Dividend Portfolio Update - January 2016

Hello everybody. Another month passed by and it’s time for my dividend portfolio value update. January was a very volatile month due to oil prices jumping up and down. There a lot of rumours that oil production will be cut and what not, but until it happens, it’s just noise. Oil prices will remain volatile until we see a concrete production cuts from OPEC and non-OPEC countries. We will see some consolidation in the oil and gas industry. Many small caps will go bankrupt and many will be scooped up.

Dividend Portfolio Value
By the end of January 31, 2016, my dividend portfolio balance was at 24,315.17. This is probably the highest level since the beginning of the year. As you can see in the chart below, TSX Composite was in a free fall for the first three weeks and then rebounded sharply.


Dividends
Dividend income is a passive income for which I don’t have to work for. In January, I received a total of $172.34 in dividends vs $107.61 for the same period a year ago. That's an increase of $64.73 or 60% on year-over-year basis. My total Year-to-Date dividend income for 2016 is $172.34. Based on my forecast I should get around $2,000 in dividends in 2016. It doesn't sound like a big amount but it’s growing every year.

Contributions
In January, I added $800 of fresh capital to my TFSA account. As many of you have heard, the TFSA contribution limit for 2016 was rolled back to $5,500 per year. But since I still have contribution room from previous years, I will continue to contribute $800 per month until I reach my maximum contribution limit.

My Investment Account (Tax Free Savings Account)
My portfolio consists of 25 Canadian dividend paying stocks. Most of my stocks pay dividends on monthly basis. This allows me to collect dividends and reinvest them into dividend paying stocks more rapidly.

Transactions
For the past 3 months I was investing new capital into energy related stocks such as PSK, FRU, IPL and PPL. Those companies are doing well and rebounding rather quickly. Since energy stocks rallied to short-term overbought levels, I decided to buy something else and return to energy sector once they test the support level.
So the first purchase of the year was in the REIT sector, specifically in property rental business. I have a lot of exposure in retail and office REITs, but I don’t have any apartment REITs, and generally apartment rentals are supposed to be the safest REITs.

Milestone Garden-style properties


So in January, I bought 60 shares of Milestone Apartments MST.UN.TO for $14.29 per share. The company owns garden-style communities in the US. A lot of it in Texas and Florida. Trading at about 20% discount to their peers and the dividend yield is around 4.5%, paid monthly. I plan to buy more companies in apartment rental business.

2 comments:

  1. Fantastic year-over-year monthly dividend income. A 60% increase in one year is a really nice increase.

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    Replies
    1. Hi there.

      Thanks for your comment. That's the beauty of dividend investment. Part of the increase came from companies increasing their dividends last year from 5 to 10 per cent. I would say that about 45% increase is attributed to fresh capital investment. Take care!

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