photo credit: kevinzhengli
Some of you have expressed interest in what stocks I own. I’ve been reluctant to share this since I’m not a stock expert and I don’t want my portfolio to be seen as advice on what you should buy.
I currently have twelve stocks in my portfolio. It would be better to have more but this is what I can afford at the moment. These are the current holdings in my stock portfolio: Bemis (BMS), British Petroleum (BP),Consolidated Edison (ED), Great Southern Bank (GSBC),Johnson and Johnson (JNJ),Coca-Cola (KO),McDonald’s (MCD),Realty Income (O),Pitney Bowes (PBI),Power Shares International Dividend Achievers (PID),Ship Finance (SFL),Universal Health Realty Income Trust (UHT).
Most of these stocks were chosen because they had a consistent history of raising dividends or had a nice dividend yield. Ideally they would be like O and have both. An 8.4% yield and a consistent history of increasing their dividend since their listing on the NYSE in 1984. I don’t particularly like investing in funds but I have PID since I am under diversified and need more international exposure.
My return on investment since I started investing last October is 4.9% or 7.2% annualized. The actual ROI is higher than that since I didn’t invest all my money at once, I’ve been slowly adding to my portfolio since then. I just calculated this figure for this post and initially thought this wasn’t a very good performance. Considering the S&P 500 index lost 22.56% the last quarter of 2008 and is down 2.67% this year my performance looks pretty good.
This performance would be a lot better if I would have been quicker to unload GE. On the other other hand if I hadn’t bough GSBC, which more than doubled, my performance would be a lot worse. That is how diversification works. If one stock sucks, there should be some others that pick up the slack.
My initial plan for this portfolio was to eventually have enough dividend income to cover my monthly expenses. I’m no longer sure if I’m going to pursue that plan since I’m looking at having a wider variety of investments. I’ll still have stocks they will just be a smaller percentage of my investments overall.
Thats a good return, been thinking of doint something similar myself, at moment most of cash in fixed rate bonds paying monthly interest.
Do you use a broker or do you buy direct? How do you go about it.
Realty Income is a great dividend stock. Do you re-invest distributions automatically or not?
Actually most dividend investors focus mainly on yield, but some studies suggest that with stocks one shouldn’t really withdraw more than 4% of their portfolio value each year. That means to me that if you have a portfolio yielding 6%, you shouldn’t spend all of your income, but leave 2% as a buffer that would soften the blow to your portfolio if something bad happens..
When do you plan on using your portfolio for income? If it’s in 10 years or more you could go for a lower yield and higher dividend growth from stocks such as PG for example.
Best Regards,
DGI
Interesting list. Bemis, Coke and Realty Income are all on my short list to buy next time I have sufficient funds. Which one I get will depend on the market conditions when I have the money.
Dreamer – I buy my stocks through Zecco. They had free stock trades when I signed up. They’ve changed the terms since then but they’re still pretty cheap and I’m too lazy to move my money so I continue using them.
DGI – I don’t automatically reinvest my dividends because Zecco doesn’t offer that option online. Most of my positions are too small for my dividends to buy a full share anyway. Currently, I let my dividends accumulate and then use them with my other funds to buy my next stock. It will probably be about 10 years before I use the dividends for income although I’m hoping it might be sooner. I’m aware of the 4% withdrawal rule but I think I can safely withdraw more if my portfolio is yielding more than that.
JerryB – I like Realty Income the best although they might be the riskiest pick of the bunch depending on what happens with real estate.