Options Update: October 2018 (Part 2)

Part 1 of my monthly options update presented October's assigned, expired, closed and rolled options. Also, I reviewed options that expire in the next two months and discussed the progress I've made related to my secured options income goal.

In Part 2, I'm providing details on covered calls and put contracts sold in October, as well as a spread trade I executed. I'm also providing the usual snapshot of recent options trades showing a running tally of options income and secured options income.

Options Update: October 2018 (Part 1)

DivGro's focus is dividend growth investing and most of my articles discuss how I use the strategy of dividend growth investing to manage my portfolio.

I added options trading to leverage the equity in my portfolio and to generate more income. Through monthly options update articles, I report on these options trades and I track the options income so generated.

With lots of trading activity in October, I decided to split this update into two parts. Part 1 provides the usual recap and a snapshot of October's trades. I report on expired, closed, and rolled options, and review a list of options expiring soon. Part 1 concludes with a look at how I'm doing with regards to my secured options income goal.

Part 2 will provide details on new covered call and put contracts, as well as a spread trade I executed last month. I'll also provide the usual snapshot of recent options trades.

DivGro Pulse: October 2018

DivGro is my portfolio of dividend growth stocks and I write monthly pulse articles that monitor DivGro's health. These articles are strategy-focused and my overall aim is to reduce portfolio risk and to further diversify my holdings.

In the third quarter of 2018, I focused specifically on strengthening DivGro's risk profile by closing or trimming riskier positions and adding higher quality stocks.

In this month's edition, I'm reporting several additions to my portfolio. These are high-quality stocks with either Safe or Very Safe dividend safety scores (as assessed by Simply Safe Dividends).

23 Dividend Increases: October 22-26, 2018 (Part 2: Remaining Sectors)

One way to identify dividend growth stocks for further analysis is to monitor dividend increases. I look for companies that regularly increase their dividends.

This past week, 23 companies on the CCC list announced dividend increases. Part 1 covered dividend increase announcements of stocks in the Financials and Real Estate sectors. This is Part 2, which covers the remaining sectors.

Two of the 11 stocks in Part 2 announced double-digit percentage increases.

23 Dividend Increases: October 22-26, 2018 (Part 1: Financials and Real Estate Sectors)

Earnings season is in full swing—no fewer than 23 companies announced dividend increases in the past week.

I monitor dividend increases for stocks on my watch list of dividend growth stocks to identify candidates for further analysis. Companies can only raise their dividends regularly and sustainably if they grow earnings sufficiently.

Part 1 covers dividend increases from the Financials and Real Estate Sectors. Part 2 will cover dividend increases for the remaining sectors.

Of the 12 stocks I'm covering in Part 1, five announced double-digit percentage increases!

10 Dividend Growth Stocks For October 2018

The CCC list is a wonderful resource for Dividend Growth Investors. Created by the late Dave Fish and now maintained by Justin Law, The CCC list contains nearly 900 stocks trading on U.S. exchanges with the distinction of having paid higher dividends for at least 5 consecutive years.

With my monthly 10 Dividend Growth Stocks series, I rank a subset of stocks from the CCC list and present the 10 top-ranked stocks for further research.

Last month I noted that my ranking system does a poor job of ranking REITs relative to other stocks. I decided to rework my ranking system to address this shortcoming. Today I'm debuting my new ranking system. While it is still in development, I wanted to test it out on stocks in the Utilities Sector.

19 Dividend Increases: October 15-19, 2018 (Part 2: Remaining Sectors)

Companies that regularly increase their dividends show confidence in the potential growth of future earnings. Monitoring dividend increases for stocks on my watch is one way I identify candidates for further analysis.

This week, 19 companies decided to increase their dividends, including 2 of the stocks I own.

Part 1 covered stocks in the Energy, Industrials, and Materials sectors. This is Part 2, which covers the remaining sectors.

No fewer than 5 of the 11 stocks in Part 2 announced double-digit percentage increases!

19 Dividend Increases: October 15-19, 2018 (Part 1: Energy, Industrials, and Materials)

Companies that regularly increase their dividends show confidence in the potential growth of future earnings. Monitoring dividend increases for stocks on my watch is one way I identify candidates for further analysis.

This week, 19 companies decided to increase their dividends, including 2 of the stocks I own.

Part 1 covers stocks in the Energy, Industrials, and Materials sectors. Part 2 will cover the remaining sectors.

Of the 8 stocks I'm covering in Part 1, the top increase is 21%!

9 Dividend Increases: October 8-12, 2018

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

In the past week, 9 companies announced dividend increases.

Four of these increases are double-digit percentage increases!

Quarterly Review of DivGro: Q3-2018

Welcome to the Q3-2018 review of DivGro, my portfolio of dividend growth stocks.

My quarterly reviews provide a summary of dividend income, dividend changes, and transactions executed in the past quarter. I also provide some charts showing various portfolio statistics. While these reviews are mostly informational, they help me to track progress over time.

My portfolio generated more than $5,370 of dividend income this quarter and I'm projecting dividend income of at least $5,600 per quarter going forward.

5 Dividend Increases: October 1-5, 2018

Companies that regularly increase dividends show confidence in future earnings growth potential. Monitoring dividend increases for stocks on my watch list helps me identify candidates for further analysis.

In the last week, 5 companies decided to increase their dividends. One of these increases is a double-digit percentage increase!

Monthly Review of DivGro: September 2018

Welcome to the September review of DivGro, my portfolio of dividend growth stocks. I present details of buys and sells, and I provide a summary of dividends collected. Additionally, I look at how the month's activities have impacted DivGro's projected annual dividend income (PADI).

In September, I opened five new positions and added shares to four existing positions. Additionally, I closed two positions. Seven DivGro stocks announced dividend increases in September.

The net result of all these changes is that PADI increased by about 1.2% in September. Year over year, PADI increased by 29.5%.

As for dividend income, September was another record-setting month! I received dividends totaling $2,713 from 33 stocks in my portfolio, for a year over year increase of 21%. So far in 2018, I've collected $14,660 in dividends or about 81% of my 2018 goal of $18,000.

Options Update: September 2018

I write monthly options updates to report on my options trades and to keep track of the options income so generated. Each update serves as a status report on the open options and obligations I have. I also report new trades and provide a running tally of DivGro's options income to date.

While DivGro's focus continues to be dividend growth investing, I leverage the equity in my portfolio to trade options and generate extra income. This allows me to buy more dividend growth stocks than otherwise would have been possible.

I mostly sell puts on stocks I would like to own and covered calls on stocks I already own. Occasionally, I execute more speculative options trades, too, such as bull put spreads and other combo trades.

9 Dividend Increases: September 24-28, 2018

Companies that regularly increase dividends show confidence in future earnings growth potential. Monitoring dividend increases for stocks on my watch is one way to identify candidates for further analysis.

This past week, nine companies decided to increase their dividends, including two of my DivGro holdings. No fewer than six of these increases are double-digit percentage increases!

DivGro Pulse: September 2018

I write monthly pulse articles that are strategy-focused and monitor the health of my portfolio. My overall aim is to reduce portfolio risk and to further diversify DivGro's holdings.

In the third quarter of 2018, I'm focusing specifically on strengthening my portfolio's risk profile. To that end, I'm closing or trimming riskier positions, looking to diversify across all sectors, and adding higher quality stocks.

I update the fair value estimates and rank the dividend growth stocks in my portfolio. Stocks that are fundamentally sound, yet undervalued, are candidates for further investment. Poor-performing stocks with low rankings probably should be sold.

7 Dividend Increases: September 17-21, 2018

Companies that regularly increase dividends show confidence in future earnings growth potential. I monitor dividend increases for stocks on my watch list of dividend growth stocks to identify candidates for further analysis.

In the last week, 7 companies announced dividend increases, including 4 of the stocks I own. Four of the dividend increases are double-digit percentage increases!

4 Dividend Increases: September 10-14, 2018

Companies that regularly increase dividends show confidence in future earnings growth potential.

I like monitoring dividend increases for stocks on my watch list of dividend growth stocks because I consider such stocks to be candidates for further analysis.

Last week, 4 companies declared dividend increases.

700

Today I'm celebrating posting article number 700 at DivGro!

I posted my first DivGro article on 10 January 2013. After blogging for 2,076 days, my articles on DivGro have seen more than 1.23 million page views. I'm averaging an article every 2.97 days and about 10.2 articles every month...

The last time I wrote a Milestones article such as this one was 4 June 2017. That article was number 500 and my page views totaled 832,549 at an average of about 516 page views per day.

Now I'm averaging about 594 page views per day. In the past month or so, DivGro averaged about 950 page views per day.

Top-Ranked Dividend Growth Stocks By Sector

Last week, I published the September edition of my monthly 10 Dividend Growth Stock series.

For this month's edition I ranked 240 CCC stocks, which is significantly more than I usually do! The ranking process is quite involved, as I manually collect data from several sources. Prior to this month's ranking of 240 CCC stocks, I've limited the number to about 50 stocks at a time.

One advantage of ranking so many stocks is that I can review the top-ranked stocks by sector. Dividend growth investors should find these sector-based lists informative, especially for purposes of diversification. This article presents up to 10 top-ranked stocks per sector.

4 Dividend Increases: September 3-7, 2018

Companies that regularly raise their dividend payments show confidence in future earnings growth potential. Monitoring dividend increases for stocks on my watch is one way to identify candidates for further analysis.

This past week, four companies on my watch list decided to increase their dividends, including one of the stocks I own.

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

10 Dividend Growth Stocks For September 2018

Like many dividend growth investors, I use the CCC list as a starting point for my research. The list contains nearly 900 stocks trading on U.S. exchanges with the distinction of having paid higher dividends for at least 5 consecutive years.

With my monthly 10 Dividend Growth Stocks series, I rank a subset of stocks from the CCC list and identify the 10 top-ranked stocks for further research.

This month I combined several lists and retained only stocks that also appear in the CCC list and pass several other screens as well. The final list contains 240 stocks and for the first time since starting this series, I ranked all 240 candidates!

Monthly Review of DivGro: August 2018

Welcome to the monthly review of DivGro, my portfolio of dividend growth stocks. My goal with these reviews is to share updates to my portfolio and to detail the dividends I received during the month. I also look at how DivGro's projected annual dividend income (PADI) has changed.

In August, I added shares to five existing positions. Additionally, I reduced my holdings in one position and closed two positions.

Three DivGro stocks announced dividend increases in August. The net result of these changes is that PADI increased by about 0.9% in August. Year over year, PADI increased by 38.9%.

As for dividend income, in August I received dividends totaling $1,433 from 18 stocks in my portfolio, a year over year increase of 55%. So far in 2018, I've collected $11,947 in dividends or about 66% of my 2018 goal of $18,000.

Options Update: August 2018

DivGro's focus is dividend growth investing and most of the articles I post here relate to how I manage my portfolio using the strategy of dividend growth investing.

In June 2016, I added options trading to leverage the equity in my portfolio and to generate more income. Through monthly options update articles, I report on my options trades and I keep track of the options income this activity generates.

Options trading generates extra income, which allows me to buy more dividend growth stocks than otherwise would have been possible.

I mostly sell puts on stocks I would like to own and covered calls on stocks I already own. Sometimes, I execute more speculative options trades, too, such as bull put spreads and other combo trades.

3 Dividend Increases: August 27-31, 201

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

In the past week, only three companies on my watch list declared dividend increases.

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

7 Quality Dividend Growth Stocks I Don't (Yet) Own

Recently, I published the August edition of my monthly 10 Dividend Growth Stock series.

For the first time since starting the series in 2014, I own each and every stock in the top 10! While it is satisfying to own the top 10 ranked stocks, not seeing a single new stock that I can research and potentially add to my portfolio, is somewhat disappointing.

So, I decided to hunt for quality dividend growth stocks that I don't own.