increases: August 6-10, 2018

Companies that regularly increase dividends show confidence in future earnings growth potential. One way to identify dividend growth stocks for further analysis is to monitor dividend increases.

In the last week, eight companies on my watch list announced dividend increases.

Three of the dividend increases are double-digit percentage increases.

Top Holdings of Dividend Growth Bloggers, 2017 Edition

This article presents the top dividend growth stocks held by established dividend growth bloggers with public portfolios. An analysis of stocks in these portfolios reveals Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) to be the most popular holding. I rank stocks by appearance frequency and by proportional weight, taking the relative size of each holding into account. Readers that manage their own dividend growth portfolios may find it interesting to compare their portfolios to the Top Holdings of Dividend Growth Bloggers.

In January 2013, I joined a growing community of dividend growth (DG) bloggers when I created DivGro. As a rookie blogger, I learned a lot by reading other DG blogs and scouring them for good ideas. For me, the best learning came from reviewing the public portfolios of DG bloggers.

The Blogger's Dividend Growth Portfolio, 2015 Edition

This article originally appeared on The DIV-Net on Wednesday, 23 December 2015.

In January 2013, I joined a growing number of dividend growth investment (DGI) bloggers when I created DivGro. As a starting DGI blogger, I learned a lot by reading other DGI blogs and mimicking what seemed to be good ideas. For me, the best learning came from reviewing the portfolios of DGI bloggers who chose to make their portfolios public.

My blogroll contains over 100 DGI blogs and I include links to public portfolios. Having direct access to public portfolios gives me a quick overview of a blogger's investment philosophy. By now, I know most of the tickers usually found in DGI portfolios, so a quick glance at a public portfolio tells me a lot. Of course, if bloggers choose to include more details than just a list of tickers, that is most useful.

Recently, I updated my blogroll by separating blogs into different categories based on date and activity. New Blogs are blogs that are less than one year old. More established blogs are either Active Blogs (blogs with at least 50 posts in the past year) or Steady Blogs (blogs with fewer than 50 posts in the past year). I also have an Honor Roll containing well-known and popular blogs that contain high quality or inspirational articles.

The Bloggers' Dividend Growth Portfolio

Includes: AFL • APD • AVA • BAX • BBL • BMS • CAT • CLX • COP • CSX • CVX • DE • DLR • EMR • GIX • HCP • HRS • IBM • ITW • JNJ • KMB
• KMP • KO • LEG • LMT • LO • MAT • MCD • MDT • MO • MSFT • NSC • O • OHI • PEP • PG • PM • PSEC • QCOM • RTN • SO • T • TGT • V
• VZ • WAG • WM • WMT • XOM • YUM 

Today, Seeking Alpha published my first premium article! Here is an excerpt of the introduction:

A while ago, I expanded DivGro's blogroll to include nearly 100 blogs. There is a special section highlighting active blogs that are at least one year old. I provide short descriptions to tell readers what each blog is about. Additionally, I include links to the public portfolios of blogs in my blogroll. These links are marked with a ¶. 

With a little work it is possible to get an interesting, composite view of dividend growth investing from public DGI portfolios. Earlier this year, I used 20 different portfolios to create a list of popular dividend growth stocks. On that occasion, the four most popular dividend growth stocks were McDonald's (NYSE:MCD), Chevron (NYSE:CVX), Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) and Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO). 

The purpose of this article is to repeat the exercise, but this time with the much more comprehensive list of blogs in my blogroll.

Please head on over to Seeking Alpha to read The Bloggers' Dividend Growth Portfolio: Popular Dividend Growth Stocks Trading On U.S. Exchanges.

More Popular Dividend Growth Stocks

In my previous post, I presented a portfolio containing 31 of the most popular dividend growth stocks, based on the holdings of 20 different dividend growth portfolios.

To compile the portfolio, I simply counted the number of appearances of each stock in all portfolios and sorted them by decreasing frequency. I arbitrarily made a cutoff at 7 appearances, resulting in a portfolio of 31 stocks. Collectively, the 20 portfolios hold 205 different stocks, which means that 174 stocks were cut.

One of my readers, Passive Income Pursuit, expressed interest in seeing the rest of the stocks. At first, I wondered if there would be value in sharing such a huge list. After all, the 174 stocks are less popular than those that made it into the portfolio of 31...

Popular Dividend Growth Stocks

The Internet hosts dozens of dividend growth investment blogs. You can easily find them using your favorite search engine. Another way to find them is to find one, like the very popular Dividend Mantra, and follow links from that site's blogroll. DivGro similarly hosts a small blogroll, which you can find just below my Blog Archive to the right.

Many of these blogs make their portfolio of holdings public. You can learn a lot by studying the portfolios and by reading posts announcing new buys (or sells). With a little work, it is possible to get an interesting, composite view of dividend growth investing from these portfolios. In this post, I'm sharing what I've learned from 20 different portfolios, listed at the bottom of this post.