We've likely all suffered dividend cuts in our portfolio and and some companies that have been consistent dividend raisers over the years have frozen dividend payments since early 2008. Recently our dividend income has finally gone back into record territory. The funny thing is that the record just eclipsed the amount of dividend income we were receiving way back in December of 2008. At that time when the market was plunging our portfolio was yielding a whopping 6.2%. I guess it was primed for a drop in income just like a high yielding stock.
Fast forward to today where our portfolio is yielding 4.1% and has grown considerably from 2008. We've endured dividend cuts from Manulife Financial (MFC), General Electric (GE), Yellow Pages Income Fund (YLO.UN), Husky Energy (HSE), and Bank of America (BAC) all of which I still hold and expect great things from in the future. Aside from income trust conversions from Yellow Pages and Canadian Oil Sands I don't expect any more negative dividend action over the next year or two so I look forward to really starting to grow our dividend income through purchases and dividend hikes.
3 comments:
MG,
Congrats on having your dividend income hitting an all-time-high. So did you achieve this by adding new money to work, or was this simply as a result of dividend reinvestment and dividend increases?
Also what are you buying these days? I am finding it harder and harder to put any new money to work...
Hi DGI,
It has been the result of new money as well as dividend re-investment. Raises have also helped. I agree about the difficulty finding good value these days. I've made only two trades in 2010. Both times buying COS.UN.
Thanks for updating your portfolio holdings...
...Nice call on COS...
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