DivGro's High and Low Performers in 2018

On this last day of 2018, I wanted to review DivGro's best and worst performers of the year. Unlike last year, when DivGro contained lots of winners, this year is a mixed bag.

Of the 49 positions I owned throughout the year, 18 are trading up and 31 are trading down. With more positions down than up, it is unsurprising that these positions are down 5.6%, on average.

The largest losses are from Ford Motor (F), down 39.6% since January 2018, and Altria Group (MO), down 30.2% since January 2018. On the other hand, Netflix (NFLX) returned 33.1% this year, and Omega Healthcare Investors (OHI) returned 28.1% in 2018.

Summary Of Dividend Increases In 2018

I like monitoring dividend increases for a selection of stocks in the CCC list because I consider such stocks to be worthy candidates for further analysis. The following screens determine the selection:

     • Dividend Yield ≥ 1.0%
     • Market cap ≥ $1 billion
     • No stocks that are being acquired
     • No Over-The-Counter or Pink Sheet stocks

This article provides a summary of 2018's dividend increases, as summarized in my weekly Dividend Increases articles. In preparing for this article, I excluded dividend increases of stocks not in the latest available CCC list (dated 11/30/18) and those that no longer pass the above screens.

10 Dividend Growth Stocks For December 2018

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

In the October edition, I debuted a new ranking system. The ranking system assigns letter grades to stocks relative to their performance among sector peers. Having a sector-oriented ranking system avoids the problems associated with ranking unlike stocks.

This month I decided to rank CCC stocks in one of the defensive sectors, Consumer Staples. Given the increase in market volatility since October, perhaps it is prudent to start considering defensive stocks. Defensive stocks tend to outperform the broader market during market downturns.

New Additions to My Portfolio (Part 2)

In Part 2 of this article I'm covering three more additions to DivGro. These are stocks in the Financials and Information Technology sectors.

Part 1 presented two new positions in the Materials sector, Air Products and Chemicals (APD) and International Paper (IP); and one new position in the Energy sector, Chevron (CVX).

On Monday, the stock market dropped to a 20-month low on the worst Christmas Eve trading day ever! But things certainly got turned around on Boxing Day! As mentioned in Part 1, I've been operating under the assumption that the bulls would keep the bears at bay for another year or so. We'll see how it goes...

New Additions to My Portfolio (Part 1)

The stock market dropped to a 20-month low on the worst Christmas Eve trading day ever! Continued turmoil in Washington is rattling financial markets, and the S&P 500 is on the brink of a bear market.

Given this context, it is weird to be reporting new buys for my portfolio. But I've been positioning DivGro for increased volatility and in anticipation of this long-running bull market coming to an end. I have to confess that I've been operating under the assumption that the bulls would keep the bears at bay for another year or so. We'll see how it goes...

This article reports on six recent buys, all new positions in my portfolio. Part 1 covers additions in the Materials and Energy sectors, while Part 2 will cover additions in the Financials and Information Technology sectors.

Dividend Increases: December 17-21, 2018

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. Companies that regularly raise dividends show confidence in the potential growth of future earnings.

In the last week, five companies I track announced dividend increases, including one of the stocks I own.

Four of the five increases are double-digit percentage increases!

Recent Sells to Harvest Tax Losses (Part 3)

Part 3 of my article on harvesting tax losses covers three more recent sells. I'm trimming these stocks rather because I'm hoping to buy back shares in 2019 to retain the dividends and to lower my average cost basis.

Part 1 covered Ford (F), while Part 2 covered recent sells on Gilead Sciences (GILD), KB Home (KBH), and Nvidia (NVDA). I trimmed GILD, but closed KBH and NVDA because I'm no longer  interested in owning those stocks.

In the conclusion of this article, I'll provide a summary of all the trades reported in this article.

Recent Sells to Harvest Tax Losses (Part 2)

Today I'm presenting Part 2 of a three-part article on recent sell transactions to harvest tax losses. With one of the sells presented today, I'm trimming two-thirds of a losing position with the view to reestablishing the position next year. Two additional sells are closing trades because I have no desire to hold onto these positions.

Part 1 presented a recent sell of Ford (F) in which I significantly trimmed my losing position. I hope to buy back shares next year before F goes ex-dividend, but I'll need to wait 31 days to avoid breaking the wash-sale rule.  F's next ex-dividend date should be near the end of January, so I'll have a window of about a week to buy back shares.

See Part 3 of this article for the final tax-loss harvesting sells.

Recent Sells to Harvest Tax Losses (Part 1)

 In year's past, I've sold stocks in late November or into December to offset capital gains, so limiting my tax liability. The strategy is not without problems, but I like having an excuse to clean house.

So far in 2018, I've earned about $15,000 in capital gains from sold stocks and an additional $6,000 from closed options trades. To lighten my 2018 tax burden, I decided to realize some offsetting losses by trimming and even closing several losing positions.

Part 1 of this article presents a recent sell in which I'm trimming a losing position. I hope to buy back shares next year before the ex-dividend date and to establish a lower cost basis. I'll need to wait 31 days to avoid breaking the so-called wash-sale rule.

Part 2 and Part 3 will cover additional sells. Most of these are similar in that I'm hoping to reestablish my positions next year. But I'm also closing one position altogether.

13 Dividend Increases: December 10-14, 2018

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

This past week, 13 companies announced dividend increases, including three of the stocks I own.

Five of these increases are double-digit percentage increases!

Goals for 2019

I believe in setting stretching but achievable goals.

It is not very useful to entertain goals that are easy to achieve. Such goals are not inspiring and they don't require special effort. And achieving an easy goal won't give you a special sense of accomplishment.

On the other hand, setting goals that are unachievable or impossibly hard is not useful either. Doing so just sets you up for failure.

Stretching goals demand extra effort and focus. They require commitment, patience, and constant monitoring. Sometimes, when progress is not sufficient, they require a course correction.

In this article, I'm presenting my goals for 2019.

28 Dividend Increases: December 3-7, 2018 (Part 3: Remaining Sectors)

One way to identify dividend growth stocks for further analysis is to monitor dividend increases. Companies can only increase their dividends regularly and sustainably if they grow earnings sufficiently.

Last week, 28 companies declared dividend increases, including 2 of my DivGro holdings. I already covered dividend increases of stocks in the Real Estate, Health Care, and Industrial sectors. Today I'm covering dividend increases of stocks in the remaining sectors.

In this list of the 11 stocks, no fewer than six stocks announced double-digit percentage increases. And the top increase is a spectacular 51%! To learn about these increases, read on...

28 Dividend Increases: December 3-7, 2018 (Part 2: Health Care And Industrials Sectors)

Monitoring dividend increases for stocks on my watch is one way to identify candidates for further analysis. Companies can only raise their dividends regularly and sustainably if they grow earnings sufficiently.

In the last week, 28 companies declared dividend increases, including 2 of my DivGro holdings. Part 1 of this article presented dividend increases for stocks in the Real Estate sector. This is Part 2, which covers the Health Care and Industrials sectors. See Part 3 for dividend increases of stocks in the remaining sectors.

Four of the 9 stocks covered in Part 2 announced double-digit percentage increases and the top increase is an impressive 21%!

28 Dividend Increases: December 3-7, 2018 (Part 1: Real Estate Sector)

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. Companies that regularly raise their dividend payments show confidence in future earnings growth potential.

In the past week, 28 companies declared dividend increases.
Part 1 covers dividend increases in the Real Estate sector. See Part 2 and Part 3 for dividend increases in the other sectors.

None of the Real Estate sector stocks announced double-digit percentage increases, but the year-over-year increase of one of the stocks is 20%! This happens when a company increases its dividend more than once a year.

Monthly Review of DivGro: November 2018

I write monthly reviews of my portfolio of dividend growth stocks, DivGro, to detail any transactions and to summarize the dividends I received during the month. I also summarize the changes to DivGro's projected annual dividend income (PADI).

In November I received dividends totaling $1,811 from 21 stocks in my portfolio, a year over year increase of 80%. So far in 2018, I've collected $17,591 in dividends or about 98% of my 2018 goal of $18,000.

This month I reduced the size of one of my riskier but higher yielding positions. I opened two new positions and added shares to four existing positions. Five DivGro stocks announced dividend increases in November.

The net result of these changes is that PADI increased by about 1.3% in November. Year over year, PADI increased by 41.6%.

My Dividend Growth Stock Selection Criteria

By Sneha Shah of Greenworldinvestor

Dividends are preferred by investors as they provide actual solid cash rewards for holding a particular stock. What is even more exciting is to see these dividends grow year on year. While it seems very easy, a lot of research is involved in selecting the stocks for creating a successful dividend growth portfolio.

Dividend growth investing is both an art and a science and your portfolio needs a lot of patience and attention in order to grow.

Here are the five most important factors to consider before selecting your dividend growth stocks.

Options Update: November 2018

DivGro's focus continues to be dividend growth investing, and most of my articles discuss the management of my dividend growth portfolio. But I also do options trades, so I write monthly options updates to keep track my options income.

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.

I added options trading to DivGro to leverage the equity in my portfolio and to generate extra income. Options trading allows me to buy more dividend growth stocks that 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.

8 Dividend Increases: November 26-30, 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.

This past week, eight companies announced dividend increases, including one of the stocks I own.

Two of these increases are double-digit percentage increases!

10 Dividend Growth Stocks For November 2018

In a recent article, I presented the top 10 holdings of Dividend ETFs in each GICS sector along with F.A.S.T. Graph charts of a selection of stocks I consider worthy of further analysis and possible investment.

For this month's top 10 list, I decided to rank these stocks and present the top 10 stocks along with my fair value estimates and other key metrics.

I'm still tweaking the new ranking system and I hope to return to ranking an entire GICs sector next month.

In time, I want to use the sector averages to calibrate the ranking system so it does a better job ranking stocks from different sectors.

Top Holdings Of Dividend ETFs (Part 2: The Top 10 By Sector)

In Part 1 of this article, I presented a virtual portfolio of the top holdings of 47 dividend ETFs. Using a proportional scoring system that favors larger investments and larger ETFs, I calculate dan aggregate score for each ticker in the top 25 holdings of the dividend ETFs. Sorting the aggregate scores in descending order determined the rank of each stock (ticker).

The top 50 holdings are not distributed evenly among the 11 GICS sectors. For example, not a single Materials sector stock is present in the top 50 holdings. For dividend growth investors interested in diversifying their portfolios, this is not very helpful.

So in Part 2, I'm showcasing the top 10 stocks in each GICS sector. Seeing the top 10 stocks in each sector, along with key ratings and metrics, is quite useful, in my view, and should give readers additional insight into the holdings of dividend ETFs.

20 Dividend Increases: November 12-23, 2018 (Part 2: Remaining Sectors)

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.

Recently, 20 companies announced dividend increases, including 3 of my DivGro holdings. Part 1 of this article covered increases from the Consumer Discretionary, Consumer Staples, and Utilities sectors. This is Part 2, which covers the remaining sectors.

Two of the 9 stocks covered in Part 2 announced double-digit percentage increases and the top increase is a spectacular 29%!

20 Dividend Increases: November 12-23, 2018 (Part 1: Consumer Discretionary, Consumer Staples, And Utilities)

I monitor dividend increases for stocks on my watch list to identify candidates for further analysis and possible investment. Recently, 20 companies announced dividend increases, including 3 of my DivGro holdings.

Part 1 of this article covers dividend increases from stocks in the Consumer Discretionary, Consumer Staples, and Utilities sectors.  Part 2 will cover the remaining sectors.

Of the 11 stocks covered in Part 1, three announced double-digit percentage increases and the top increase is 25%! I'm happy to say two of my dividend increases are double-digit increases, too!

Top Holdings Of Dividend ETFs (Part 1: The Top 50)

From time to time, I compile a virtual portfolio consisting of the top 50 holdings of dividend ETFs. To compile the portfolio, I analyze the top 25 holdings in each ETF and assign scores proportional to the size of each holding. Summing the scores of individual holdings allow me to rank them by popularity, and so to find the top holdings of these dividend ETFs.

For this edition, I analyzed 47 dividend ETFs. Of the 1,154 tickers found in the top 25 holdings of these ETFs, 389 are unique. Pfizer (PFE) and Verizon Communications (VZ) appear in 25 of the 47 dividend ETFs, the most of any stocks. However, Exxon Mobil (XOM) tops the list by aggregate score and Apple (AAPL) is the  runner-up, replacing Microsoft (MSFT) which drops to third place.

Dividend growth investors can compare their own portfolios to the top 50 and identify candidates for analysis and possible investment.

22 Dividend Increases: November 5-9, 2018 (Part 2: Remaining Sectors)

Companies that regularly increase their 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.

Last week, 22 companies announced dividend increases. Part 1 of this article covered increases from the Industrials, Health Care, and Utilities sectors. This is Part 2, which covers the remaining sectors.

Four of the 11 stocks covered in Part 2 announced double-digit percentage increases!

22 Dividend Increases: November 5-9, 2018 (Part 1: Industrials, Health Care, And Utilities

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

This week, 22 companies declared dividend increases. Part 1 of this article covers increases from the Industrials, Health Care, and Utilities sectors. Part 2 will cover the remaining sectors.

Of the 11 stocks covered in Part 1, three announced double-digit percentage increases and the top increase is 30%!