2016 Dividend Portfolio – Year in Review

The year has finally ended and I thought it would be a good to take some time and look back at the dividend portfolio to see exactly how it performed; if there were any big clear winners or clear losers and if there are any lessons to be learned from it all.

Let’s first start our look at the overall market indexes. The S&P 500 had a positive 10% increase for the year with The Dow up over 13%. Even if you remove the post-election surge in November, the market still has a positive return for 2016.

Portfolio wise, my return has been 14.72% for the year with the majority of the returns coming from stock growth. I was lucky enough to purchase a lot of high quality dividend paying stocks on some dips and they have rebounded and have went even higher. The bulk of my return has been since the Trump rally in November however. Before that, i was up about 5%. The following image shows the graph in the Robinhood App on the yearly scale.

Let’s take a look with how much of the return is from dividends vs stock growth. The following image is just a spreadsheet where I keep track of dividends paid out on a monthly basis.

At almost $1k in dividends being paid out to my account, this accounts for over 20% of my yearly return.  Not too shabby for passive income.

The biggest winners, growth wise, of my portfolio are MAIN, STWD, T and JNJ.

I first started my position in MAIN in December of last year and have been collecting their monthly dividends ever since. They pay 18 cents a share normally, but add on top of that they also paid a special dividend in June and December of this year, then we can see why MAIN is a fun stock to own. They have had a big year in growth as well since I’m up 26.17% on it.  At the time before this is posted, I have sold my position in MAIN to lock in the growth. I hope to maybe get back into it once it’s closer to it’s fair price.

STWD is another stock that I didn’t realize would perform so well when I first bought it in March 2015. It still has a dividend yield over 8% and I’ve received three dividend payments of 48 cents a share. On top of that, it’s also returned 21.3% growth. STWD is another stock that I need to revisit because I’m not sure if the dividend is sustainable. Most analyst have STWD as a hold right now and I believe I will follow that advice for the time being.

T is a telecommunications giant that’s been a dividend champion for 33 years. What’s also impressive is the 25% total return I have as well as the three dividend payments I received since owning it back in January 2015. The stock still has a PE Ratio under 20 and gives a dividend yield of 4.5%. My only regret is not buying more. Hindsight.

JNJ is another monster in the dividend champion list that has been raising dividends for 54 years. Since I’ve purchased them in January 2015, they have given my portfolio a 19.7% return, as well as four dividend payments. Right now, I believe they are fairly valued and I’m looking to buy more if it happens to dip on any amount. A lot of people have been talking about JNJ being one of the “Always Buys” and I can’t find any fault with that.

The biggest lost of the portfolio came from when I finally sold off my position of CSIQ. It had dropped radically and before I pulled the trigger to dump it, I had lost over 1k. This was before I was committed fully to the DGI brotherhood. But it was definitely a lesson that I needed to learn.

Overall, I’m happy with my dividend portfolio. I managed to cobble together a collection of stocks that have beaten the index for the year, which is no easy feat. I have a lot planned for Dividend Noob in the next year, so please stay tuned!